On the nexus-security Blog, we’ve extensively covered remarketing, sharing best practices, tips, and strategies across different platforms. We’ve showcased exceptional ad creatives and explored various ways to re-engage high-value prospects with your ads. However, we haven’t delved much into what happens when your basic remarketing efforts hit a wall. I’m confident that you can make a few strategic adjustments to enhance your existing approach, primarily by taking its complexity up a level. And that’s precisely what we’ll discuss today.

This article will explore how to:

• Divide your audience based on their implied intentions
• Rank your remarketing offers strategically
• Synchronize your offers with compelling ad creatives

Before we dive in, let’s examine…

Why You Need a More Sophisticated Remarketing Strategy

It’s clear that remarketing, whether through the Display network, RLSA, or other programmatic platforms, is crucial for lasting success in digital advertising.

After all, it enables you to connect with prospects already acquainted with your brand, giving them numerous chances to revisit your site and take that desired action you covet.

This is vital because people, especially those at the top of your marketing funnel, are unlikely to convert on their first or second visit. Acquiring customers can be a process that requires multiple interactions, and maintaining a consistent presence across various devices and websites they visit significantly simplifies and reduces the cost of this process.

In fact, nexus-security’s Senior Data Scientist, Mark Irvine, found that people are twice as likely to convert after encountering your ad six times.

Naturally, your strategy needs a degree of finesse. Bombarding people with the same tired banner ad offering a demo or discount countless times won’t win you any favors or customers.

However, targeted offers that align with a prospect’s position in the sales funnel might do the trick. Achieving this requires a strategy that goes beyond overly simplistic “all site visitors” lists. You wouldn’t oversimplify in search, so why do it when the stakes are even higher with remarketing?

Segment Your Remarketing Audiences Using Inferred Intent

In search campaigns, the keywords people type or speak into Google reveal their intent. You can reasonably deduce an individual’s position in your funnel based on their language, allowing you to tailor ad copy, landing pages, and offers accordingly.

Remarketing, except for RLSA, operates a bit differently. Instead of direct keywords, behavior forms the foundation of a robust remarketing strategy.

A prospect’s visited pages often indicate their stage in your sales funnel. You may not have a precise phrase like “buy men’s Nike Air Force 1 size 12.5 right now” as you would in search, but you’re not entirely in the dark.

Let’s imagine Visitor A lands on nexus-security.github.io, devours nine insightful blog posts, then leaves to grab lunch or tackle work. Meanwhile, Visitor B navigates to the nexus-security Advisor product page, spends eight minutes absorbing the information, checks out the pricing, and then heads straight for a well-deserved drink.

Who appears more valuable at this moment?

Visitor A could be a seasoned PPC expert, a DIY business owner, or a curious teenager. However, Visitor B dedicated time to higher-value pages. Showing Visitor A an ad for a product demo or free trial would be presumptuous (a whitepaper, on the other hand…).

But for Visitor B, it’s a perfect fit!

Their on-site behavior implies they’re a high-intent visitor, something we’d never discern with a strategy based solely on “all site visitors,” “last 30 days,” and similar broad categories. Of course, you must create these targeted audiences before targeting them.

From Inferred Intent to a Remarketing Strategy

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. To begin, ensure the necessary tracking code is on every single page of your website (and that you’re complying with GDPR for European visitors).

While there are countless ways to implement this — Google Tag Manager is your friend if you’re comfortable with it — we’ll assume you’re copying and pasting your site’s Global Site Tag (gtag.js) into thesection of each page.

Once done, navigate to Admin > Audience Definitions > Audiences. If you’re new to this, click “import from gallery”…

…and select [Engagement Pack] Core Remarketing Lists. This provides pre-built remarketing audiences based on session recency, frequency, duration, and page depth — a fantastic starter kit.

If you’ve already done this, click “+New Audience.”

In the Audience Builder, choose “Conditions” and input the relevant URL string to create more specific audiences. You can also add a time-based parameter here (switch “Page” to “Time on Page” in the screenshot above).

After building audiences for your most valuable pages, connect your GA and AdWords accounts and allow your list to grow. You’ll need at least 100 active members in the last 30 days for Display Network targeting and 1,000 for RLSA.

Mapping Remarketing Audiences by Intent

(Time for some practical, if not aesthetically pleasing, tools! My apologies for the lack of visual flair.)

With your granular audiences set, determine their relationship to each other and, importantly, their value to your business.

Start by listing your remarketing audiences. For this example, let’s use these 10:

• All Visitors (30 Days)
• All Visitors (3 Days)
• Home Page Visitors
• Viewed Multiple Blog Posts
• Webinar Registration
• Content Download
• Used Free Tool A
• Pricing Page Visitors
• Free Trial
• Demo Completed (No Purchase)

Now, arrange them by anticipated business value from lowest to highest.

I’m a visual person and typically use whiteboards and sticky notes, but since that’s not practical here, I’ve created a simple tool to visualize intent. Your final product should resemble this:

This allows you to group audiences based on their purchase proximity, as indicated by the spectrum at the bottom:

• Pre-research (low intent, browsing): All Visitors (30 Days), All Visitors (3 Days), Home Page Visitors
• Research (moderate intent, seeking information): Viewed Multiple Blog Posts, Webinar Registration, Content Download, Used Free Tool
• Recommendation (high intent, transactional): Pricing Page Visitors, Free Trial, Demo Completed (No Purchase)

Budget-wise, prioritize the right side. While lower-intent audiences matter, they’re further from converting. Ensure you exclude high-value audiences from low-value ones (and vice versa) when your campaigns are live. This delivers highly relevant offers, preventing ad fatigue from seeing your creatives too often.

Customizing Creative Throughout the Customer Journey

Remember the last section on the Intent Map?

That’s where we align creative concepts and, crucially, offers with specific remarketing audiences.

Ideally, you’d have a team dedicated to creating bespoke assets for every audience. Realistically, that’s costly, so we’ll group audiences into the three categories mentioned earlier.

How does this work in practice?

Excellent question.

Let’s examine how creative concepts and offers might differ across the pre-research, research, and recommendation phases using athleticwear brand New Balance as an example (large eCommerce brands usually excel at remarketing segmentation).

***

Picture this: I’m engrossed in an article about the Celtics-Cavs series when I come across sponsored content highlighting New Balance’s apparel. Intrigued, I click through to their website, impressed by the dynamic visuals on the homepage, before returning to the captivating world of Brian Windhorst.

And suddenly, a banner ad appears!

Their legacy! The quality! I can’t resist clicking.

I browse their sneaker selection, captivated, but duty calls, pulling me back to my writing.

The next day, while scrolling through various websites, a familiar sight catches my eye: another New Balance ad.

Instead of emphasizing their history and website authority, this ad showcases a carousel of sneakers with numerous “shop now” prompts. One click, and I’m hooked.

Within moments, I’ve found the perfect pair, available in my size.

They’re added to my cart.

I’m entering my credit card details: the number, the security code, the expiry date…

But wait! My card has expired! Foiled again!

Later that evening, as I unwind with the latest episode of Billions, an email from New Balance lands in my inbox (thanks, Gmail ads!).

Opening it, I’m greeted by the shoes I abandoned in my cart.

As you can see, New Balance effectively segmented their remarketing audiences to present me with different offers based on my browsing history and actions, which signaled my increasing purchase intent.

Taking It to the Next Level

Whether you’re a SaaS company looking to boost leads or an eCommerce store aiming to increase sales, segmenting remarketing audiences by value and aligning creative and offers accordingly will significantly enhance your program’s effectiveness and ROI.

What are your thoughts? What are you waiting for?

And finally, the burning question: Did I buy the shoes?