3 ROI-positive ways to segment your remarketing audiences

Everyone knows that remarketing is an efficient method of bringing back users to get them to convert.

But are you being smart about your remarketing efforts? It’s not a one-size-fits-all endeavor; segmentation is a huge part of the picture.

In other words, don’t just dump everyone who has visited your site and remarket to them; think about how you can segment visitors into groups of identifiable characteristics that can allow you to create a more tailored (and ROI-positive) experience. In this post, we’ll explore three simple segmentation types that can drive huge results for your remarketing dollar.

1) Audience segmentation based on website interaction

This allows us to understand and speak to a user’s intent. For example, compare someone who has visited the home page and bounced with someone who has gotten to a signup page/lead form/add-to-cart page and bounced; we know the latter person has higher intent. At the very minimum, you should be segmenting your audiences by “researchers” vs “high intent”. “

Researchers” should include audiences who have visited more high-level pages such as the home page, about page, blog, etc. “High Intent” would consist of audiences that got lower in the funnel – product page, services page, lead form, etc. For each of these audiences, you should tailor ads specifically, supplying the right customized messaging and creative to push them further down the funnel.

2) Segmentation by time

One thing you want to avoid is being that annoying company that follows people around, showing them the same ad over and over again. By segmenting audiences by how long ago they visited your site, you can avoid this scenario.

For example, let’s segment audiences by week. In week 1 since they have visited the site, you should them a specific ad (with tailored creative and messaging). In week 2, you experiment with a different message, creative, etc. And in week 3, if they still haven’t come back to convert, perhaps you can get more aggressive and offer an incentive/discount/promo.

3) Segmentation by Google Analytics data

If you have a decent amount of traffic visiting your site, multiple pages with great content, etc. – you’re well positioned to leverage all of the advanced capabilities of Google Analytics to create remarketing audiences.

Some great ways to segment out audiences include time on site, number of pages viewed, and Google Smart Lists – which leverage Google’s machine-learning capabilities to identify users most likely to convert in subsequent sessions and dynamically manages the audiences to focus on those users.

I haven’t talked about bidding yet, but the success of all of these segmentation types will also rely on bidding nuances – e.g. bidding more for higher-intent users than for researchers. Bucketing more valuable users will allow you to be more aggressive when warranted while keeping bids conservative for users you’re trying to simply re-engage.

With the right mix of segments and tailored bids and ads, you’ll be well on your way to remarketing success.

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by Sana Ansari
source: Search Engine Watch