Expert Insight: The Surprising Marketing Tactic Too Many Businesses Ignore

Joel Stone, best-selling author and founder of Shropshire-based marketing agency Codebreak, shares his thoughts on a frequently shunned marketing tactic, and explores why service-based brands and e-commerce businesses can’t afford to ignore it.

You know when you look at a pair of trainers online, and for the next few weeks you can’t get away from them? It’s like they’re following you around the internet, haunting your dreams.

That’s not a coincidence – it’s targeted remarketing, and it’s one of the most powerful yet underused sales tools out there. Remarketing is about staying front-of-mind without being annoying – a second chance to make a first impression, basically.

The biggest brands out there today rely heavily on remarketing. They know that staying ‘familiar’ to prospects and customers drives conversions. Look at Lush, the organic cosmetics brand. Every time they launch something new, if you’re on their newsletter, you’ll hear about it. You’ll get served ads. The Body Shop, however? They never did that – maybe they should’ve.

Why you need to annoy people

Whether you’re selling a physical product or a service, you’re missing a trick if you’re not staying front-of-mind with people. But here’s the problem; a lot of business owners won’t email their database every day because they assume it’ll annoy people. Ironically, these are the same business owners who complain they don’t get enough sales.

People are beyond getting annoyed by emails now, especially in the B2B space. If they don’t want to read it, they’ll just delete it. But if that subject line captures their attention? They’re in. Get out of the mindset that you’re being intrusive.

Why do you need to stay front-of-mind? Because people rarely make their buying decision straight away. In fact, only 2% of visitors convert on their first visit. Most prospects aren’t going to make a buying decision on their first, second or even fifth touch. You’re getting into six, seven, ten touch points before they’re ready.

I love it when people unsubscribe – no, seriously

It blows my mind how many businesses try to get people to convert on the first visit, and don’t do anything after that. It comes down to knowing where your customers are the sales funnel. Are they at the top, ready to buy? Or are they even aware they have a problem to which you’re the solution? You need to get them in at the top and then nurture them down the funnel towards realising what their problem is.

If you annoy them and they unsubscribe, they were never going to buy anyway. Some people will always walk away, that’s part of business. The emails I’m sending out from Codebreak? Between six and 10 people unsubscribe every day. To me, that’s great news; it means the people left are more likely to be into it.

Marketing isn’t just about attracting the right people, it’s also about repelling the wrong people.

People also forget that remarketing doesn’t just attract new buyers; it reassures those who’ve already bought. If someone’s bought from you and then they see you everywhere, you seem a lot more established and legitimate – and they feel more comfortable with their decision than they would if they never heard from you again.

Hey, remember that thing you wanted?

Another great opportunity for remarketing is cart abandonments. If you’re selling a product online, you should definitely be optimising your e-commerce site for add-to-cart. And if you’re not doing that – then chasing after those people for a sale – you’re missing out.

Buyers today treat websites like they used to treat high street shops; they window shop. They’ll go into a shop and look at loads of different things they like, and not buy any of them. But then they’ll go back half an hour later and get the two things they wanted first. Today’s internet is just an online version of that.

So remarketing isn’t just the ads and emails that follow you around. It’s the abandoned cart email; the ones that prompt you 48 hours later with: “Hey, we saw you didn’t pull the trigger. Here’s a gift on us.” Then they give you 10% off, or free delivery, or some other incentive to get you over the line.

Part of this process is understanding that buyers don’t have time to keep track of everything they want to purchase, so remarketing is actually helpful. I’m a coffee lover, for instance. But I often forget to reorder, and it’d be so helpful to me if someone could send me an ad as a reminder.

Honesty’s always the best policy

Something else to keep in mind is that you should be remarketing to people who’ve bought from you before. That’s where all the profit is; the second, the third, the fourth purchase.

Sadly, most businesses aren’t doing that. Business owners will say: “Well, we send a monthly newsletter.” But are you putting your new products or services in front of them? “No.” Well then.

The other thing to remember in remarketing is honesty. Authenticity in marketing should be automatic, so if you’re lying to people, stop it. The best way to market your business is to tell people how it’s going to help them, how it will transform their lives. But if what you’re telling them has to be the truth.

Of course, it’s easier for e-commerce brands; something’s in your customer’s basket and now you can follow them around with an ad or email until they buy it. But service-based businesses really miss a trick with this. They think that once they’ve given someone the information they need, that’s the end of the prospecting process. But it’s not. It’s the start.

Ad fatigue is real

Every business out there should be hitting up their lists to move prospects and existing clients along the funnel. But there’s a balance, of course. Ad fatigue is real, and you can’t just spam people constantly. If the frequency of your ad – meaning how many times the same person has seen it – pushes past 20, you might be trying too hard.

It depends where your business is, though. If you’re McDonald’s, frequency isn’t a problem. They still sponsor the World Cup. Millions of people see the same thing over and over again; it’s brand awareness. But if you’re a one-person solicitor firm and you’re peppering people non-stop, you could erode trust.

So what can you do right now to start remarketing? First, make sure your website is functional because that’s where you’re sending people. A pixel or a Google tag is essential. If you don’t know how, just google ‘how to put a pixel on my WordPress’; then you can start building web audiences.

Even if you’re not planning to launch ads yet, it’ll pay off in the future when your business grows. You may not know it, but LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok are already building those audiences for you. So when you come to use their ad platforms, you’ll have a ready-made remarketing list.

Second, if you’ve got a database, get something out to everyone in it. If you don’t have one, start building one. And if you don’t have time to do it, work with a marketing agency. I can honestly say that every one of our clients is a remarketing success story.

It works; simple as that.