645 – Top Ten Remarketing Tips – The Paid Traffic Series

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Ilana Wechsler

In the episode:

01:19 – If you don’t know – remarketing defined
04:27 – Be multi-platform
05:39 – Have a plan
06:15 – You’ve got to segment
07:19 – Then you exclude
08:17 – Are you tracking?
09:36 – Build these audiences
11:27 – Don’t show the same stuff
12:21 – Create engaging copy
15:27 – Ads plus email
16:25 – Next-level Google remarketing
17:31 – In summary

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Transcription:

James: James Schramko here. Welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com. This is Episode 645. And today, we’re going to be talking about the top 10 remarketing tips. And I brought along Ilana Wechsler for this. Welcome to the call.

Ilana: Thank you so much, James. It’s always a pleasure to be back on your show.

James: Well, I love having you back over and over again talking about really cool traffic techniques. And now you’ve just run a challenge about remarketing. So I thought it would be a terrific topic for today, because it’s fresh in your mind, and it’s such a powerful way to get a huge return on investment with paid advertising. So let’s sort of introduce the topic.

Firstly, if we’re not sure what it is, what is remarketing?

If you don’t know – remarketing defined

Ilana: Sure. So if you don’t know what the term is, no doubt you’ve experienced it before. But essentially, it’s if you go to someone’s website, have a look around. Even if you don’t have a look around, you just go to someone’s website and leave. And then the next day, you see an ad somewhere online for that particular business. So I’m sure everyone’s experienced it before, maybe you looked at a pair of shoes, you left, and suddenly you see those shoes following you everywhere around.

James: Perfect. So I’ve heard it described before as like an invisible contact list. It’s a way that people can be reached if they’ve sort of visited somewhere. So in the ecommerce world, I think I first noticed this with Amazon. I went and looked at some equipment. And then they sent me an email, which was quite clever, because they must have had my email address, because I was logged in. I think they can remember you from when you visit, and it sent me back to the page. It was like, “Hey, were you still interested in…” Or, “Here’s some cool equipment.” It’s like, exactly what I was looking at.

And then I noticed there were banners on some websites, when I was searching the web, that had the equipment. And now of course, I’m seeing a lot of my clients’ banners. When I am working with them and reviewing their sites, etc., I keep seeing their banner in my face.

So there’s a few do’s and don’ts with remarketing isn’t there? I think one of them that I recall is not to be too clever about how much you want to divulge to them exactly what you’re doing. What do you say about that?

Ilana: Yeah, I would. And I think why it works so well as well for many businesses, and why, you know, you do see those ridiculous return-on-investment screenshots, is that someone comes to your website and they leave, it doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t want your product. It could just mean that life kind of gone in the way, you know? They came to your website, and then the phone rang and they got interrupted, or the kid fell over and started screaming, whatever. There is a multitude of reasons why somebody didn’t do what they originally intended to do. And so, it’s kind of like, just the second bite of the cherry, really.

James: Perfect. Yeah, so it’s something I’ve experienced. A lot of the sales that happen in my own business are from post-visiting the sales page. It’s in the follow-up, and it can be supported, especially with online. I saw someone actually sent me an email recently for an event, I went and had a look at the event page, and now I’m seeing some banners, which is sort of along the lines of, you know, it’s sort of a gentle reminder about this thing. And if I had to go and check my calendar and see if I’m available or not, or if I wanted to think about whether I really want to go to the event or not. It’s a really gentle, subtle way to be just tipped back into the path of buying an event ticket, because it’s relevant. And I visited the page. I suppose what’s so effective about it is that you’re only spending money for people who are of a specific group or catchment, who have done some action or visited something versus just the general public’s. It’s just super, super hyper-targeted. Right?

Ilana: Exactly. It’s like continuing the conversation which you’ve already started a day or seven days ago. So yeah, it’s just only really talking to the people who have expressed some kind of interest in you and your product or your service.

James: Perfect. So let’s talk about the top 10 remarketing tips, now that we know what it is and how it works and why we should be doing it.

Be multi-platform

Tip number one.

Ilana: Tip number one, all right, would be definitely to do remarketing on both Facebook and Google. So often, I see people like, just do Facebook remarketing or just do Google – they don’t do both. So my strong recommendation is to be present on both platforms because we know we live in a multi-platform and multi-device world, really. So that’s sort of tip number one. So to do that, you will need both pixels on your website. Of course, Facebook and Google are not really friends. So Facebook has got their own tracking code and Google have also their own tracking code. So you will need both those tracking codes on your website in order to advertise on both platforms or remarket on both.

James: Perfect, it makes sense. So just by covering Facebook and Google, you’re getting a pretty big chunk of the available footprint that you could reach, the sites that most people are visiting.

Ilana: Exactly.

James: By the way, where does Instagram fit into that?

Ilana: Within Facebook. It’s in the Facebook ad platform.

James: And do you also get YouTube, potentially?

Ilana: Within the Google one. Yeah.

James: So basically, you get Instagram, Facebook, Google and YouTube by those two pixels.

Ilana: Yes, that’s actually coming up a little bit later in one of our tips about how you’re going to do that.

Have a plan

James: Well, help me on with tip two, then.

Ilana: Okay, tip two is to make sure you plan your strategy. Like, you want to have a clear idea of who you’re showing what. Okay? And that involves an element of planning out kind of, I guess for lack of a better word, like, your sales funnel, so that you can show the right people appropriate things. So often, the implementation actually is the easy part. People struggle with the planning of it, of who you want to show what. So it’s worth just getting out a piece of paper and pen, and planning out the funnel that you’re going to show people.

James: Nice, it makes sense. Good plan.

You’ve got to segment

Tip three?

Ilana: Tip three is to make sure you segment people. So this is kind of an extension of your planning, where you want to segment people to show the right people the right thing. So I kind of like to think of it, like, the broad categories on your website are a good way to segment people. So for my business, for example, I’ve got my agency. So the people who are interested in my services…

James: Tell us the name of it.

Ilana: Green Arrow Digital. I’ve got my services page, and then I’ve got a completely different kind of customers, a person who wants to learn how to do it. And that’s like my training page. They’re two different people, right? So the people who visit my services page, I’m only going to talk to them about the agency stuff that I do, versus the people who visit my training page, I’m going to talk to them about the training that I offer and the webinar that we run, etc. So think of, for your business, what are the category pages on your website, and you can segment people that way.

James: This is also where we talk about the difference between prospects and customers, like not showing prospects an offer versus…

Then you exclude

Ilana: That is tip number four. We’re going to exclude people.

James: Cool, okay, good. Go for it.

Ilana: Yeah. So make sure you exclude people from your remarketing campaigns for your exact reason, so that you’re not trying to sell something to your existing customers that they’ve already bought. But I would say a little bit of a ninja tip, actually, is on Facebook, sometimes, we might intentionally show customers ads so we can get people commenting and saying I bought these shoes. They were so comfy. They were awesome. And then you can turn it off.

James: Oh, that’s a good one. I also, quite often, I’ll show banners only to paying customers, because it’s just for them. It’s like a second extension of the way that I can broadcast to my own community other than just emails.

Ilana: Exactly.

James: And that’s certainly already proven, validated, tested buyers, but it’s a good way to communicate to remind them about something, super, super tight segments as well.

Ilana: That’s right. And yeah, it’s also a good way to like, test offers, etc. There’s many ways to slice and dice that.

Are you tracking?

James: What about tip five?

Ilana: Tip five is to please make sure you set up the appropriate tracking so that you can see which ads are working, which offer is working, etc. So many times, I would like, audit an ad account, and people haven’t set up the appropriate tracking. So we don’t know what’s worked, what hasn’t worked, etc. It is an extra step you have to take when you create your campaign, but it’s a worthwhile step, so that you can have the knowledge of what worked, and equally important, what didn’t work.

James: Oh, that’s a huge one. Is there a conversion pixel? Or do you just nominate a page that people visit if they’ve purchased, and can you specify values? How does it work these days?

Ilana: Yes. So on Facebook, you can just specify the URL that would be “your conversion”. I’m doing air quotes, but you can’t see my fingers moving. So you just specify the URL, and you can assign a value if you want, that’s optional.

On Google, though, it will give you extra code to put on that specific page, the thank you page, on your website. So it’s not code that goes on every page. It’s not like the remarketing code. The conversion tracking code, it goes on just that thank you page. And it is that little bit of an extra step.

James: Nice. Tip six?

Build these audiences

Ilana: Cool? Tip six is what we kind of talked about in the beginning with the YouTube and Instagram, is to build what’s called engagement audiences. So these are audiences of people who have engaged with your business or your brand on social media, but didn’t actually go to your website. So normally, in order to do remarketing, they’ve got to have come to your website or your asset or your home, you know? But for the people who’ve watched a YouTube video, or you know, liked a Facebook post of yours, or watched a video on Facebook, you can create an engagement audience of those people and remarket to them.

But there is a bit of a catch, you can only remarket to them on that platform. So let me explain. So if somebody watches a YouTube video, you can create that engagement audience, but you can only remarket to that audience on the Google sphere, be it search, display, Gmail, etc., right? The same for Facebook or Instagram. And this comes back to Facebook and Google not really being friends, right? If somebody watches your video on your Facebook page, you can create an engagement audience of that, but you can only show them an ad on the Facebook ecosystem, be it Instagram and Facebook. Does that make sense?

James: It does make sense. But it’s a really powerful one, isn’t it? People who’ve watched certain percent of your content, you know, they’ve raised their hand, they’ve shown interest. That’s going to be a powerful segment.

Ilana: It’s incredibly powerful. And you can go to a level of granularity that’s pretty crazy. And with all the messenger bot kind of development is really an explosion in the last year, you can actually create an engagement audience of your ManyChat subscribers. So there’s lots of ways that you can really build out your remarketing lists, even if people don’t actually make it to your website.

Don’t show the same stuff

James: Gosh. What about seven?

Ilana: Seven is to please make sure you rotate your creative, because you don’t want to show the same people an ad over and over again, because you’re dealing with such small audiences because it’s remarketing, right? It’s only the people who’ve come to your website in a certain timeframe. Your audiences are going to be small. It doesn’t mean they’re not worth advertising to. It just means that, you know, they’re a smaller group of people, right? So please rotate creative so you’re not showing the same people the same thing over and over again.

James: Nice. Makes sense. I remember from when I was running CPA offers a decade ago. The offers would fade pretty quickly. You’d have to start creating the next ones in anticipation of them becoming sort of worn out.

Ilana: That happens on Facebook, all the time.

James: Yes. I can imagine. Facebook seems like the place you go to relieve boredom. So you’re going to want to keep stimulating your audience.

Create engaging copy

Ilana: That’s right. Which kind of leads me to number eight, actually, which is to really try and write some good engaging copy. Often I see people with their remarketing ads, and they’re pretty boring, like, hey, come back and buy, right? No, like, this is an opportunity to reengage with your people. And I encourage you to tell a story in your ad. Your goal is with this ad is to reengage people, get them to comment, get them to share it, because they’re going to sort of spread your message far and wide.

James: Yeah, look, I think that was probably the core message that we heard about on Episode 630, with Molly Pittman.

Ilana: Yeah, I listened to that, it was great. She was spot on.

James: She knows her stuff as you do.

Ilana: Yeah.

James: And the good story stuff is what’s been working well for her. So you’re supporting the same story. It’s like, that’s the story, get the stories happening. I’ve certainly been playing around with that. Lots more videos.

I actually resisted this, even in podcasts and for my book ideas. I tend to be quite direct and pragmatic, and I’ve been encouraged by people, put more of my stories in there. They like the stories, and I should tell them, I’ve got so many. So I’ve had to start to add them in now in my podcasts, and I’ve had really tremendous feedback about it. It just makes sense, because we are wired for it. I used to think it was too self-indulgent. And it would sometimes annoy me as a consumer to be reading through a story to get to the punch line. But not everyone is like that. I think a lot of people savor and enjoy the story.

Ilana: They do. And that’s often the one thing they remember, actually. You know, if you go to a conference, and the speaker tells a story, you walk away and you remember that story, because it’s memorable and it’s relatable. And especially, it applies on social media. Because as you say, people go to social media to relieve boredom, and they’re looking for entertainment. And stories are entertainment. They don’t have to be false, true ones are still entertainment. And they’re relatable.

James: Absolutely, they should be true. Remember, you know, when I was speaking, and I saw other speakers, I couldn’t really understand why the audience was so excited and jazzed up. They could hear a 90-minute story with one bullet point of content. And I’d deliver pages of notes for people. Yet, the story-based stuff was remembered and sold well. So it’s a good reminder. We all fall into that trap of over-delivering on the content stuff and missing the point entirely. So, a good sort of dose of story, and they can be really powerful metaphors to instruct people as what to do next, as well.

Ilana: That’s right. Yeah, and often I’m a bit like you, James. Like, I find it hard to share stories. But every time I have stories about my kind of journey – and everyone has a journey – like, I’m incredibly also humbled and astounded that people’s responses from it. So we’re all learning that.

James: I like your story. I like how you came from Big Data. That’s why you understand these numbers and you can cross multiple platforms, you haven’t just gotten into the one platform, you understand how to leverage multiple platforms, because you’ve just decoded it. I like that. That’s a good historical, you’ve got the pedigree for it that most people don’t. And you can translate it, so you’re able to teach it, which is also rare.

Ads plus email

What about tip nine?

Ilana: Tip nine is kind of like what you said before with showing ads to your email people. That’s exactly tip nine, which is to combine your ads with your email marketing. And this applies especially on social media. We do this all the time. And it works so incredibly well, because people will share that ad, right? So for so many businesses, the whole goal is to use ads to get people on their database. And as soon as someone’s on their database, they never show them an ad again, that’s like completely crazy. When you combine ads with email marketing, people will comment, they’ll tag their friends, they’ll share it and they spread whatever it is that you’re, you know, maybe running an offer on or something in your email marketing. They’ll spread it for you. I want to give these people a hug, you know? So it’s such a small amount of money, it’s often like five or $10 a day to do this, and you’ll be astounded with the results.

James: Oh, that is a huge tip, leading us to number 10.

Next-level Google remarketing

Ilana: The big reveal, number 10.

James: Ta-dah!

Ilana: This is more on the Google side of things, is to sort of take your Google remarketing campaigns, just kind of, to the next level and create Google Analytics audiences. So this is incorporating Google Analytics behavior to create a subset of your generic remarketing list to show those people an ad. So a classic example of this would be to filter out the people who have bounced from your website, from your remarketing campaign. Because personally, I think if somebody’s bounced from my website, then they’ve spoken with their clicks, right? They haven’t even bothered to have a look around. That’s fine. I don’t even want to remarket to these people. So if you take those people out, then at least you’re only paying and communicating with the people who are genuinely – not genuinely, but have expressed interest in what your product or service is.

James: That’s a killer. Just like, find that 80/20 from your audience and just advertise to them.

Ilana: Exactly.

In summary

James: Perfect. It all makes sense, everything you’ve said. So a little quick recap here, our 10 tips. Use Facebook and Google, and of course their extended little side gigs. Imagine if you’re Facebook and your little side business is Instagram, or you’re Google and your little side business is YouTube. That’s pretty cool.

Plan your strategy. Know who you’re going to advertise to and what you want to advertise. And then you segment so that you can get quite relevant with that. You then exclude certain people, maybe excluding the buyers, or maybe excluding the prospects with your campaigns, or some other exclusion.

Make sure you have all your tracking. It’s absolutely pointless guessing or spending money and then not being able to dissect the answer.

Engagement.

Ilana: Build the engagement audiences.

James: That’s right. Build engagement audiences.

Rotate your creatives, keeping it fresh and trying new stuff.

Have great copy.

Combine your email and your creatives so that you’ve got basically a campaign across multiple channels, multiple modalities.

Ilana: Yup.

James: And then have your remarketing lists built from analytics audiences and removing certain segments, like people who leave the site very quickly, etc.

How’d we go?

Ilana: That is spot on.

James: Right. Well, that is a gold mine. Now, you’ve opened up sort of a conundrum here. We’ve got this fantastic information. If we want to execute on it, or if we need help getting executed on it, then we might want to follow you up at GreenArrowDigital.com.

Ilana Wechsler, you’re a fountain of knowledge. When’s your next challenge, just out of curiosity?

Ilana: That’s a good question.

James: Can we pre-register?

Ilana: Yes. Yes.

James: Whereabouts?

Ilana: GreenArrowDigital.com/retargeting-challenge.

James: Right. There you go. If you want to get on to Ilana’s next challenge, I actually recommended this the first time you ran it. You had a huge take up and some tremendous success stories. No doubt some of those will be appearing on that page – GreenArrowDigital.com/retargeting-challenge. There you go, enjoy.

Thank you, Ilana. This is Episode 645. We’ll list out those 10 remarketing tips into a handy PDF for you. And this was part of The Paid Traffic Series where Ilana Wechsler and I kind of talk a lot about Facebook and Adwords. And I don’t know that much about it, which is really good to have an expert like Ilana to come and explain it all to make it sound so much easier than it could be. If you’re trying to approach this with no help, good luck to you. It’s a little bit intimidating to start out with, but you get the right help, and it all becomes easy and it makes a lot of sense. Thank you so much, Ilana.

Ilana: Thank you so much, James.

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