08 Feb Stop Running PPC Without Remarketing
At Odd Duck, we get it. Nobody likes to be stalked and followed. That’s even true if you’re only being followed online by a product, service or website you’ve already visited. It’s annoying and feels… invasive.
We understand why there’s so much hesitation about running remarketing campaigns with Pay-Per-Click programs. You don’t want to bother your clients. You don’t want to see intrusive. You especially don’t want to turn-off a potential customer and burn a potential sale.
That being said, it’s time to get over your fear of remarketing and ensure that your campaigns are running at full capacity. Here’s a quick breakdown as to why.
PPC Conversion Rates Without Remarketing Stink
Since this is a family-friendly marketing blog post, we’ll refrain from using any stronger language than saying that conversion rates (generally) stink when you don’t include remarketing.
On average, a GOOD Pay-Per-Click campaign will convert at a rate of 8-15%. Keep in mind, that’s out of the total number of actual paid clicks, not impressions.
So, a successful Pay-Per-Click campaign is only converting maybe 1 paid visit in every 10 into an actual lead. Then, as a business, you’ve got to really try and close at a 100% ratio in order to make that investment pay off.
Sounds tough, right?
On the other hand, remarketing ads have an astronomically higher conversion ratio. It’s not at all uncommon to see a remarketing campaign convert at 60-70%.
That’s because if a potential customer clicks on your remarketing ad — after they’ve already seen your website or product — it’s because they’re finally ready to commit and buy something.
Remarketing Ads are Significantly Less Expensive Than Search
Pay-Per-Click ads in Search are some of the most expensive marketing sources across the entire internet. That being said, they can still be very effective. On the other hand, remarketing ads cost a fraction of the investment per click, simply based on the fact that there’s so much less competition.
That means that a business can spend a much smaller portion of their ad budget on remarketing and still get enough views and frequency to make the investment worthwhile.
My personal recommendation: spend somewhere between 10-15% of your total Pay-Per-Click budget on remarketing. More than likely, that’s enough to give you consistent presence and generate substantial conversion ratios.
Customers are Easily Distracted and Flighty
I heard a story once that most online shoppers (whether they’re looking for services or products) are like cats: something as simple as a laser-pointer can completely blow their minds.
When your customers are online, they’ve still got real-world lives to manage: they’ve got a boss that’s coming around the corner and they don’t want to be seen browsing while at work, there’s a kid in the corner running with something that looks suspiciously like scissors, or they’re in the middle of looking at your site on their phone and their phone rings. Then again, it could be something as simple as pay-day being two weeks away and your service or product not being the most important thing to do with their current funds.
Point being: it doesn’t take much to make them lose focus on you and your website. Maybe they’ll come right back to it, but probably not. The average American adult attention span is roughly 8-13 seconds.
Wait… what were we talking about?
Just kidding. In all seriousness, though, you can’t expect everyone who sees your website to become a customer right away. Running remarketing ads, though, keeps your brand, product and service top-of-mind and allows them to revisit their shopping thoughts when they’re more available.
Your Customers are Going to See Ads Anyway
By far, the most common reason that business owners tell me they don’t want to do remarketing ads is because they feel like it’s intrusive or invasive to have an advertisement follow their clients around.
My response is always the exact same thing: your customers are going to get ads online, anyway! If there’s an option to have an ad displayed on any website they visit, there’s going to be one there.
Maybe it’s another site they’ve visited recently prompting them to complete the purchase of that product they put in their shopping cart. Perhaps it’ll be a display ad for a luxury car because their search history shows they looked up cars a few weeks back. It could just be an a banner ad for the new movie coming out next week that’s a huge sponsor of the website they’re browsing.
The point is: your potential customers are inundated with ads online all the time. If it’s not your ad, it’ll be someone else’s. We’ve gotten so used to seeing ads on our browsers that we don’t even think twice about it anymore.
The creep-factor is way overplayed. Just set a frequency cap so that you’re not overloading the same customer again and again with the same ad, and you’ll be just fine.
Summary
In short, if you’re running a Pay-Per-Click campaign and you’re not running remarketing, you’ve severely handicapped your program. Your customers don’t mind the reminders that they were interested in your product, and you’ll see your conversion rates increase significantly by adding remarketing to your campaign.
So bite the bullet, take the plunge, and be sure to contact our team of experts at Odd Duck Media if you need help putting the right strategy together.