Demand Curve - The Growth Newsletter #186

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The Growth Newsletter #186

6 lesser-known ad remarketing strategies

Themes of the day:

• Warm > cold
• Specific > general
• Creative > same-old

Let's dive into 6 lesser-known strategies to increase sales with remarketing.

– Neal

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6 lesser-known ad remarketing strategies

Insight from Ladder.

The highest ROI campaigns will always be to warm audiences. Whether they’ve:

• Visited your homepage
• Visited key parts of your site (FAQ, return policy, pricing, checkout)
• Purchased previously
• Filled out a lead magnet
• Jumped on a sales call

Cold audiences need a ton of convincing.

Warm audiences sometimes just need to be reminded that you exist. Or you need to overcome whatever unresolved objection they may have.

Here are some lesser-known remarketing strategies to boost sales & reduce churn.

1. Retarget high-performing audiences on cheaper channels

Use top-tier channels and targeting to find quality people, then use cheaper/lower-quality channels to remarket to them. For example:

1. Ensure all your ad sets and ads have unique UTM tags.
2. Find your top Google Ads keywords or Facebook/LinkedIn audiences.
   1. LinkedIn is very expensive but has great targeting.
3. Create custom audiences on Twitter or Display Ads targeting people who visited with those unique UTM tags where people’s attention is cheaper.

Find them where it’s expensive, focus where it’s cheaper.

2. Cross-sell, up-sell, and re-engage inactive customers

After a sale most companies just rely on email to do all the engagement and closing. But, the average open rate on emails is 30~40%.

And a lot of people just open and archive without reading. Instead, use remarketing:

1. Identify cohorts of people who are:
   1. Not reading or engaging with your emails.
   2. Less likely to repurchase or more likely to churn (haven’t been actively using the product)
2. Run retargeting ads to these segments on social platforms (Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc) to re-engage them.

Here’s how Amazon does it:

3. Remarket for months to come

A lot of folks focus on remarketing within the first few days. Abandoned cart emails or ads after the first day or two. After a couple of week or so, they kinda give up.

Remember: Someone will rarely hit your site and be ready to buy at that moment.

Usually, it’s not “no”. It’s “not yet.” For example:

• For shoes, maybe they don’t need a new pair right now, but they might next spring/summer.
• For B2B services or tools, maybe it’ll take the company months to figure out if they actually need you or if the time is right.

It’s still a decent idea to use a higher budget the sooner the interaction because they are hotter. But try remarketing to people months later.

As a rule of thumb, you should get more salesy the longer it’s been. Don’t overwhelm someone while they’re deciding; it might turn them off. But if you wait 6 months and they’ve forgotten details, hit them with a more direct pitch.

4. Don’t just optimize for purchases

Ad platforms can tell when someone is close to purchasing and charge more for their eyeballs or clicks if your ad campaigns are optimized for sales. Instead:

1. Identify or create pieces of content that lead to leads/sales.
2. Make sure there’s a strong CTA embedded into the content.
3. Send people to that content and optimize your ads for “engagement”:
   1. 50% scroll depth
   2. 20+ seconds on the page (or longer)

This may lead to more conversions at a lower price. Example:

5. Get creative for sniffing for intent

Focus on more than just the obvious pricing pages, product pages, checkouts, and free trial events. Here are other ideas:

• Return policy page
• Clicked on 3+ FAQ items
• Clicked on numerous product photos
• Spent X time on the pricing page & scrolled through the different comparisons
• Used search or filtered
• Clicked to numerous pages on the site

Get creative with sniffing for intent and combine it with:

6. Be specific

Specific will always outperform general. Customize ads and emails to match users' confirmed interests and interactions. For example:

• If they visited a specific product page, hit them with an ad or email featuring that specific product.
• If they talked to a specific sales rep, include them in an ad for familiarity.
• If they spent a bunch of time on the pricing page, they might need help figuring out which plan is right for them.
• If they visited the return policy, maybe they're worried they won't like it

Example: Chaiirish used a product the user visited and added some urgency:

Remember:

• Warm > cold
• Specific > general
• Creative > same-old

If you want some ad inspiration, check out our Ad Vault. And if you want to dive deeper into ad tactics, check out the 461 tactics in our Growth Vault.

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Also, for the true DC fans, you'll notice Nick is back helping with the newsletter:

Neal O'Grady

Justin Setzer

Nick Costelloe