Remarketing is a very clever marketing tool that can connect your brand with visitors who have gone to your website, but may not have made an immediate purchase.
A good example would be when you look at a particular website to buy a pair of shoes. When you exit the website without purchasing, you may notice an advert for those shoes following you around other, unrelated websites as a ‘reminder’ to make the purchase. This means you can barely access your phone or computer without the memory surfacing on your screen of those shoes that were tempting you earlier in the week.
Remarketing has provided a welcome solution for many companies, who previously had to make do with a web banner on one specific page of a website. Sometimes a web banner on one page can be effective, if the content is relevant; for example, an association sponsoring a page about industry education.
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Too often, however, it has been a case of throwing money at internet advertising hoping that the right people will pay heed. What is so exciting about remarketing is that when your potential customer leaves your jewellery-related website, to check the latest news or football score, or to shop for something totally different, your banner will follow them and stand out as the only thing in the world of watches and jewellery on the next web page they are viewing.
Moving away from the whirlwind of jewellery websites, so often plastered with supplier and buyer messages, your advertising is much more distinguishable. There is guaranteed repeated exposure which delivers a real impact. People begin to associate with, and memorise, a brand after seeing them at least five times – the minimum each web-user should be targeted.
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In terms of value, in the CPM (‘Cost Per Impression’) method of remarketing, you are paying for the number of people who will be targeted by your advertisement, not hoping that a certain number will see it based on projections. Your advertising providers should consult you on this anyway, but it’s important to remember that this advert can be more aesthetically driven or more educational for your audience, depending on what is most important to you.
At IJL, exhibitors like Clogau have used remarketing as a tool to help promote their participation at the show. When buyers go onto the IJL website to register, check the dates or plan their visit, a Clogau advert will appear when they then go onto BBC news for example, or the trainline.com, promoting visitors to go to their stand.
Several of IJL’s clients have benefited from this, since it was introduced in 2015– from First Jewellery to UK Beads, whose director Andrew Sanders said: “This is one of the most effective online promotional opportunities I have come across. I have generated sales before arriving at the event, with customers commenting on my profile.”
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My favourite anecdote, which happened during IJL 2015, was listening to an industry insider paying a lovely compliment to Jan Martin Asscher on how she had been seeing his brand everywhere in the build up to the show, naturally not knowing that IJL had executed the campaign with him.
So, what are the criticisms of remarketing? There seem to be three reservations. The first is the reputed lack of targeting and certainty delivered by these campaigns. If remarketing is going to be following around a single website’s user-audience – in our case, IJL’s online visitors – you need to be sure that people who use that website will include your target audience. Although, presumably, this is why you exhibit at that event, or advertise in trade magazines, in the first place!
The next two criticisms are becoming more and more risible. Detractors have said it’s invasive, with some going as far as to describe it as ‘Big Brother interference’ – a reference that would make the author of 1984 turn in his grave.
There is an important moral difference between competing companies of any size trying to reach more potential customers, on the one hand, and a government’s brainwashing of a population (without free will) on the other! I’ve never once felt offended by a cricket bat or a television, or a piece of jewellery, following me around the internet. It must be effective though as it’s those brands I now think of first, in each of their respective fields. They should be credited for their ambition.
Finally, it’s true that users have the right to block cookies, meaning you can’t guarantee everyone who visits the initial website will then be re-targeted. However, you only pay for those people who have accepted the cookies and who are being retargeted.
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In summary, remarketing is here to stay. The watches and jewellery industry needs as much support as possible to be more productive online. Remarketing may be new to many of us, or perhaps you have embraced it and think of it as helping you to achieve only one of your goals? The original marketing questions have simply been amplified, not altered. We need to ask this all the time. “What message am I trying to convey to the trade?” and “What is this message going to look like?” These questions need answering before a remarketing campaign can begin. This certainty, knowing that the image you have decided on is going to stand out as the common theme – owned by you – on otherwise unrelated websites, is something we should be cherishing right now.
Working in such a visual industry, with so many vibrant stories and legacies attached to it, jewellery professionals need to be taking full advantage of this phenomenon
IJL is #withyou to help with your marketing goals. If you would like to find out more about implementing a remarketing campaign, please contact us.
Discover more about Remarketing here.
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