Stay top of mind for your prospective donors
Remarketing is an advertising tactic that’s aimed at turning non-converters into converters. Also known as “those ads that follow you around the internet showing you stuff you’ve shopped for,” you’ve probably encountered these if you’ve ever looked at shoes, clothes, electronics, mattresses, cars, or a host of other products online. It works for converting donors, too!
The basic principle is that people who’ve engaged with your content – by reading a fundraising email, or visiting your donation form, for instance – already care about your cause and are far more likely to come back and donate than cold prospects. By targeting them specifically, you can get a higher return on your ad budget and bring back would-be donors who would otherwise get lost.
I often get questions about whether remarketing is really effective. After all, wouldn’t many of these folks come back and donate anyway? Maybe so – but numerous, numerous studies have found that people who see remarketing ads are more likely to come back and convert than those who don’t. Even if they ultimately donate via another pathway, like clicking on one of your emails, seeing your ad increases their likelihood to follow through.
There are approximately a zillion remarketing tools out there if you’re looking for bells and whistles, but it’s easy to get started using two platforms you’re probably already on:
Remarketing with Facebook Ads
On Facebook, you can set up what’s called a Custom Audience to remarket to your supporters just like any other ad audience. When you go to Custom Audiences, you’ll have several options for targeting. I recommend trying:
- Upload a list of supporters (e.g. donors, prospective donors) with email addresses to match them to Facebook’s records;
- If you’ve installed the Facebook Pixel on your website and donation forms, set filters to target people based on what pages they’ve visited – for instance, people who visited your donation form but didn’t complete a donation.
Save the audience, then use it in any ad campaign to target those supporters.
Remarketing with Google Ads
With Google Ads, you can create an audience based on what pages people have or haven’t visited on your website, among a plethora of other options. Similar to Facebook, you can filter to particular pages, and exclude other pages or specific conversions.
You can add custom audiences to your search campaigns, but that depends on your audience searching for your targeted keywords. You’ll generally get more bang for your buck using Google Display Ads, which function like banner ads and display on partner sites across the internet. Note that display ads aren’t available to Google Grants customers; if you’re running Google ads through a grant, you’ll need a separate, paid account to do this.
As you’re planning your end-of-year fundraising campaign, be sure to look at remarketing as part of your ad strategy!