In recent years, a number of new tools that marketers can use in order to boost conversion rates have entered the fray. In the past, marketers, at the most, could make a couple of changes to their websites in order to squeeze a small % extra of conversions out of it. This was a lot of effort for very little gain.

If you really wish to kick your conversion rates up into the high percentages, you might want to consider looking beyond marketing on your own website and instead think about marketing through other external sites.  If so, you will need to incorporate a relatively new technique, in the world of the internet at least, known as remarketing, a technique which most big sites out there nowadays are using to drive leads towards their business (many large companies are actually using 50% or more of their digital advert budget on remarketing - it is really that effective)

What is remarketing?

Remarketing is the practice of displaying adverts to people who have already visited your website – it will often display to them the products or services that they viewed before.

It is a fantastic way in which to draw people back to your website and encourage them to spend. These are people who have already demonstrated that they are interested in what you have to offer. Standard PPC campaigns do that. But it is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. No matter how much you optimise your keywords here, you are still going to struggle to get people to click your advert and generate a lead. With remarketing, you already know that the people who are viewing your adverts are interested.

Why remarketing?

As you may well know, the vast majority of people who click through to your website are not going to make their purchase straight away, particularly if the product or service is of a high value. They may not even find any incentive to give you their email address or phone number at the moment. They will leave and unless you provide a method for them to come back, they are just not going to come back.

The purpose of remarketing is to remind the people that visited your website that they actually come to your website. They will be reminded whatever they are doing online. For example, if they are browsing their favourite news website, perhaps watching a video on YouTube or Vimeo, or, maybe just accessing their email. They will constantly be told (in a not so harsh way), that they should head back to your website and continue with whatever they were doing. If you can remind them enough, you are going to bump up your conversion rate.

Obviously, you do not want to be going overboard. For example, you do not wish to remind somebody straight away that they should continue their purchase on your website. This is just going to be irritating. They may have just gone away to think about it. If you wish to unlock the highest conversion rates, you need to plan your remarketing campaign properly. This means, ensuring that the adverts are displayed at the right time. For example, if a person is considering something for say, a good few thousand pounds, it is unlikely that they are going to make the purchase the next day. They may need a week, or even a month, to think about it. You can start your remarketing campaign at that point. If they do not bite, then leave it to rest for a little bit. You can remarket to them later on down the line. This is the aim of a remarketing campaign, to ensure that the adverts are displayed at the right time and to the right people.

So, how much could you increase your conversion rates with remarketing?

Here’s an example - a printer company which goes by the name Storkie Express found that their conversion rate with a remarketing campaign was 203% higher than their standard display adverts. Storkie Express also found that dynamic remarketing was 3x more likely to generate view-through conversions than regular remarketing.

This goes to show why so many companies are throwing the big money at remarketing - it really can unlock higher conversion rates.

How we market ourselves has changed dramatically over the last ten years. Outbound marketing is out and inbound marketing is in. Remarketing is a technique that can yield higher conversion rates if designed properly. To this end, we will be publishing new guides very soon about how to design remarketing campaigns that increase conversion rates. In the meantime, this guide from Hubspot is an excellent read and our 5 rules for online lead generation will help you to understand what you should focus on for conversion success.