How much re-marketing is good?

Except for HPTOs (Home Page Take Overs), it seems as if re-marketing drives the entire online display advertising. Be it OTA ads, e-commerce sites, review sites, or even some corporate websites, everybody seems to be riding on this bandwagon.

It must be effective and hence the rush. I’m told that remarketing ads gets an average CTR of above 0.75% where as a similar communication through a plain display ad would give a CTR of about 0.25%. A 300% increase in CTR, coupled by the fact that the conversion from such traffic also will be high (can safely assume double the conversion). Such effectiveness will surely keep the interest level high amongst marketers and advertisers.

However, like most people, I am being ‘stalked’ by these salesman-ads. Be it a review site that I had gone to, or checked out ticket price and availability on an OTA site, these salesman-ads with standard copy flyers keep popping up in almost all the sites that I visit. For me, after a few repetitive messages it becomes a blind spot, and later a pain. For marketers, it is money going down the drain. The funny part is some of the re-marketing campaign goes on, and on, and on…. Until I get fed up and delete all the cookies (no pun here)

Let us assume that only 10% of the traffic coming to the website is relevant.  Assuming that of the 10% relevant traffic about 30% (i.e 3%) has been ‘satisfied’ with their visit… it means that there are about 7% ‘unsatisfied customers. If the marketer is doing a 100% remarketing ‘always on’ campaign, it means he/she is reaching out to 97% of the customers who had visited his/her website, while actual target audience is about 7%.... which is a huge waste of money.

So the big question is – how much re-marketing is good? And how do I bring more efficiency into re-marketing campaigns in the current form

Event-time model:

While each product or service website will have its own set of uniqueness - depending on the product, value, offers, brand equity, communication etc; some basic things can be followed to achieve effectiveness. The best way is event-time based re-marketing. Based on the website usage an event is formulated and basis the past data (or real life scenario) an average time period is calculated. In some instances, the website would have the ability to capture event time period (for example the departure date in an OTA website, or gifting for a festive occasion)

Purchase cycle stages model:

Many may argue that the classical funnel model of purchase cycle stages might be dead, but I believe that the stages remain the same, only thing is it is more randomized from within…rather than being a linear progression.

When it comes to remarketing communication, basis the event on the website we need to classify the person to which stage of the purchase cycle they belong. This would involve tweaking in many of the existing websites’ UI – rather than having all the information in a single view, create opportunity to track and analyze data and classify the people visiting the website. Once the stage of purchase cycle is identified – create staggered communication in the classical AIDA format. And how much of communication, we shall see in the next model

The OTS model:

The opportunity-to-see (OTS) model has been around in traditional media planning space for a long time. Since digital too is a ‘mass medium’; it would be alright to assume that the frequency/spread of the media and its effect would be similar to what one experiences in the traditional medium.

Message:

As David Ogilvy long ago recommended, "If you are lucky enough to write a good advertisement, repeat it until it stops selling.” Under such a scenario, after initial testing, take the best performing ad and run it (as a standard ad) till it loses its potency

Frequency:

In the offline scenario, the ideal frequency for OTS is 5; we can assume that since 50% of the online ads appear in non-viewable space (below the scroll); we can assume for the online ads a frequency of 10 should be ideal

Spread:

In the OTS scenario, the spread should be based on normal ‘prospective user’ behavior with initial ads running on any/all general interest websites, and later taper it to specific niche sites that focus on anything related to the product or service that is being sold

Feeling the pulse model:

Also called sizing-up-the-customer model. Here the remarketing advertising is more about customized messaging and taking the person through the purchase funnel, if possible, through the banner itself. Similar to the real world scenario, where a salesman behind the counter sizes up the prospect by asking few basic questions and then decides whether it makes sense to pursue the person further or not…a similar exercise in the online space would go great lengths to make one’s remarketing campaign successful

For example: the first set of communication is to understand where in the purchase cycle does the user fall into and what his intent on visiting the website was…basis the interaction on the banner ad, the next set of messages is shown – leading from one stage to another.

As the remarketing space gets crowded, the efficacy would come down, if marketers do not gear up to fine tune their marketing. The idea is to take remarketing to the next level – Dreamarketing

Courtesy:

Images: blog.straightnorth.com 

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