How to Improve Campaign Performance with Funnel-Based Ad Re-marketing

The modern consumer journey is no longer a linear progression from stage to stage but rather a zig zag roller coaster ride with multiple points of entry. 

A siloed ad campaign that is restricted to a single channel will not appeal to a consumer who is hopping across channels and touchpoints. What you need is a dynamic paradigm that will respond to the shifts and sharp turns in the volatile buying journey and yet keep your brand at the top of your audiences’ mind. 

This is where re-targeting or re-marketing can come to your rescue to tap into audiences who are already aware of your brand, but have not yet reached a purchase threshold in their buying journey. 

Once a consumer has engaged with your brand through a touchpoint, you can use a remarketing campaign that addresses users staged within the funnel and guide them along their journey.

The ubiquity of mobile devices and social media means consumer journeys are becoming more fragmented — making it critical to adopt a full-funnel strategy that drives awareness and demand across multiple channels simultaneously.

The power behind remarketing is the ability to overlay audience data to create hyper-relevant ad campaigns that keeps the customer journey ongoing and engaging. 

For instance, if a visitor lands on your site, browses a few product pages, and exits without completing a transaction, you can re-target them based on their site engagement patterns. It’s not necessary to follow the visitor that hit a product page with a banner ad that drives conversion. Instead you can re-engage the visitor in the top or middle of funnel with a gated e-book or product comparison guide in the form of a display ad. 

You can sequentially re-target them with an ad that promotes education and engagement, and then finally present them with ad to make a purchase based on their previous responses. 

Funnel analysis will help present the next best action in your re-marketing campaigns to build a domino effect of engagement that will finally lead to a conversion. 

Every action a user takes in your site corresponds to a step in their purchase journey. For example, if a user visits your homepage and drops after spending a few minutes, they are still in the awareness stage of the funnel. Based on each specific on-site actions, you can assign visitors to different stages of the consumer decision journey. Here are a few different types of remarketing funnel lists based on user actions:

• Awareness – Visited homepage, searched the site

• Interest – Visited a specific product, category or service page; opted in to be contacted through emails

• Decision – Visited a pricing page or created a new account

• Action – Added products to cart or submitted a form

After you have mapped out the customer journey and defined the actions that align with each step, you need to apply it to your retargeting strategy. With a good combination of ad messaging and content, you can re-engage users and move them down the funnel without letting them slip through the cracks. Here are some ways you can refine ad copy based on re-marketing funnels:

• Customize ad copy based on specific products and services the consumers are interested in. Pull in specific data such as pricing, quantity available, offers, etc into your ad copy based on the audience lists

• Set up dynamic re-targeting ads by configuring a catalogue of your offerings that automatically populate display ads based on how your audiences engaged with your site

• Use attractive offers that aim to maximize value for consumers such as countdown messaging, cost savings, added benefits and free gifts

• For abandoned carts, re-target prospects with a discount or incentive to bring them back to your site

• Tailor ad extensions to be more specific to the funnel position and build customized landing pages to drive next best action

• Test ad copy with A/B testing and other conversion rate optimization best practices 

Adjusting your bid optimization strategy for audience targeted campaigns is an often overlooked tactic.

Because you can assign audience lists at the ad group and campaign level, it means that you can adjust your bid optimization strategy, too. Your bidding should match the value of the actions you want to drive. 

Based on the past or previous engagements with the user, the chances of conversion may differ and so will the value of your bids. For re-targeting ads targeted at high-value audiences in the bottom of funnel, the odds of conversion are greater and so you may need to set a competitive bid. When placing bids, consider the customer lifetime value in your bidding optimization strategy and come up with an optimal ad budget. 

When you create a remarketing ad, you are allowed to assign a lookback window for how long a person’s cookie remains in your remarketing list. Often, marketers leave this window at the default setting of 30 days. However, it’s best to define lookback windows based on the purchase or lead generation cycle of your business. For top and middle funnel retargeting campaigns, it may be best to set a longer lookback window and for bottom of funnel ads you can define shorter timeframes. 

You’ve nurtured your customer throughout each stage of the marketing funnel, and they’ve made their way onto your customer list. Your retargeting job isn’t over yet, though.You can use your existing customers’ list, to re-target them again with user adoption, product usage, profile enrichment, cross-sell, value-maximization and retention campaigns. 

Leveraging full-funnel approach is an effective marketing strategy that maximizes the ROI of your remarketing ad campaigns. It does so by efficiently using your advertising budget to re-target prospects already warmed up with your brand. 

Each stage of the marketing funnel represents a state of mind. It all comes down to setting up the right campaign management structure in line with your customer journey by choosing the right audience, offers and bidding strategy and guide them until the ultimate conversion.

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