Updated: April 14, 2025
Originally Published: Sept. 18, 2023
About 97% of website visitors don’t take the conversion actions intended by site owners.
Don’t let that 3% conversion rate discourage you. It presents not only a significant challenge, but an opportunity to maximize online engagement and revenue and beat the competition.
How? Implement a strategic approach that taps into the potential of a range of remarketing techniques.
1. Define Your Audiences
Begin by segmenting your target audiences. Categorize potential audiences into clearly defined groups, each with at least 1,000 individual users.
But what if your monthly visitor count ranges from 1,000 to 2,000? The size of your visitor pool limits the level of segmentation; the bigger the pool, the finer the segments. If your pool is just a few thousand, a single remarketing audience set might be right.
Consider factors that align with the unique dynamics of your business as you establish each segment. Consider customizing ad content and messaging for specific audiences.
You can also classify website visitors based on their interactions with specific product categories, dedicated service pages, and geographical location pages. It's prudent, for example, to partition your audience according to users who initiated, but didn’t finalize, a conversion. (Note: Each site can have its own conversion goals.)
Next, determine the time span a given user segment will remain on your remarketing list. Your customers' typical buying cycles will guide your timeframe choice. It could be anywhere from a week to 90 days or more, depending on your industry and customer behavior patterns.
2. Grow Your Lists with Softer Conversions
Many users are unlikely to convert to expensive purchases on their first interactions at your website. "Soft” conversions – capturing an email address or prompting a sign-up for a useful newsletter, for example – can maintain engagement, build trust and grow your contact list. This patient, nurturing approach makes your potential customer available to your remarketing campaigns and more open to them and to your ultimate conversion.
Soft conversions involve encouraging users to take smaller, lower-commitment actions that keep them engaged and bring them into your sales funnel. Examples include:
- Signing up for a newsletter that offers valuable industry insights.
- Downloading a free resource, such as an eBook, whitepaper, or how-to guide.
- Registering for a webinar or virtual event related to your product or service.
- Joining a free trial or demo experience for your software or subscription service.
These actions allow you to collect valuable contact information, such as email addresses, and open the door for future remarketing efforts. By establishing multiple touchpoints, you can maintain communication and provide value over time, keeping your brand top-of-mind until the user is ready to convert.
The Power of Email Nurturing in Soft Conversions
Once you’ve captured a lead through a soft conversion, follow up with targeted email campaigns that nurture the relationship. For example, if a visitor downloaded a guide on improving warehouse efficiency, your next email might share case studies or success stories on that topic. This personalized approach keeps leads engaged and moves them closer to purchasing.
3. Use LinkedIn, Facebook & Instagram as Channels
Once you've defined your remarketing audiences, choose the best channels for re-engaging past website visits. LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram are prime options, offering full-screen ads to precisely targeted users while those users are active on the platforms – and just a click or two away from your website.
These cost-effective channels allow you to retarget your audience lists. On social channels, you can target customers for whom you already possess data. That’s an advantage over Google Ads, because social doesn’t require sending and receiving huge numbers of emails to target your audience effectively. Yes, more is better, but it’s not always cost-effective or even possible to deal with 1,000 or more emails.
The best social channel choice comes down to whom you are retargeting and for what purpose. If you’re going after e-commerce sales, you’ll likely be more successful retargeting on Facebook than on LinkedIn. If you’re focused on a business service, LinkedIn is likely the better choice. The exact nature of your products and services, and your customers’ use of and relationship with them, make a difference, too. This is another reason to know your audience very well.
4. Implement Lead Nurturing Campaigns
Lead nurturing, a fundamental aspect of digital marketing strategies, can transform potential prospects into loyal customers. Lead nurturing involves utilizing your email marketing software to present your potential customers with email drip campaigns that nurture your contacts into a sale.
A well-developed lead nurturing campaign builds brand recall and perches your business top of mind when your customer decides to buy. A good campaign takes the customer from the awareness stage to consideration and to a final decision. If you’ve defined your audiences well, you can create a series of emails for each stage for each audience segment, so your message resonates throughout the buying journey.
5. Leverage YouTube and Social Video
When you think about remarketing techniques, think about the entire map of the user’s digital journey. You have defined audiences who have visited your website, and you want to reach those audiences in as many cost-effective places as possible. You want to stay in front of them and encourage them to come back and convert.
Video ads should be in your remarketing mix. Your video will show up before your audience as they watch videos on YouTube or on a social channel. Video ads can be extremely effective, especially for complicated products where a how-to or a breakdown of your product’s benefits are better shown than explained in text.
6. Utilize the Google Display Network
The Google Display Network delivers a massive number of impressions to your target audience across a vast network of websites and mobile apps at extremely low cost. You can utilize this network to target potential customers you’ve identified, either with email lists you’ve created or with website data.
We recommend targeting people who exited from your conversion page (cart, form page, etc.) without a final conversion action. Sometimes, people need a little extra push. Remind them to complete their purchase.
7. Monitor Frequency
It’s important to continue to monitor the frequency with which your ads appear to your audiences using each remarketing technique. The size of your audience and budget allocation per audience directly affect how frequently your audience sees your ad. Large or small, your audience is finite. A bigger budget to a specific audience will not enlarge that audience, but it will engage that audience more frequently.
A frequency of 10-20 or so per channel, per ad is reasonable for a remarketing audience. If you show an ad to a specific user 50 times, that user tunes you out and you’ve spent too much on that channel.
Understanding How Google Remarketing Works
At the core of any remarketing strategy lies a simple but powerful tool: Google Ads remarketing. By adding a small piece of code – often called a tag or pixel – to your website, you can track visitors and include them in targeted remarketing campaigns. This allows you to show them ads across Google’s Display Network.
Remarketing with Google also allows for advanced audience segmentation. You can target different types of visitors – those who abandoned their shopping cart, first-time visitors, or even returning customers – with unique, personalized messages. Dynamic remarketing takes this a step further by automatically showing ads featuring specific products that visitors viewed on your site.
Combining Google Ads with other remarketing strategies, such as email nurturing and social media campaigns, amplifies your impact. Just remember to monitor ad frequency carefully. While remarketing ads can boost click-through rates, overexposure can lead to ad fatigue.
Measuring and Optimizing Remarketing Campaigns
A well-crafted remarketing campaign is only as good as its results. Regularly measuring performance and optimizing based on data is essential to ensure you’re getting the best return on investment.
Start by tracking key metrics such as click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, cost per conversion, and return on ad spend (ROAS) to gauge the effectiveness of your campaigns. These metrics will help you identify what’s working and where you might be overspending.
Test different ad creatives, offers, and calls-to-action to see which combinations drive the highest engagement. For example, you might compare the performance of ads with a discount offer versus those promoting free shipping.
Frequency capping is another important tool in optimization. While it’s essential to stay visible, showing the same ad too often can lead to diminishing returns and ad fatigue. Adjust frequency limits to ensure your audience doesn’t get overwhelmed.
Finally, refine your audience segments based on user behavior and conversion patterns. Look for high-intent users – those who have viewed key product pages or added items to their cart – and adjust your bids to prioritize them.
Summary
Remarketing holds immense potential as a tactic to re-engage with the elusive 97% of website visitors who don’t convert. If you’ve read this far, you have a pretty good idea of how to recapture their attention and interest and guide them to a successful conversion.
With a deep understanding of user behavior, a commitment to delivering value, and strategic use of multiple channels, remarketing can be a powerful instrument in your digital marketing toolbox.
If you need assistance determining a remarketing strategy or implementing a strategy effectively, don’t hesitate to reach out.