Remarketing, Retargeting & Respect

Recently I’ve come across a number of firms using Remarketing who still don’t understand the concept of respecting their customers online.

I recently wrote about the need for businesses and organisations to respect their fans, followers and customers when using social media.

“In a world where consumers can now opt-in to receive marketing messages, they can just as quickly opt-out.” I said.

What I like about social media as a consumer is that if I don’t like something then I have the ability to unlike or unfollow. It’s great. I have the power and it feels good.

Recently I’ve come across a number of firms using Remarketing who still don’t understand the concept of respecting their customers online.

What’s Remarketing? It is a tool available to help an advertiser target users who have visited their website as the user browses the web. The term Retargeting is also sometimes used (same concept but seems to depend on whether you use Google or Facebook as the advertising medium). As a customer you’ve likely seen it in action. You visit a company’s website, then suddenly hey presto, ads from that company start following you around the internet. “Isn’t that powerful” the agencies cry to that company. “Now you can be in front of your customers ALL DAY AND ALL OF THE TIME!”

For me this goes against good marketing protocols. Rule 1 – Don’t make your customer take a court order out against you for stalking.

Here’s some tips to help Remarketing work for you without alienating the very people who you want to attract:

• Cap the frequency. Make it so that people will get a maximum number of views over a set period of time. You could even go as low as once or twice a day but that may not have the desired effect of brand awareness. Just be sensible.
• Think about the member duration. How long do you want people to receive your ads?
• Use “kill pixels” on website pages where the customer has already been converted. This means you can ensure that you don’t advertise to people who have visited a certain page on your site. An example is where the “kill pixel” stops the ads for the 20% discount if the customer has already been through the shopping cart and paid.

There is a plethora of information on how to use Remarketing and Retargeting (here’s another 15 tips), but do think about your audience.

Respect!

Jon