You may have read a recent article we wrote explaining the basics of remarketing. If you have haven’t seen it, you can read it here.

In any case, we go through the basics of remarketing and how it can be used in a variety of different types of businesses.

But an important aspect to the success and effectiveness of remarketing is doing is properly and not making crucial mistakes. So, I thought I would outline some of the common mistakes I see other marketers making when it comes to remarketing.

Common Remarketing Mistakes

1. Not Excluding Specific People From Remarketing Lists

I can’t tell you how often this happens and it is such a crucial mistake. A typical remarketing campaign is one that shows ads to people who have added items into their shopping cart and left the website without actually purchasing. This is formally known as ‘shopping cart abandonment’.

So, to remarket to these people, when you set up your remarketing lists, you need make sure that you remove the people who have actually purchased. Otherwise you will be inviting the person back to buy the product that they already purchased.

2. Not Restricting The Amount Of Ads Shown Per Day

This is another rookie mistake, so please don’t fall into this trap. When you set up your remarketing campaign, it is super important to restrict the number of times your ads will be shown to people. In AdWords terminology, this is called ‘frequency capping’.

Why is it important to restrict the frequency of ads? Remember, these people have already been to your website, so you don’t want to continue to bombard them with your ads. If you hound them, they will just get annoyed and the end result will have the opposite effect of what you are trying to do. I know from first hand experience that this is what happens, so please don’t do the same.

3. Don’t Show The Same Ad All The Time

Showing people the same ad all the time will just result in people ignoring your ad. This is known as ‘banner blindness‘ and is a common phenomenon.

With remarketing, you are trying to reactivate a past visitor, so it is best to create new, fresh and continually updated ads. Otherwise, people are just going to continually ignore the ads and no one will click on them.

Be sure to test how often you need to be changing the ad images as there is no set formula which will work. There are so many factors at play that the only way you will know is by simply testing yourself.

4. Don’t Stalk & Freak People Out

No one likes to feel like they are being followed or having their behaviour tracked, so be careful with remarketing and don’t freak people out. What exactly do I mean by that? Don’t say things like “You visited our website 7 days ago, come back!” or “Why didn’t you complete your purchase?” etc. You get my drift.

My mantra when it comes to this is to focus on future behaviour, not past behaviour.

 

So, please take note of other people’s remarketing mistakes and I urge you, not to do the same. Remarketing is a fantastic way to re-engage past website visitors, and by avoiding some of the most common mistakes, you will find you will get fantastic ROI from those campaigns, just like us.