Remarketing for dummies

I get a lot of questions, hey captain, the best looking and smartest pirate of them all, please help me with remarketing.

Me being lazy, I didnt help no one (you know that is not true!) but when I saw one of those crappy ads that majority of the so called gurus use, I was triggered to write this article. TRIGGERED!

You know what ad Im talking about?

“Did life get in the way…….”

What the fuck does that even mean? Would this shit text copy make you buy something? Did this piece of creative Einstein jedi text, solve any of your issues when you visited the site in the first place? No it did not. Life does not get in the way in 99% of the cases.

What does?

Everything else. Price gets in the way, shipping cost gets in the way, trust issues gets in the way, product quality gets in the way, slow site speed gets in the way, complicated site gets in the way, a lot of shit gets in the way before LIFE.
Im sure you all know what remarketing or retargeting means, but imagine, I get also some really newbie questions.

So, for all you newbies – the pirate newbie explanation:

Remarketing or retargeting is a smart way to connect with visitors to your website who may not have made a direct conversion (action). It allows you to position targeted ads in front of a defined audience that had previously visited your website – as they browse elsewhere around the internet. Sounds good, right?

You know, the ads that scare you, like, how the fuck did they know I want a new inflatable “just for research” doll. And if you really need that doll and now get a free shipping or something, the chances you will buy it are now much higher, yes? YES!

This is what remarketing should do.

The major point of remarketing is to solve the reason why the visitor didnt convert in the first place. Keep in mind, there is a few stuff that are not solveable with remarketing, but most of them are.

Let me paint you like one of the French girls ——- a scenario of sorts.
***** you need some predispositions tho, ads cant solve everything.

* a friendly site where you sell products.
* products that someone would actually buy with an acceptable price for the perceived value.
* relevant traffic to the site / product.
Now that we have the playground set, lets PLAY!

Scenario one. #1 (cold traffic – no funnels here)

By some dark magic you got someone on your site, preferably on the landing site of the product. Your site checks out, the product looks good and the price is okayish.

Visitor clicks on the magic button “Add to cart” or “Buy it now” and goes to the checkout process.

Immediately a seed of doubt appears in the mind of the visitor. I dont really need this product, do I? I have a fresh bill to pay, this could wait. I dont really like the colour and I have never bought in this shop. I will just leave. BAM. The visitor is out. It literally needs the smallest seed of doubt to make them leave the site.

Not everything is lost. Its time to remarketing to kick in.

In this stage you really dont know the reason why the visitor left and what triggered the doubt. If we had a segmented checkout process, well we could identify the step the user left the site and offered a solution for his issues. For example, step two is where they see the shipping cost and if they leave at this stage, they probably dont like the shipping cost. Solution is easy – free shipping ad.

What to do when you dont know the reason?

Cover most of them in a general remarketing ad for checkout abandonments. If you cover all the NO reasons to not buy your product, the only remaining thing for the visitor to say is YES.

Make them say YES instead of NO.

Be creative. Stand out. Its your weapon to stand out. It means you interrupt their user experience on Facebook (scroll, scroll, till you die) and if your copy/image makes them think “YES, YES, YES” – you are good to go.

Example, I did a couple of years ago, when remarketing on Facebook first rolled out. Remember, this can be also applied to Adwords remarketing also.

We had issues of a high drop off rate on the second step of the checkout process (the shipping one) and remarketing proved to be a right fix for us. I did a creative ad that said something in the line of:

Hey there! We had some issues on the shipping costs, we are really sorry about that, we really want to make it up, so please accept the FREE SHIPPING coupon as a sign of good will for our favourite customer.

This coupon is valid only for your purchase. Again, really sorry. blabla.blablabla.

Yeah, we had no issues on the shipping step, but we fucked up the customer by thinking we had and now he thinks he has leverage over us and he will gladly take the offer now, thinking he just fucked us over good, when in reality, we pulled a hard one on the customer.

How do you like that?

Did life get in the way??!!?! Still cant get over this. Ohh, never, ever, forget to exclude the buyers from these kind of remarketing ads, because if you dont, there will be anger and there will be blood.

Ok, back to the remarketing and offers.

You can do the same with pretty much every problem you see. Solve it for the customer, before he ever realises there was a problem in the first place. Not only that he will buy from you, he will be thankful for the opportunity.

There is way too much people focusing on manual bidding, auto bidding, while they dont understand the basics of marketing. At the end, there is you and the customer and psychology works from back when we were primal animals, Im almost sure we didnt have no manual bids then. Be sure to check all the boxes before you go and focus on the refinements.

You know that gurus love to sell you a new method of bidding that makes millions of fake dollars, why would someone share the secret sauce with you if it is soooo damn good?

Did McDonalds share their recipe? Did Coca Cola share their secret? Did KFC share their recipe? Did they open courses called “NEW method for the ultimate BigMac vol.69? No they didnt. They used their shit to their advantage and are still doing that.

Dont trust everyone that has a nice screenshot. It must be true, its on the internet. Ohh, a sweet totally free secret recipe under mr. Abe.