Have you ever been on Facebook and saw an ad of me? Something that looked like this:
That’s remarketing. I’ll explain how it works. When people visit Quick Sprout, they get cookied with an ad code, and whenever they browse the web, they see ads related to my offers.
How Remarketing Works
Laying the ground work
Although remarketing is mainly used for targeting people who visit your website, it doesn’t have to stop there. When you are working on a business deal, chances are you are going to communicate with the other party through email.
Remarketing solutions like Retargeter and Perfect Audience are known for providing email solutions. They give you an invisible piece of code that gets placed in your email signature and is used to cookie people once you start sending them emails. Your recipients won’t even know that you are tracking them through this cookie code.
There are other remarketing services out there, but many of them, e.g, Adroll, don’t do email remarketing, or at least that’s what their sales reps told me when I asked them.
So, my recommendation to you is to choose one of the two options above as your remarketing solution as they both work with all of the major email providers such as Gmail.
Don’t forget your tool belt
Now, to take this case further, lets assume that you already have someone interested in your product or service and you are at the proposal stage. If this isn’t the case, read this blog post so you can quickly get to the proposal stage.
Before you send out your first proposal, you should use two tools. The first is Yesware, which helps you track whether your emails get opened. This free tool is valuable because it will tell you if you need to follow up, particularly in cases when people have not read your email.
The second tool is Bidsketch. It’ll give you all the analytics you need on your proposals: if they are getting passed around and how interested your potential customers actually are in hiring you, etc.
Creating your first remarketing campaign
Before you can send out your first proposal, you’ll want to create a banner ad for your remarketing campaign. If you aren’t a designer, go to Fiverr as you’ll be able to find someone who will do it for $5.
The banner ad should state the benefit of using your product or service. For example, if I were creating a remarketing ad for KISSmetrics, I would create an ad that would say something like:
Stop wasting time and start making money with KISSmetrics.
The purpose of that ad would be to get you to move faster on signing our KISSmetrics proposal. It reinforces the benefit of our product helping you make more money that our sales reps pitched to you in the proposal.
Make sure the ad you design isn’t too pushy like this one:
When are you going to sign your KISSmetrics proposal?
Ads like the one above can backfire as some people will feel that the ads are creepy. When I tested out similar ads, they actually deterred people from signing up.
The overall goal of the ads you are creating is to keep your company in your potential customer’s mind. The last thing you want to do is to send off a proposal and have your prospects forget about you.
Start your remarketing campaign
Now that you are all set up, it’s time to send off your proposal. You have your tools in place, and your remarketing campaigns are set up so that you can continually remind your potential customer to sign up.
Now, a few scenarios are likely to happen, and here is what you do in each one:
Scenario #1: Your email isn’t opened
This is why you use Yesware. You don’t want to assume people are opening your emails when they are not. There is always a chance your emails get filtered into someone’s spam box, so you should never assume your email is being read.
If Yesware shows your email isn’t read after two business days, send another email with a different subject line. When sending this email, call your prospects and let them know by phone that you also sent them a proposal via email.
If that didn’t work, wait five more business days and repeat the process. But this time, walk them through the proposal over the phone. That way they have no choice but to read your email.
Scenario #2: Your email is opened, but the proposal isn’t read
There are a few things you need to do in this scenario.
- Call them and see if you can set up a time to walk through the proposal – at the end of the call, make sure you ask what they thought so you can take that feedback to improve your future proposals.
- Add more banners to your remarketing rotation – these new banners should highlight case studies that link over to your site. The goal is to provide social proof on why they should sign up with you.
- Follow up with an email – after five business days of doing the two steps above, follow up with an email breaking down their site and explaining what they can do to grow their business. The advice you give them doesn’t have to relate to your product or service, but instead it should help them see that you are a smart person and you know what you are doing. This way when you tell them to buy your product or service, they’ll trust your advice.
Scenario #3: Proposal has been read, but they stop following up with you
This is probably the worse-case scenario that can happen because the other party is either really busy or they are ignoring you. Or even worse, they feel there is no sense of urgency to move forward.
Here is what I would do here:
- Rotate the ads – include links to case studies, include testimonials, and leverage messages like “If X Company Uses KISSmetrics, Shouldn’t You Too?” This should help keep your company in the back of their mind even if they are extremely busy.
- Be blunt – I would call and ask them if there is anything that you can do to move this deal forward. Ask them if they have any concerns, then answer them all and also mention that you are a strapped-for-time startup. Tell them to feel free to be candid with you as it won’t hurt your feelings and ask them to tell you what they thought of the overall deal. The answers should help you get to the root of the problem.
Scenario #4: Proposal has been read, but they tell you they are not interested
In this situation you are probably not going to get the deal, but you can learn the reasons for not getting it.
Pick up the phone, thank them for being upfront with you, and then ask them this one question:
What could have I done differently to win your business?
They may beat around the bush, and if they do, tell them to be blunt as it will help you improve your business. They will typically give you responses such as:
- We are not confident that you can deliver the results you promised.
- You are too expensive.
Depending on the answer, you’ll want to create a new set of remarketing ads. These ads will answer these objections. If they said you are too expensive, your ads should showcase the financial results others achieved by using your products. Link those ads to case studies.
The reason you don’t want to give a discount is because businesses don’t care how much something costs as long as they know it will make them a lot more money.
If they feel that you can’t deliver on what you promised, create these ads:
- Quotes from press about your company.
- More case studies
- Testimonials within your ads
- Create an ad with your company logo in the center and the logos of your clients around it.
These ads should help your prospects be more comfortable with the claims you are making.
Conclusion
Remarketing isn’t a magic pill that will help you close every deal out there, but it can’t hurt. I’ve found that using it in my sales process boosted my overall deal closing ratio by 28%.
And it’s not just me either. We had five sales reps test it as well. They have found that remarketing has helped increase their closing numbers by 16% on average.
When you are trying to close deals, sometimes you just have to think outside the box. Some things will work out well for you, and others won’t. It’s all about testing new techniques and being creative.