How to create persuasive ad banners for remarketing campaigns? [With Examples]

How to create persuasive ad banners for remarketing campaigns? [With Examples]

Reading Time: 11 minutes

“We’ll use old banners for remarketing campaigns.”

“You can’t imagine the success of Remarketing campaigns without the right banners.” This was my first statement when the eCommerce startup business owners shared they won’t be giving much focus on banners for remarketing campaigns.

I met the startup owners last weekend and discussed on paid advertising for their product quite in detail. Though they hardly had any idea about Remarketing campaigns, I insisted them to focus on creating persuasive banners for remarketing campaigns to see significant growth in getting online orders.

Remarketing campaigns are the campaigns in which you target people who are either your existing website visitors or your existing customers.

That means you can use your customers’ browsing data to plan and create banners for your remarketing campaigns.

Our ultimate goal behind this is to showcase the right product to the right audience to make more conversions.

Achieving this goal becomes challenging if you are not prepared well in advance. Hence, before we move on to create the results-driven banners, let’s do some homework.

Preparations to do to create persuasive banners for remarketing campaigns

1. Segmentation – divide the target audience into sub-groups

A remarketing campaign may fail if you don’t know your customers and their needs. 

You need to segment your customers into different groups who have a similar set of preferences, choices, mindsets, and speed at decision-making depending on the products or services they’re looking to buy.

How to do customer segmentation to create persuasive banners for remarketing campaigns?

Usually, when it comes to creating banners for advertising campaigns (whether standard or remarketing), it is significant to show relevant ads to the appropriate audience.

You need to begin segmenting your target audience based on demographic, geographic, psychographic, and behavioural information.

If you have a product that sells women apparels, you need to create a sub-group of women only. Your ads should not be shown to men.

If that happens, men won’t click on your ads, and you might be thinking that your banner ads are not working.

Once you do this, segment your target audience further into the following groups–

1. Homepage visitors – People who’ve visited your homepage but not moved within other pages
2. Category page visitors – Visitors who have visited your category pages but not specific product pages
3. Product or offer page visitors – People who might have visited product pages but didn’t add anything to your cart
4. Cart abandoners – Store visitors who have added products to their shopping carts, but didn’t make a purchase
5. Already a customer – people who at least made some purchases in the past

How to find such customers to segment them further? Using the following tracking tools-

1. Google Analytics
2. Google Tag Manager (GTM)
3. Adobe Analytics
4. Google Marketing Platform
5. Google Ad Manager

Once you segment your target audience into different groups, you’re all set to design campaigns for each segment.

2. Design campaign banners for each segment

Marketplaces have a huge target audience with a vast number of sub-groups. When designing banners for each sub-group, you need to consider for whom you’re creating. Even if you’re a niche eCommerce brand, you need to identify the user persona of your target audience.

If you’re creating banners for toys, you need to understand who is going to see the banners. Though your product is toys, the online buying decision would be made by the parents. So, understand the mindset of parents when they’re looking to buy toys for their kids.

Let’s take another example, if you want to sell your live video streaming services like Netflix, you need to create banners considering the preferences, choices, and mindsets of Generation X, Y, and Z.

Hence, consider the ethos of each segment before you design the banners.

3. Create banners of multiple sizes

Another essential preparation you need to make is to create banners for multiple sizes. Why different sizes?

You’re investing quite high on remarketing campaigns so you would not want to leave a chance to make conversions. Hence, you need to run campaigns for all kinds of devices- desktop and mobile at the most. Also, your target audience might be visiting different platforms where you can flash your ads.

Every platform that you choose to run your remarketing campaigns must be having different pixel sizes and aspect ratio available for banners. Here are they,

For Instagram, the banner size recommendation for image ads are-

Square

• Minimum resolution (600 x 600 pixels)
• Maximum resolution (1,936 x 1,936 pixels)

Landscape

• Minimum resolution (600 x 315 pixels)
• Maximum resolution (1,936 x 1,936 pixels)

Vertical

• Minimum resolution (600 x 750 pixels)
• Maximum resolution (1,936 x 1,936 pixels)

Aspect Ratio

• Square – 1:1
• Landscape – 1.91:1
• Vertical – 4:5

For Facebook, the banner size recommendations for image ads-

For desktop ads–

Single image ad

• Image aspect ratio
• Minimum aspect ratio: 400×500

Single image ad with a link

• Image dimension
  • Minimum width: 476 pixels
  • Minimum height: 249 pixels
• Image aspect ratio
  • Minimum aspect ratio: 100×100
  • Maximum aspect ratio: 191×100

For mobile ads-

Single image ad

• Image aspect ratio
• Minimum aspect ratio: 400×500

Single image ad with a link

• Image dimension
  • Minimum width: 320 pixels
• Image aspect ratio
  • Minimum aspect ratio: 100×100
  • Maximum aspect ratio: 191×100

For Google Display ads, the best banner size recommendation is the Responsive Display ads. They adjust their sizes, appearance, and format to fit any device or any display space.

4. Optimize banners and review click rates

Another thing you need to do is to keep a close eye on click-through rates. Click-through rate (CTR) helps you identify how many people clicked on your banner ad.

Review the click rates to measure the success ratio of your banners.

Based on this ratio, you can optimize your banner colors, text, CTA sizes, and more to bring better results every time.

5. Execute A/B testing for various banners

A/B testing for various banners becomes significant to double sure on what you show to your target audience. You can use a split testing or A/B testing tool to execute this for a specific time. As a result, you come to know whether banner A drives better engagement and results or banner B.

This is entirely feasible when you have got a massive number of remarketing campaigns and segmented groups.

Types of banners to create for your remarketing campaigns

Now, let’s move on to see what kinds of banners you can create to ensure you get a higher ROI for your remarketing campaigns.

1. Create message which can persuade buyers

One crucial thing in your banner is the message. Though you have the right banner color or size, if the message is not effective, you won’t get clicks. No clicks mean no conversions and no conversions mean loss of money, time, and effort.

You need to create a persuasive message for your remarketing banner ad which invokes the desire to take action- either a click, adding it to the cart, or even buying it.

Let’s have a look at a few persuasive messages on the banner ads-

1. Nike’s Google Ad-

Nike is popular because of its purpose, and it uses it to its benefit of inspiring athletes to become a better athlete by using Nike shoes.

2. Ketto’s Google ad using pathos effectively

Ketto used pathos in their banner ad message to gather funds for their charitable purposes.

You must know your message is a key ingredient to grab the highest clicks. Use it in your favor.

2. Not only showcase products that they visited on your stores (dynamic ads), display them with a message.

One of the most common mistakes advertisers make is that they showcase only those products that people have seen in their online store.

They’ve already seen it that does not mean that they’re only interested in those products. Showcase what else do you have which can inspire them to revisit your online store again. It might be the case that they might have visited a product, but they might not have liked it.

A killer idea is to configure dynamic ads. Almost every advertising platform provides you with dynamic advertising for your remarketing campaigns.

Also, don’t just put your products on banners, ensure you attach some message to them. Like we discussed above, add some persuasiveness to it.

3. Create promotional plans

What will drive your target audience to click on your banner ads? Well, here are a few ways that will-

1. Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) ads

Your banner text must invoke fear in your customers’ mind of missing out some great deals or even free shipping.

FOMO ads drive exceptional results instantly. Check out an example of Dell using FOMO ads-

2. Discount deals

You can offer discounts on your products or services to create an urge for your target audience to buy them.

Here is an example of Nua Woman offering discount deals on Instagram Stories-

3. Social approval ads

Okay, now this is something like- allowing people to talk about your products and services in the ads.

Those ads could be user-generated content in the form of videos and even images. When people tag you after using your products or services, give them the boost and execute them for your segmented remarketing audience.

Many people are not sure about whether to buy a product or not. To give them the social proof of their products or services using these ads.

See how Kleen-o-wipe used this post as their social approval ads-

View this post on Instagram

Attention: All the girls with Sensitive Skin out there… Meet ever charming @getgorgeouswithnidhi newest addition to our #loveatfirstwipe family 😍, as KLEENOWIPE solved a her face care concerns during travel because of her sensitive skin. Watch full IGTV video on her profile…. What are you waiting for? Try our Micellar, Charcoal or Exfoliating Version without worrying about redness, itching or burn! Check our exciting “Great Indian Sale” prices on @Amazondotin or DM for offers on kleenowipe.com Here is what she says… Watch this easiest way to remove ur makeup , clean and exfoliate ur skin 😯 Guys!! Check out my new love @kleen_o_wipe . These facial wipes are such a blessing and perfect to remove all ur makeup or to just clean ur face to remove all the excess oil and dirt after a long day . I’m totally in love with them and I mean it . . . . #MicellarWipes #CharcoalWipes #ExfoliatingWipes #micellarwater #facewipes #skincareroutine #micellarwaterwipes #Kleenowipe #charcoalwipes #activatedcharcoal #skindetox #facialwipes #skincare #swipe2kleen #skincareregime #facewipes #cleansingwipes #blackisnewpink #cleanface #wetwipes #skinfriendly #refresh #feelgood #healthyskin #glowingskin

A post shared by KleenOWipe (@kleen_o_wipe) on Sep 28, 2019 at 7:43am PDT

4. Benefits-oriented ads

Not every time your target audience is aware of the benefits of buying your products or services. You can create a few banner ads showcasing them the reason to choose their brand over others.

Being one of the top payment gateways, see how PayPal utilizes benefits-oriented ads using Google Ads-

Another example is of Babyyful executing benefits-oriented ads on Instagram Stories-

5. Brand recall

Sometimes, you want your target audience to recall your brand and products/services from time to time.

See how Authorize.net is creating advertising banner ads for allowing their customers to just recall their brand.

Sometimes, brand recall ads drive online as well as offline conversions as well.

4. Create banners for cross-selling who made the purchase

The journey of your remarketing campaigns does not end after the conversion takes place. Well, it continues as you want them to stay loyal to your brand for almost all kinds of products you sell.

So, if a person just bought jeans from your store, you can suggest them buying a matching belt, shoes, and even socks, only if you sell those items. This way, you’ll be able to sell more products to your existing customers.

Promotional Banner Ads Best Practices

Just planning the banner ads won’t work until and unless you create it the right way. To achieve the maximum results from your promotional banners, here are a few best practices to follow-

1. Avoid too much text (ratio)

Banner ads should not have too much text as it provides a poor user experience in terms of appearance.

If you see an ad from Saffola Fittify, you will see too much text in just a small square-sized ad-

Now, if you see an ad by Apple, they’ve used a minimal amount of text to keep the ad look clean, organized, and even appealing for their new iPhone 11 Pro launch.

So, maintain an 80/20 ratio for image and text, respectively in your banner ads.

2. Impulsive CTA

It’s a good practice to place a call-to-action (CTA) button on your banner ads. It drives the highest clicks. But, the main punch here is to use different and effective CTAs such as below-

• Sign up for Free
• Learn more
• Subscribe
• Install now
• Book now
• Get started
• Book a demo
• Get X% off
• Create an account
• Try for Free
• Explore
• Join Now
• And, more

You can use different CTAs for different banners serving different goals.

See how Freshdesk uses different CTAs for different banner sizes and text.

So, depending on the message and the size of your banners, you can choose the right CTA to drive unbeatable clicks.

3. Use your brand guidelines

While creating banners for your remarketing campaigns, you must include the essentials of your brand guidelines-

Your message must consist of your brand voice. The banner must include your brand logo, typography, color palette, and images.

Why use brand guidelines in your banner ads?

Imagine if you see a person every day, and every other day he looks and acts differently. Would you be able to say that you know this persona and you can rely on or trust his actions? No, because he keeps on changing. 

Image Source

Hence, people love to stay connected with a brand that is consistent about what it is, their purpose, and how they communicate across all channels.

Let’s take an example of an ad by MakeMyTrip below-

Let’s check out whether MMT follows some brand guidelines for their ads by looking into its website below- 

In both of these graphics, we noticed that MMT uses branded typography in their banner ads.

Even they use the brand CTA color, which is red-

This way, you can also utilize your brand guidelines for your brand to stand out from the competition, and gain your customers’ trust.

4. Use GIFs

GIFs are trending, and you must use them right away.

GIFs are small videos of around 2-5 seconds or a combination of 2-3 images that are in the loop to look like a short video.

Almost every brand such as Netflix and Lenskart uses GIFs for advertising campaigns. Creating GIFs is very easy with the help of a GIF maker.

Also, running a remarketing campaign using GIF is precisely the same as running the banner ads.

5. Chase on multiple channels

Like mentioned above, don’t stick to one platform for remarketing banner ads. Make sure you use Google, Facebook, Instagram, and even any other platform where you feel it’s perfect for promoting your eCommerce products.

Even LinkedIn and Twitter works excellent for service-based eCommerce businesses. Recently, Gmail ads have also shown some great results. 

Adroll is another platform that allows you to manage multi-platform remarketing campaigns in one place.

Keep experimenting and see what works best for you.

6. Be persistent

That’s what we highly recommend. 

Remarketing campaigns is not a one-time affair. The more people you have on your website, the more you need to continue for remarketing campaigns.

And, for an eCommerce business, you cannot let your customer forget you. So, keep reminding them that you exist, and showcase everything that can help you bring them back to do some shopping.

It’s high time, get your banner ads ready

Creating banners for remarketing campaigns need in-depth research and analysis to make them work. So, prepare yourself with all the prerequisites to build interactive, branded, and conversion-oriented promotional banners for your remarketing campaigns.

Are you looking for some personalized guidance on how to prepare banner ads for your brand? Email us at [email protected], and we will help you create unbeatable banner ads.