Remarketing Campaign Mistakes to Avoid

Marketers, it’s time you considered remarketing in order to increase conversions by 150%.

Hear us out.

There’s no question that the B2B industry, like the rest of the business world, should invest in remarketing.

Through remarketing, marketers serve ads to users who have visited their website and who have or haven’t taken a specific action.

Since you are targeting past visitors or existing customers, it’s called ‘RE’marketing.

While the terms ‘retargeting’ and ‘remarketing’ are used interchangeably, they are distinct in nature.

Let’s take a more in-depth look.

Remarketing vs. Retargeting

Let’s first understand the difference between remarketing and retargeting.

Retargeting uses paid ads to re-engage audiences who have visited your website or social profiles.

On the other hand, remarketing uses email to re-engage customers who already have purchased from you, enabling targeted upselling and messaging.

The common goal, however, is to increase conversions from those most likely to buy; the difference being the strategy.

Let’s now look at remarketing campaign mistakes you must avoid.

7 Remarketing Campaign Mistakes to Avoid

1. Not Cross-Selling & Upselling

When setting up a remarketing campaign, it’s crucial to test sell, cross-sell and upsell messages.

a. The sell message conveys the same thing heard by users before but in a different manner: with a more direct CTA and/or an exclusive, one-time offer.
b. The cross-sell message promotes offerings that complement or supplement the purchases customers have already made.
c. The upsell message encourages users to consider a more elaborate offering.

Explore these message types to increase customer lifetime value and ensure repeat purchases, build brand loyalty, as well as brand advocacy.

2. Remarketing via Cookies

With third-party cookie deprecation looming large, it’s advisable to embrace first-party data.

In any case, cookie-based retargeting gives you incomplete website visitor data, which is likely to lead you to send the wrong message to the wrong users.

On the other hand, first-party, privacy-friendly data enables you to run personalized campaigns, track relevant user interactions, and increase user engagement.

Utilizing data from customers who have shown interest in reaching out to you is preferable, as compared to buying and selling access to third-party consumer data.

Therefore, it’s now time to reexamine remarketing strategies so that you can better target users with the most relevant message.

3. Avoiding Lookalike Audiences

Expanding your reach to new audiences is critical.

For this, you shouldn’t avoid lookalike audiences (used in Facebook remarketing) and similar audiences (used in Google remarketing).

Take people showing desirable traits as models to find new audiences.

Targeting lookalike audiences will enable you to increase the size of your target audience, leading to an increase in potential leads.

Remember that when ads are received well by your targeted audience, it shows they are relevant to them.

This maximizes conversion rates, as well as ROI on your ads.

4. Forgetting to Exclude Irrelevant Audiences

An irrelevant audience equals the audience that has already been converted.

Why would your audience want to see ads for something they’ve already purchased? Excluding them from the remarketing list is essential.

This audience in particular will show no interest, dragging your click-through rates down along with the likelihood of your ad attracting clicks and conversions.

Make sure you exclude the converted audience from the past one or two weeks.

5. Setting and Forgetting the Campaign

Some marketers treat remarketing as a set-and-forget campaign. They keep running the same message, despite getting zero results.

All you have to do is to craft multiple messages that are relevant to the campaign, and then A/B test them so that you can figure out which one is most effective.

Being flexible rather than over-committing to a single idea that may not work is a win-win situation.

6. Choosing the Wrong Time to Remarket

Not all website visitors act in a similar manner. Therefore, you need a different approach towards people who view your products and abandon their cart.

Segmenting your audience based on their actions is a must. Put time and thought into WHEN you will retarget visitors.

If your products and services cause customers to visit after a specific period of time, use that as a basis.

7. Ignoring the Need for Extra Budget

Just because a campaign takes a more concentrated audience into account doesn’t mean that a budget is not required.

That said, unless these audiences are especially big, there is no need for increasing your budget. Try allocating 15-20% of your ad budget to remarketing.

There could be some exceptions. For instance, some brands end up spending more on remarketing campaigns due to the high auction prices of their industry.

Key Takeaway

Remarketing is a valuable marketing strategy, especially if you want to reach people who have already expressed an interest in your business.

Having said that, avoiding the aforementioned mistakes is a must. Remarketing when done right yields the highest ROI among all marketing tactics.

Drive Highly-Effective Remarketing Campaigns