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Unremarkable or Remarketable?

Remarketing refers to advertisers that track users who have visited their web sites so they can deliver “targeted” ads for their products as the user visits other web sites.  The remarketing ad may actually include a specific product that was viewed on the site or placed in the e-commerce shopping cart.  And remarketing may start as soon as you leave the site.

Depending on your point of view as a consumer, you may find this remarketing stuff to be cool (oh yes, that stuff I liked, but forgot to buy!) or to be creepy (am I being stalked?).

Photo by Gerlos via Flickr

This is part of the challenge. Not all customers are the same and thus their views of remarketing will undoubtedly vary.  Difficult situations can be created with this, for example, you are doing research on a new branded fashion outfit for your 10 year old daughter. You conclude research and then begin helping this same daughter do research for her school science project. With every research click as you cruise the internet looking for material, you are repeatedly bombarded with the branded  outfit ads. Some may find this cute, while many  will become frustrated.

A solution for good permission based marketing is to have some kind of remarketing opt-in before we start following our customers around the web, and/or implement our remarketing programs to leverage what we know about existing customers to be more relevant and less creepy.

Another challenge with remarketing is the creation of an additional paid-search-like tax.  Since the goal is to target customers (all types-prospects, former, new, best customers, etc.) who have already visited the brand’s web site, remarketing is very often talking to someone that has already purchased.  So like the paid-search-tax (discussed in a previous blog ), marketers are constantly paying a remarket fee for customers they already have.  “Have” being an engaged, buying relationship. And to make it worse, the remarketing ads often cost the marketer a premium price because they are “targeted”! Yet, this is a Best Customer we are repeatedly remarketing to. I picture a customer exiting a store with bags full of purchases being chased down the street by a store associate that is repeatedly yelling “Do you want to buy this? Or this? Or how about this?” Ridiculous, no?

Again, as a customer centric marketer we feel that a remarketing campaign needs to be designed to leverage what we know already about our existing customers. This will enable more relevant marketing to be delivered to the customer AND it should enable the brand to negotiate a lower CPC and not pay the Ad Tax for customers they already know and have an existing relationship established.