In her BrightonSEO talk, Samantha Noble opened with the statistic that it’s 500% more expensive for paid search marketers to acquire new customers than retain old ones. Most of our digital marketing efforts lean towards attracting as many potential customers as possible, but should we be spending our budget on increasing customer loyalty instead?
Interestingly, up to 80% of customers have stated they would switch to a new brand due to an exclusive offer being available, which is certainly something we could be capitalising on.
These days, advertising on Google is about so much more than just keywords. We’ve now got customer audiences at our disposal, and Samantha explained the extent to which we can use these to our advantage. By working out which customers might be influenced by particular offers, we can segment our audience into more specific sections and target them individually. Here’s the highlights of how it works…
Create dedicated PPC landing pages
Every PPC knows the power of a dedicated landing page for ad rank and quality score. But specific landing pages can also be used for effective remarketing purposes. Samantha demonstrated the usefulness of creating dedicated landing pages for any offers & loyalty schemes you’re providing, which can then be used to remarket to existing customers.
Keep your customers with RLSAs
Prevent your customers from clicking on a competitor’s ad and through to their site by creating RLSA ads, allowing you to always nab that top spot on the SERPs. Don’t just limit yourself to your standard ad copy – depending on your business and what it’s offering, your ads could push anything from limited time-only offers, money off for repeat bookings, or discounts off additional services for loyal customers.
Get clever with the Google Display Network
Remarketing via the Display channel is a common feature in paid marketing strategies, but by using specific segments of your website visitors this can be made even more powerful. Category page viewers could be shown ads with messaging such as ‘check out our new arrivals’, while new or additional products and services of interest could be upsold to past converters. Targeting your ad messaging specifically to each audience segment will make them feel more understood, more receptive to your brand and offerings, and ultimately more loyal.
Combine Customer Match with Gmail Ads
Not experimented with Gmail Ads before? Now might be the ideal time to. Using Google’s Customer Match function in combination with Gmail Ads can offer existing customers, or customers very similar to them, exclusive deals and discounts straight into their Gmail inbox. If done properly, Gmail ad campaigns can achieve sky-high click-through rates at a low cost per click, so could be a creative and cost-effective way to drive up the loyalty of your customers.
Upsell with urgency
Ad customisers are a great way to create urgency in your ad copy, particularly when using the countdown customiser function to dynamically insert the time remaining on a sale or deal into the ad copy.
Image: Acquisio
Later on, Customer Match can be used to identify these purchasers or converters to be targeted individually. Future remarketing strategies can be launched in accordance with popular times of the year such as Black Friday or before a popular summer season, encouraging these customers to convert again.
Don’t forget Facebook…
It doesn’t all have to be about Google and Bing. Social channels such as Facebook are also highly effective remarketing tools that allow you to reach the same customers in a more personal & social way.
Remarketing on Facebook to website purchases or converters eliminates the long trust-building process advertisers often struggle with. With this is mind, you can go straight in and show previous customers relevant and recognisable products, but including additional products or upsell them a subscription upgrade, for example. Seeing a brand they recognise on Facebook can be highly effective in convincing customers to engage with your business again.
A much newer means of marketing is through Messenger Ads. When someone clicks on your ad in their Facebook news feed, a Chat Bot message from your brand will open up to provide potential customers with exclusive information or coupon codes – all wrapped up in a ‘personalised’ service. As an outbound marketing strategy to new customers, this approach could be highly off-putting to potential customers. However, by using Customer Match and only triggering these Messenger ads to past converters is more likely to build a rapport with these customers and trigger repeat purchases.
Key Takeaway
If I took one thing away from Samantha’s talk, it was the importance of gaining the loyalty of existing customers rather than only consistently pumping budget into attracting new ones. Make it as hard as possible for your customers to leave you for your competitors with clever and creative marketing techniques across a host of paid channels. Once these customers are loyal and happy we can then look to gain a whole host of new ones, and even use these happy customers to gain new ones!
