What is Remarketing?
Remarketing focuses on bringing back customers who have either visited your site, or have already done business with your brand or made some type of connection.
Let’s look at how this retention marketing definition fits into the final stages of customer lifecycle marketing. So a basic rundown of the business lifecycle looks like, this is ideally how the sales funnel works and remarketing aims to :
- Build awareness
- Attract and educate the audience
- Convert into buyers
This is easier said than done, and the real art of digital marketing is how you handle the creation of your sales funnel. Retention marketing, remarketing comes towards the end of the buyer’s lifecycle. People already landed on your site, and you want to remind them of your brand’s products by using remarketing. Re-marketing campaigns work great to re-engage customers and convince them to complete the conversion.
Retention marketing’s primary goal is to increase the return rate of customers, not to increase the actual number of customers. Retention marketing relies on bringing back customers who are likely to make a conversion and getting them to rejoin the buying cycle. Rather than letting your ideal customer completely forget about you, remarketing is a proven method to keep existing customers engaged. If you want to drive conversions like never before and decrease the number of lost customers, you’ve got to take retention marketing as seriously as you would SEO or PPC.
Examples of retention marketing are showing ads for your business on another brand’s site, and if that user has been on your website in the last few days. Ads from the particular sales funnel they left will be shown. So if they were shopping for camping gear, ads get displayed to pull users directly back into that purchase.
You can even create a curated list of items that the customer would find of interest. If there are upgrades to the services your customers already have, you can also retarget to current customers who could benefit from upgrading services. If you’re a hosting company, then an increase in site speed and server capabilities would suffice.
Why Retention Marketing is a Smart Strategy
If you’re a brand new brand, then focusing entirely on initial customer acquisition is your best plan of action. However, once you’ve been at it for a few years, it’s a good idea to start taking retention marketing more seriously.
Without a solid retention marketing plan, all of the hard work involved in the initial customer acquisition phase will be a waste of time. If you fail to re-engage with customers over and over again, you won’t be able to cut through all of the other clutter of brands out there, and you’ll likely lose valuable conversions to competitors. Retention marketing has been proven to significantly increase revenue and maximize the potential of your current customer base. Since remarketing uses far fewer resources than the customer acquisition phase, it’s a no brainer to re-engage with these users.
Most businesses tend to focus solely on increasing sales by gaining new customers. If you shift your focus to retaining your current customers, you can increase profits significantly. Plus, selling to an existing customer is more effective than selling to a brand new customer. The stats are something like there’s a 65% of selling to an existing customer, compared to about a 10% chance of selling to a brand new one.
So after a customer buys from you once, the chance that they’ll become a return customer goes way up. The odds increase by about 60-70% that they’ll revisit your site. Since it costs less to remarket to existing customers than to acquire new ones, and because existing customers are more likely to make transactions, you can see why remarketing is vital.
Also, existing customers are more likely to spend more than new customers. That number is said to be around 3x more per visit than brand new customers, according to Adobe Digital Index.
Plus, making existing customers who love your products happier will inevitably lead to brand loyalty. In the end, you’ll have a healthy business for customers who love your products. Most likely, they’ll recommend your products and services to friends, helping lead new customers to your business.
From customer engagement, customer satisfaction, repeat customers, and inevitably word of mouth referrals, it’s clear that retention marketing is a fantastic marketing method if you want to have an immediate and lasting positive effect on your business.
Best Time to Use Retention Marketing Campaigns
Once you have ideas for your retention marketing plan, consider what types of campaigns you’re going to use.
Active Customer Campaigns: Users who are consistently returning to your brand’s site, or who subscribe to your services are essential to keep in the loop. We create campaigns to reach out to and reconnect with more dedicated customers, even if you believe you’ve got them for the life of your brand, staying in touch can make a huge difference.
Onboarding Campaigns: For targeting brand new customers, we’ll create accommodating and welcoming paths to bring the user back to your site. The best method to do this is to create a wow factor, an outstanding first impression to keep them coming back.
Lapsing Customer Campaigns: These target customers who have been inside the buyer’s cycle but now appear to be leaving. Think expiring free trials and other similar funnels.
Re-engagement campaigns: These try to absorb as many “lost” customers as possible, people who were once subscribed to your services but dropped off for whatever reason.
Attracting the Right Customers is Key
So brands with the most excellent customer retention tend to have the right customers in the first place using their services. Finding and attracting the ideal customers that are good for your brand in the first place, particular using SEO and SEM, that’s the real best retention marketing plan.
We’ll attract customers who will have a real need for your services and products. Ultimately this is the key to a good retention marketing plan. We outline who we need to target and pull into your sales funnel to increase purchases.
Creating A Positive Customer Experience For Retention
Your customers need a reason to engage with and return to your products and services. By providing an optimal site experience, offering extras like rewards and loyalty programs, and showing continued support to existing customers, we can create the best possible setting for a sound retention marketing experience.