Remarketing refers to engaging audiences who have already interacted with your brand, to encourage them to take a desired action that may interest them, such as conversion.

But it’s actually a lot more than that.

The secret to remarketing is building brand. That is to say, increasing the number of people who know of you, can remember you, and will say good things about you. Because brand is simply the reputation you have in the marketplace.

When remarketing is working well everything is easier. Leads are more responsive. Appointment show-up rates increase. And more of your traffic chooses to work with you!

And remarketing can also increase your brand loyalty, referral business, and the number of people considering to work with you. It’s the secret weapon of a savvy marketer and it makes all your other sales and marketing efforts more effective.

Today we’re going to discuss:

• Benefits of remarketing
• Understanding the customer journey
• The fundamentals of creating a world class reputation
• Establishing a relationship with remarketing
• The best content (and ads) for remarketing
• Best remarketing tools
• Measuring ROI and metrics track & measure
• Paid social remarketing strategy (that works)

Benefits of remarketing

• Improve awareness of your business among new audiences
• Boost brand recall
• Increase conversions, appointments, and opportunities from your audiences & traffic
• Establish a relationship (connection) between your audiences and your brand
• Increase demand for your business
• Build your know, like and trust
• Increase brand loyalty & referrals

Understanding the customer journey.

Remarketing is important because the customer journey can take time. While some customers discover a business and take action quickly, the majority of people take time to understand their problem, discover a brand, learn about solutions, and then make a decision.

We want them to not simply know about us, but to remember us, and ultimately to choose us.

A big decision like buying or selling a house may take longer than choosing a detailing service, but in both situations the service that has created a memorable connection with the individual will win the business.

There are 4 stages a person goes through in their decision journey: awareness, interest/education, decision, and action. With loyalty (the stage after deciding) resulting in happy customers and referrals. Each of these stages are opportunities to create trust.

Stage 1: Awareness:

First they discover a problem, one they may not have known they had. Awareness can also be of an opportunity that they were not conscious of. This is the tigger that initiates interest. They are now aware.

This is where ads that put you in front of people you never otherwise would of met, become very powerful.

Stage 2: Interest/Education:

Then they begin researching and educating themselves on possible solutions. Here they discover brands/services that can help them. And are actively looking for ways to solve their problem or to take advantage of an opportunity. They are interested, so will watch videos, read blogs, and scroll threads that educate them on the topic.

This is where educational, entertaining, and story telling content and ads become critical to earning that trust.

Stage 3: Consideration/Decision:

Now, they compare the various services/products that they discovered in order to determine the one that is best for them. They read reviews, schedule appointments, and evaluate the business. They’re not simply checking the boxes. Ultimately, they’re asking themselves if they can trust you with their business.

This is where reviews, case studies, and responsive communication become important to demonstrating your values as a business and why others love you.

Stage 4: Action:

Finally, they choose who to work with. Which is you, because your remarketing is amazing, of course!

Creating a world-class reputation (aka brand)?

There’s no denying that Nike has a world-class brand. It’s known the world over. And it’s known for the right things. People feel a sense of relationship with it.

So how can you create a world-class brand too?

#1: Customer service and the quality of your offering / product.

It all starts with how you take care of the customer.

Toyota for example, is known for reliability. Why? Because they over-engineer their vehicles to last longer. It costs more for them upfront, but it pays dividends in brand loyalty and word of mouth.

How well you serve your customers is the most important thing to get right.

Often, as founders and entrepreneurs, we focus on building the business. But brand is established in the communication, relationship and experience the customer has with the business. Brand is the space between the customer and the business.

If your customer has an issue, how do you respond? If they are angry at you, how do you support them? If the product fails outside of warranty, how do you care for them?

Are you putting the customer first? Or have you put your business first?

Because a business that puts itself first, is a business that will leave customers with a bad experience, creating a poor brand. Instead, overdeliver on everything. Go above and beyond for the customer. Give them more than they expected. More than they paid for. Even if they don’t appreciate it today, they will one day. And that is how you leave your mark and uphold a brand.

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

Maya Angelou

Establishing a strong brand-audience relationship with remarketing

When you have the markings of a world-class brand, as we just read about, marketing is easy. Marketing gets to tell the stories.

Toyota can create advertisements about reliability because their quality & service backs it up. That’s brand.

They can tell stories of how customers have used their vehicles to safely venture the remote corners of the world. That’s brand.

And customers who value reliability, quality and adventure will resonate with those stories.

You have all the markings a great brand too. You have great customer service, you deliver on your promises, and you provide a quality experience.

Now is the time to create that relationship.

As human beings, the more we spend time with someone the more we grow to know, like and trust them. Until we would call them a friend.

There is a fascinating study on friendship published by the University of Kansas. It states that casual friendships develop fast, usually within 3 weeks of meeting someone. And requires around 43 hours. And, in Hornstein and Truesdell study (1988), they found that 39% of acquaintances developed into casual friends after three interaction sessions of just 30 min each plus an initial investment of less than 6 hr of close personal contact.

This works with video too. The human brain doesn’t know the difference between spending time with someone in real life or on video. Have you noticed that after subscribing to a YouTube vlog you soon feel like you know the person? It’s a phenomenon called YouTube or TikTok famous.

Advertising enables you to stay in front of people with video in the same way.

As you remain in front of them, especially in those first 3 weeks, the more likely the individual is going to develop brand-recall. Soon they will feel like they’ve gotten to know you and will begin to trust you.

The best content (and ads) for remarketing

What content that builds brand?

Building brand is about creating a connection (relationship) with your customer. It’s that feeling. And you want to leave them with a good feeling about your business.

When you meet people where they are at in the customer journey stage, they pay attention. It’s of interest. This is your opportunity to show them content (and ads of that content) that shows who you are too.

#1: Tell your story

Content that tells your story of your business. How did it get started? What values do you represent?

#2: Share customer reviews and wins

Feature your clients and customers telling their stories of working with you. Share testimonials, reviews, or videos of their perspective.

You can also brag about your customer. They are hero of the story at the end of the day. Feature how awesome they were to work with, what problem they came to you with, and why you are so glad you were part of helping them achieve it.

#3: Provide value (Education, entertainment, and offers)

By providing high-quality educational content on the topics that your customers and clients are interested in, you will position yourself as the thought leader of your market.

Create videos that educate them on the most common questions people on the customer journey. For example, if they are considering selling their home, they may be interested in 10 inexpensive and easy things they can do to increase their value.

If you have a product management software company, you may teach your audience how to better organize their calendar to be more productive, as an example.

What are the best tools for remarketing campaigns?

Remarketing is about staying in front of your audience, website visitors, and email list to build brand recall, trust and increase conversions.

You can remarket with:

#1 Paid social ads

Retargeting on social media is highly effective. In fact, Meta did a study and found conversion rates were eight times higher among people who saw ads across Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network.

The best ads for remarketing are a combination of paid organic posts and offers. Use your best organic content that you’ve already created. Such as Instagram Reels, YouTube videos, and Facebook posts. Then convert them into social ads with tools like StreetText to remarket them to your audience. Always use Call To Actions on your paid ads so that you maximize the results.

#2 Email Newsletter

Email is an incredible way to build trust and loyalty with customers. Send weekly emails to people who subscribe to your newsletter. This is a simple and effective way of sharing stories, education and value that your audience will appreciate. When done well you will create loyal fans. ConvertKit and Happy Grasshopper are a couple great email tools.

#3 Mailouts

Snail mail is definitely not dead. In fact, it’s highly effective. If you have the home address of your contacts, you can send targeted mail, making it much more cost effective. Thanks.io is a great tool for hand written mail outs.

#4 YouTube channel

If you can build up subscribers on YouTube, it is an effective tool for remarketing. Similar to an email newsletter, each video you upload will be shown to subscribers. The one challenge with YouTube is it will not show the video to all your subscribers. But rather who they think will be most interested in it.

#4: Stay active on social media

Staying active on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn are also great ways of remarketing. Especially for local service professionals. When you meet someone new, add them as a friend. That way they will see you again and again – forming that all important connection.

Measuring Return on Investment

Tracking ROI is critical to understanding how your marketing is growing your business.

A common mistake is that many believe remarketing is not trackable. As a result, they don’t have the information they need to make good decisions. In the end, good campaigns are turned off and bad ones are left running.

This can all be solved by tracking the right metrics.

#1 Always track your overall marketing spend. This includes:

• Marketing tool expenses
• Wages
• Promotional material
• Ad spend
• Conversions (Leads, Emails, Trials, Appointments etc)
• Customers

#2 Track your overall marketing spend & metrics for each channel. This includes:

• Ad spend
• Reach
• Clicks
• Conversions (Leads, Emails, Trials, Appointments etc)
• Customers

#3 Track your marketing spend & metrics for each ad

• Ad spend
• Reach
• Clicks
• Conversions (Leads, Emails, Trials, Appointments etc)
• Customers

#4 Track qualitative data

Ask customers, “How did you hear about us?” You will learn a lot.

By tracking these metrics and asking these questions you will always know: your cost per lead, your cost per customer, your cost per channel, and if people are finding you from ads but converting another way.

Also, you will be able to measure trends. Remarketing ads work as a team. The longer they run the more conversions you will see. If you see your overall demand and customer conversion rate increasing, you will know that your remarketing is working.

The paid social remarketing strategy that works

I touched a bit on the challenges of organic social. It’s where content goes to die. And it’s also where the best remarketing content is created.

Paid social ads enable you to get your content in front of your audience. But the problem is you don’t have any control of when someone will see it. The infamous Ads Manager will pick the ad they think is getting the most engagement, and keep showing it again and again and again to your audience. And there’s nothing more annoying than being followed by the same ad for weeks on end.

So how do you keep your ads fresh, your content seen, build demand, and create trust with paid social?

Be everywhere all the time by rotating Facebook & Instagram ads to your audiences with StreetText. That’s right!

StreetText is a tool that enables you to create bundles of ads that rotate to each audience. You can include your email list, your website visitors, and even your CRM contacts. And best of all, it will sync your audience with Meta, so you will never have to re-upload another custom audience ever again. Three cheers!

And you can stay out of ads manager, because you can create all your ads from within StreetText. More cheers!

You can setup as bundles for each of your audiences. That way you can separate cold audiences from warm ones. And even create a bundle that only shows ads to past and present clients.

Plus StreetText is designed to track your ROI. That’s built in. So each ad tracks clicks, reach, emails, conversions, etc. You can even click on the leads to see exactly who came through each ad.

With StreetText, the paid social remarketing world is your oyster.