Beyond Remarketing: Powerful Ways to Leverage Audience Data

The amount of data and signals available to marketers can be overwhelming. How do you shift through the noise to uncover the most valuable nuggets to influence decision-making?

The evolution of digital has allowed advertisers to BYOD – bring your own data. From CRM insights to on-site activity, marketers can now better connect cohorts of consumers with more targeted messaging than ever before. Search marketers have Google Remarketing List for Search Ads (RLSA) and on the social side of the house, there’s Facebook Custom Audiences.

Typical use cases include targeting known customer lists or remarketing to cart abandoners to engage them, but there are many others ways to leverage this data you’re collecting.

Promoting Specific Offers

Promotions and special offers can appeal to a variety of segments, such as existing customers, recent buyers, abandoners, or deal seekers. Depending on which route you want to take, tailor the copy and landing pages with messages that will appeal to the motivations of each segment.

Converting Customers

Get consumers to take action by increasing reach and frequency with those who have visited your site but have not converted. To recapture lost potential, you should also consider showing these individuals products similar to – but not the same as – what they viewed. You want to make sure you don’t turn a potential buyer off by “following” them around with something they may no longer be interested in. You can also take some market share from competitors by targeting site visitors with competitive terms.

Developing Loyalty

Rather than serving generic ads to your most loyal customers, deliver specific messages that reward them, and demonstrate value to increase engagement and ensure repeat business.

Excluding Individuals

You can do a lot with exclusions. If you are trying to reach only new prospects to increase your customer base, you can exclude existing customers from your targeting. If your site sees a high level of traffic, you can exclude frequent or recent visitors to capture a different subset. Additionally, you can use exclusion to avoid overlap so audiences don’t see conflicting messages or compete for bids.

Upselling or Cross-Selling

Remarketing isn’t just for cart abandoners – what about those who have made a purchase? Take advantage of these buyers, offering them a relevant reason to come back and visit you with complementary products or services.

Maximizing Your Audience Data

Audience data can be incredibly powerful for a variety of marketers, but there are a few things to remember:

• Don’t set it and forget it. Start by testing with a sample and observe the results. Updating the ad copy/creative, offer and landing page, or even segmenting the audience further may generate better results. Stay active in the process and iterate as you go.
• Make sure your data is up-to-date and accurate. Bad data breeds bad targeting. This is especially true when leveraging CRM data. For example, if you want to leverage a list of business executives with Facebook Custom Audiences, consider whether these executives would use a business email address to sign up for a Facebook account. You may need to adjust your strategies based on your audiences, and their affinities and habits.
• Balance precision with reach. As you refine your audience more, remember that your segments begin to narrow. Be sure to counteract this with campaigns and targeting that provides you with reach. Lookalike targeting can help you strike an optimal balance.
• Audience data can add another layer to your digital marketing when you explore the ways in which you can leverage it. As you learn about your consumers, funnel that data back into your systems to influence future programs.