How to Use Re-targeted Marketing & PPC Together

PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click and is a type of online marketing where advertisers pay a fee every time their ad is clicked. This system is a fast and efficient way for B2B and B2C organisations to capture leads (Brad McMillen). Your target audience is essentially saying they are interested in your service or product by searching keywords into search engines, such as Google. You can serve them ads that will take them directly to that particular product or service. However, 98 percent of your overall visitors leave without converting (Crowe, 2021). So what can be done to nurture these visitors? Re-targeted marketing, or re-marketing, is a tactic used by marketers to nurture users who visit the website, or certain pages on their website. There are always potential leads visiting your site who may take a while to come to a decision on whether they want to purchase from you. In this situation, you can use re-marketing to encourage these visitors back to your site to complete their purchase or convert into a lead (Web FX). For both B2B and B2C markets, PPC ads should be designed to target customers at each stage of the buyer journey. You should consider the natural path your buyers take, and base your keywords and ad content around this. Direct your audience to content tailored around answering the questions they may have at each stage of the purchasing journey. Your content should be in a variety of formats, starting with educational, insightful content. This could mean directing prospects to your website where they can find in-depth information such as whitepapers, infographics, case studies and video demonstrations. These formats offer an educational message, whilst engaging with the audience. Initially directing your audience to your website means that you can add these users to a re-marketing list, and target them at a later point with re-targeted adverts. Thanks to your PPC ads, this audience is now aware of your brand. Keep your brand in the forefront of their minds by setting up highly unique, personalised re-targeted ads, to move them from awareness to consideration to purchase. Similarly your PPC ad set up, your re-marketing ads should target your audience at each stage of their buying journey. With this in mind, the content then needs to develop into content that entices the users to purchase. The difference between your PPC ads and your re-marketing ads will be that you re-marketing ads will be hyper-personalised, based on the content they have viewed, or downloaded. Using parameters, you can define actions that reassign your audience as they move further through the purchasing funnel (Crowe, 2021). The B2B and B2C sales cycles differ slightly. In a typical small business, the number of people involved in a single buying decision has risen from 1-2 to 7-8 (Gartner). This means that typically, the B2B buying process is longer than the B2C, so keep this in mind when trying to understand the journey. For B2B brands, you can create account-based remarketing lists, which target the entire account, rather than the individual. Account-based retargeting allows you to focus your ads on company decision-makers, rather than an individual with potentially no power in the decision-making process. Platforms such as Leadfeeder offer an abundance of extremely useful features for B2B brands; you can re-target only those with a decision-making job title, or a job title you consider valuable; or target companies that represent meaningful opportunities, based on data collected prior; or re-target entire accounts on LinkedIn, the Google Display Network, Facebook, and Instagram (Crowe, 2021). Customers, and the competitive landscape, demand truly optimised and personal experiences. Having a map of your customer journeys allows you to predict very early on who your potential customers are. This allows you to prioritise both customer segments and marketing activities, creating an optimised journey (Data Driven Marketing, Progress). You must remember that just because somebody has visited your website, or downloaded your content via your PPC ads, doesn’t mean they will eventually convert into a sale. Re-marketing ads offer an effective way to nurture these prospects, in a highly personalised way, providing a customer experience that is unique to individual needs, increasing the chances of them converting.