On any given day, dozens, hundreds or thousands of people visit your website as they’re searching for a solution, information or another reason. The sad reality is that for most websites, the majority of these people visit your site once and then disappear. They leave no mark of their passing other than being counted as an anonymous visitor. All the effort you expended to capture them has not paid off. They did not convert. They didn’t buy what you’re selling. This audience is a virtual ghost since you’ve failed to get them to fill out a form, make a purchase or engage with you in another, direct manner. But you can capture these ghosts and take another shot at turning them into likely prospects. How? By implementing a thoughtful and strategic remarketing campaign to target those ghostly visitors with web visitor tracing.
User 101
There are two types of users visiting your website. There are users who visit once and leave without taking any measurable actions. I call them one-and-done visitors. The other users are those who come back to your site after their initial visit. While this group may not take a measurable action during any of their visits, they are expressing interest and are more likely to convert. But if these repeat visitors don’t fill in a form, buy your product or connect with you so you can capture their information, they remain ghosts.
Here’s the key question to ask yourself (or your web master or chief strategist): How am I going to get these ghosts to convert? Do we have a strategy to transform ghosts into actual customers? If the answer is a shrug, then you’re missing a chance to turn those ghosts into leads.
Remarketing with a web tracing campaign can identify and target these visitors so you can reach them beyond your website.
Identify and Target
When you choose to implement a remarketing strategy, the first step is to look at your site from a visitor’s perspective. Which pages offer a ghost or one-time visitor an action they can take to signal interest no matter where they are in their decision journey? For example, is there an engaging video that showcases your unique proposition? Is there a specific internal link to a key page? If there isn’t something for a visitor to do on the page, something that helps them move along their decision journey, this isn’t a target page.
Once you have identified the pages and the specific actions visitors can take, then you’re ready to take the next step. A remarketing pixel will be added to those page actions you’ve identified. So anyone who visits a targeted page but doesn’t click the specified button or link won’t become part of your remarketing target audience.
The next step is to get your new message in front of this captured audience with a campaign designed to retain and intensify their interest in your community.
Ghosts to Leads
Successful remarketing isn’t a generalized campaign. It’s not blasted out to everyone in your audience who’s receiving your digital or print messaging. A smart remarketing campaign carefully considers who gets selected and the specific message you want to place in front of them. By carefully considering who and what, you maximize your results.
Once the pixel is in place and capturing the data, your website traffic is processed in three ways in order to create the best result. Generally, we can identify up to 60% of your anonymous visitors who take those selected actions. We go beyond identifying the user’s device ID. We match that ID to our databases to provide you with their name, USPS address and an email address if one is available. Our process also suppresses repeat visitors within a 30-day window so you don’t waste marketing dollars on duplicate mailings or email to the same person. The result transforms your ghosts or anonymous visitors into viable prospects.
If you’d like to know more about how to transform ghosts into prospective leads, contact Maribeth today. Imagine what you can do when your website visitors can be identified, retargeted and converted!
