When it comes to developing strategy, marketing managers couldn’t ask to operate in more exciting times as new, innovative digital techniques provide countless possibilities to expand their reach. Let’s look at some of the digital marketing methods that are making a huge impact, and ensuring that certain brands are ahead of the posse.
Facebook remarketing has been around for a while but it’s been fine-tuned to such an extent that it is now a must. Since approximately 28 per cent of our time online is spent on social networks, remarketing is a powerful tool for relevant, timely targeting. It also works equally well for large and small brands.
Pop onto the Aer Lingus website to check out the prices of a flight and next time you login to Facebook, you will be greeted by an ad from the airline. However, it would appear Aer Lingus isn’t firing all of Facebook’s remarketing features at you just yet, as it could have employed Facebook’s recently announced dynamic travel adverts. These allow travel-related firms to drive sales through mobile by targeting Facebook users who have visited the site with offers for the trip they’ve been researching, or even hotels in the destination they’ve just booked flights to.
Dynamic ads have been available for around a year and were first launched as ‘dynamic product ads’. When a visitor to your site looks at a specific product or page or puts something in their shopping basket, pixels allow you to target them with specialised remarketing ads on Facebook that feature the product imagery and pricing. When browsing on desktop, tablet or smartphone, they appear in the newsfeed or in the ads list on the right.
That’s a great tool in itself, but there are also some great filtering options that mean you could stretch your budget even further. These allow you to decide who sees what, and to specifically target people who’ve looked at items within a designated time period and added them to the basket. You can exclude people who have gone on to buy something or show them related items. This allows for cross-device targeting without reliance on cookies and it saves you time by eliminating the need to create multiple ads.
Remarketing and even dynamic remarketing are also available on Twitter and Instagram, but distinct differences should be noted. Firstly, video ads seem to work better on Twitter and Instagram because of the functionality of the platforms. Secondly, there’s a slightly shorter shelf life for Twitter and Instagram remarketing as the ads are shown to users for less time and people tend to scroll faster on these networks.
Viewing the impact of social media remarketing as part of a wider digital strategy allows you to ensure any effort you’ve put into sending traffic to your site via content marketing, SEO or paid advertising, doesn’t go to waste. ASOS is one global brand that seems embrace the full suite of remarketing options available. After recently buying a gift for a pregnant friend, my wife was greeted with Facebook ads displaying items from their maternity range, which also popped up using remarketing for search ads in the middle of a news article.
Incidentally, several of these cross-platform ads mention the new loyalty point scheme at ASOS. The message for marketers? When remarketing, as well as reminding customers of your product at just the right time, give them additional reasons to come back to your site.
Gone are the days when you had to guess your customers’ likes and dislikes or to rely on surveys and focus groups to build better customer profiles. Having successfully used products such as Facebook lookalike audiences and Google Match, you can ensure the data behind those actions is put to good use in helping you target similar customers across a variety of channels. You can use all the valuable first-party data you’ve collected as part of your digital marketing efforts to target your best prospects, which is good news for your ROI. If you’re not already including and excluding specific audiences from your paid marketing campaigns, you could be wasting money.
These represent just a handful of the frontline digital marketing techniques that are helping brands turn successful campaigns into leading campaigns. Isn’t it time you incorporated them into your digital marketing mix.
The latest techniques don’t just allow you to target the right people, they also allow for a level of tailoring that means you’re putting your brand in front of them at the right time too. Google Custom Affinity Audiences does exactly that. Working across the Google Display Network you’re able to tap into recent topics of interest as well as longer term interests to create a target a logical target profile.
Launching a new car? You can use affinity audiences to reach long-term car enthusiasts. Perhaps your USP as a brand or for this particular vehicle is safety? Along with targeting those who have been identified as in the market for a new vehicle using in-market audiences, you may want to hone in on new parents too. Once you’ve designed your campaign Google will provide an estimate for the volume of people you may potentially reach with your custom affinity audience, so you get a good idea of your potential customer’s profile.