Content Remarketing

Content remarketing is targeting content towards previous visitors to a site, often after they've failed to convert, with the goal of nudging them back onto the buyer's journey.

Content Remarketing is a technique used to target previously engaged leads and reengage them. Often it is targeted at people who've failed to complete an action necessary for conversion. Think about having viewed an item for sale on a website and clicked away-- or worse, having added an item to your cart and forgotten. Sites with good remarketing strategies won't let you fail to convert so easily. That brand can, and sometimes will, follow you through your entire internet existence, repeatedly increasing brand awareness until you eventually return and finish the conversion.

While the idea of ads stalking potential buyers through email, banners, and social media may seem like a mid 2000s horror movie, content remarketing can be very effective, it can be done more subtly. A solid remarketing strategy is customized to your brand and can reach a large audience that is already interested in your content or products.

How does content remarketing work?

Content remarketing is applied in many ways, but is at its heart a simple concept. When a visitor to your site engages with your content or products, your site tags them through cookies. Customized content is then targeted at them to reinforce brand awareness and remind them to return.

Using this technique, you can direct content at a pool of leads that have already shown a likelihood to convert. Beyond turning prospects into first time buyers, content remarketing can be used to keep your brand top of mind and drive repeat business.

Why is content remarketing important?

Content marketing is all about ROI. Remarketing caters directly to an audience that has potentially a much higher conversion rate compared to traditional content marketing. Since remarketing strategies often use content you already have, remarketing is much more efficient and cost-effective. It's like re-plating a sandwich and serving it to someone in a new setting.

Remarketing offers many advantages as part of an overall marketing strategy:

• Increase brand awareness, brand recall, and branded searches.
• Potentially turn bounced visitors into leads, and lost leads into likely conversions.
• Encourage repeat visits and boost engagement between visits.

Effective content remarketing strategy

An effective content remarketing strategy largely depends on your needs and potential audience. You can easily customize what content you'll be sending out and to whom, so determining which is best for your situation is the key to solid returns.

A quick note about "repeating yourself" or "annoying people." Don't worry about it. Attention spans are so short, people read things and forget them, overlook emails, ignore millions of messages daily. Talk to your audience like they are drunk and exhausted. It's fine to repeat yourself.

Once a user has been tagged by your site, they are a potential audience for you. From these new potential leads, you can control who to target based on a number of factors.

• Buyer's Journey. Target people based on what content they've consumed, and where that lies on the overall buyer's journey for your content strategy. This can be used to leverage more closes out of near conversions, or to encourage more engagement from those new to your brand.
• Intent and purchases. The content consumed and purchases made by leads in the past indicates what their intent, interests, and buying habits are. This can be employed to suggest complementing products to recent purchases, or to direct discounts at potential price comparison views.
• Engagement. Measuring the online activity of your audience, you can generate content remarketing that targets specific engagement goals. Utilizing content remarketing, leads with faltering engagement can be brought back to the brand, or low engagement visitors can be targeted to establish strong brand awareness.

How to get started with a content remarketing campaign

While some social media companies like Facebook have their own infrastructure for content remarketing, we'll explore how to get started on Google Ads. As you probably know if you're reading about content distribution, Google Ads is pretty universal for digital marketing, and gives you everything you need to craft a remarketing campaign easily.

1. Create an audience list. In Google Ads, choose "create a new remarketing list" under audiences. Here you will define who to leave off your list and who to include. Once you define the parameters, Google will assign cookies for you and track traffic.
2. Set a Duration. Decide how long audiences will be included in your list. If someone is months away from last engagement, sometimes it may be better to move on to a new lead. In the case of past purchase targeting, however, this may just be the perfect time to target for next purchase. Again, successful strategy is choosing the correct path for your specific needs.
3. Assign some content. Choose what content a specific audience receives on what timescale. Choose content that can is effective in engaging at a glance. Remarketing can be a second chance at a first impression, and you want it to capture attention.

From here, you have the whole armada of tools that is Google Analytics to track CTR and ROI from your content. While the steps above will get your hands dirty, remember that any effective strategy must be carefully crafted, tested, and refined based on use data. Track ROI and CTR from remarketing and adjust until the balance is right for your needs.

Content remarketing is an efficient and low-cost way to reengage leads that should be incorporated into almost any comprehensive content marketing strategy. Its versatile application and results can complement any content strategy to increase brand awareness and conversion rate long term. With all this potential, marketers should consider content remarketing a vital tool to maximizing ROI.