The Native Ads Retargeting Strategy You Haven’t Yet Heard of

In our last post, we talked about leveraging your SEO data so you can run highly relevant Facebook retargeting campaigns.

If you implemented some of the strategies we showed you in the last post, then give yourself a nice pat on the back.

Now, I’m sure you’ve read many posts outlining how marketing funnels work. Bloggers like Neil Patel talk about it, but mostly in the theoretical sense – like you’d get in an economics class.

You would learn the theory of various marketing platforms, like what native ads are for example.

But how do you actually put that into practice?

In this post, I’ll give you the exact playbook to implement a powerful marketing funnel combining various platforms like Native Ads & Google Remarketing.

A marketing funnel where you can have complete transparency and actually measure each step of the funnel, target users across ad networks, and most importantly, give them what they want; when they want it.

Note: While the marketing flow I am about to share is fairly complex, it’s for the most part fully automated by AnyTrack.

The only thing not automated is your marketing creativity 😉

I believe selling successfully online isn’t challenging in itself. However, the lack of good data, where you can actually leverage it, is what makes it overcomplicated.

Selling successfully online boils down to:

1. Having a compelling offer
2. Creating a powerful marketing funnel (copy, etc.)
3. Targeting the right audience at the right time with the right message

Let’s assume you have your compelling offer, and now you need help with your marketing funnel.

What you do at every stage in the funnel is more of an art than a science, but it’s important to understand where your potential customers are at each stage of the funnel, “meet them there”, and guide them to the next stage of the funnel.

Let me explain.

Let’s say part of your marketing funnel looks like this:

1. You buy traffic from Google Ads to your landing page.
2. You then retarget users and show them a special offer on Facebook for the product they checked out on your site.

This alone can be very effective because you’re promoting special offers to users who showed intent (they took a valuable action by clicking on an offer on your site)

One thing you guys need to understand AND CAPTURE is the intent of your users at each stage of your marketing funnel.

For those who are not yet familiar with this concept:

Google’s advertising platform is based on queries and keywords which allow advertisers to show ads to users based on the queries or keywords people are using, aka showing ads based on user intent.

The million dollar question is identifying what the customer’s intention is with their search and giving them what they want.

Your audience shows their intentions overtly with their search queries, and covertly by the actions they take on your website.

I wish most customers would tell us “Hey I want to buy!”, but instead we have to settle for keywords like “Best [Product] Delivery Companies” and figure it out from there.

Google’s advertising platform is a goldmine for finding people who are specifically searching for something, and they make it super easy to reach users based on overt intent.

They’re telling you what they’re interested in!

And for the users that clicked on 3 offers in a specific category, they’re also telling you what they’re interested in! albeit covertly.

These tried and true methods of intent marketing are so powerful on their own if you do it correctly.

And in a future post we may go even deeper into matching marketing funnels with user intent.

However, today we’re going to talk about a different strategy.

Creating intent.

We know how powerful it is to match user intent with the right message, but creating intent is pretty much “next level wizardry” magic.

Imagine, if we could create buyer intent, then we wouldn’t have to rely solely on Google.

We wouldn’t have to compete with the entire world on high intent buying keywords that are only increasing in cost and reducing our margins.

When you properly create intent at every stage of the funnel, you create a snowball effect where the user will be begging to buy from you.

In a nutshell, the strategy works like this:

You source large amounts of traffic interested in a topic and retarget to them based on the actions they take. As they move further down the funnel you show them more specific and relevant content so the chances for conversions increases as well!

You just need to make sure the entire journey is tracked and then you’re good to go. AnyTrack automatically takes care of that part for you.

So where should you source the initial audience?

Imagine you’re a baker.

Do you source your dough from the mega bakery down the street (Google) which will likely cost you an arm and a leg?

Or would you source your dough from the boutique bakery that specializes in editorial / content dough?

Ok enough with the bakery example.

You could source your users from Google, however with today’s advertising costs, that can easily cost you $10,000 for a simple list.

You could source your users from Facebook, but Facebook is a social networking platform. I’m not sure it would do well there at this stage of the game. Feel free to try and let us know how it went.

Or, you could source your users from native advertising channels like Taboola or Outbrain.

Native advertising channels are perfect for promoting editorial content, and accessing users who are interested in consuming content.

What are Native ads?

Native Ads are a type of paid ads that have a lot more creative freedom compared to regular PPC channels.

Since native ad platforms are more editorial based, the visitors are more likely to spend more time consuming the content.

Native ads are usually subtle and blend in really well with the page content and design.

The Native Advertising Institute defines Native Ads as:

Sometimes the native ad placements blend in so well that it’s almost like they belong there.

In feed / In content native ads

In feed native ads are placed between the content on a page and allow the advertiser to promote sponsored content within the publishers environment.

Here’s an example of In feed native ads from Business Insider:

Content Recommendation Native Ads

Content recommendation ads are when sponsored content (ads, videos, links, etc.) are shown primarily below an article.

(Some content recommendation ads can also be shown in feed as well, but not as common)

An example of native ads placed at the end of an article.

Native Ads can be a perfect top of the funnel marketing strategy where we want to simply inform people on a topic.

Native Advertising Channels

The Native Advertising industry is evolving and is fueled by massive amounts of resources being invested to deliver effective ad experiences.

Leading the industry are companies like Taboola and Outbrain. Both are powerful native advertising channels that enable advertisers to reach users on their favorite publishing sites.

We’ll even show you how to remarket to these users on Google, where users are now searching for topics similar to the one you showed them with Native Ads.

Ninja stuff 🙂

Before we jump in, let’s go over some basics using Taboola as an example.

How does the Anytrack Taboola integration work?

AnyTrack is fully integrated with Taboola, so you can take make the most out of every single feature Taboola has to offer.

From the AnyTrack documentation:

When you enable the Taboola conversion tracking option, AnyTrack will automatically send engagements and affiliate conversion events to your Taboola pixel.

Once the data is received by Taboola, you can use it to create both custom audiences and conversions.

Finally, you will be able to use the audience data to run retargeting campaigns, exclude converters from your campaign targeting or even “up sell” products to suitable audiences.”

To summarize:

• AnyTrack will send onsite events such as outbound clicks and form submissions to the Taboola pixel.
• Anytrack will send server side events (server to server tracking) coming from affiliate networks, ecommerce sites or third party apps to Taboola.
• Conversions are sent to Taboola whether they are originating from Taboola campaigns or from other ad networks campaigns (including organic / seo traffic).
• Conversions that are attributed to Taboola campaigns will show in your Taboola ad reporting.
• Both conversions attributed to Taboola campaigns and from other ad networks will fill your Taboola audiences according to each conversion type. (so you can exclude audiences from being targeted in your Taboola campaigns).

The Taboola Pixel

The Taboola Pixel, much like the Facebook Pixel, gathers data and gives you insight into the actions users take on your website. This helps Taboola optimize your marketing campaigns.

Once you’ve got your pixel set up, the fun begins.

We can create a new campaign with the goal of creating intent.

One way to do this is by publishing an article on a topic that’s of interest to our audience.

If a person clicks and reads the article, they’ve shown a certain interest. And for those who clicked out to one of the offers you promote on the article, they’ve shown you a real intent.

And because you’ve got all your pixels on your article, both visitors and “clickers” will be tagged and start filling your custom audiences.

The possibilities are really endless. We can even create custom audiences on Taboola to run retargeting campaigns like we did in the last post!

However, for this example, let’s focus on creating intent with Taboola traffic, then remarketing on Google Ads.

Create your campaign on Taboola

Ad Copy & Landing page

Create one high quality piece of content that we will be using to promote on Taboola. Think about your buyer’s journey, and work backwards to the top of the funnel.

If you’re selling golf clubs, think about a topic your buyers would be interested in so that after reading it it would lead them right to searching on Google for golf clubs.

Example, you’re selling golf clubs made out of real gold.

Your article could be called: “Want a better swing? Think gold!”

Campaign Creation

Follow Taboola’s documentation to get your campaign up and running and start promoting the piece of content you created in Step 1.

Pro Tips:

• Know your audience extremely well. Visit forums, read product reviews, etc to get an idea of the language they use.
• Curiosity is a powerful tool. Make sure the topics really pique their curiosity!
• Don’t overlook the power of persuasive copywriting. Create engaging headlines!

Create a custom audience list in Google Analytics

You could create a remarketing list in Google Ads, but you have a lot more freedom in Google Analytics which you can then publish to Google Ads.

In Google Analytics, we will create an audience that follows some rules:

1. All visitors that came from “utm_source=taboola”
2. Users who visited a specific page or a page that includes a keyword “golf”
3. Users that did not yet trigger a Sale conversion (since we don’t want to retarget to users that already bought the golf clubs.)
4. We can even specify the Event Category – where we send the brand name of the product that triggered a conversion.

Note: Audiences can be tricky to master, so I highly recommend doing some tests to get familiar with these rules and see what the audience outcome is.

Here is one setup you can do to create a custom audience based on the users who visited the article from Taboola:

Once you’re done creating your audience, you’ll have the option to publish it in Google Ads & Google Analytics.

It may take some time to populate, but once it’s finished, you should be able to see your new audience in Google Ads Audience Manager.

Run Google retargeting campaigns

You’ll have the option to do a display remarketing campaign, or use the search network.

I personally think the search network is a better choice because we’re showing ads to people based on the topics they search for, but you can run both simultaneously.

Go ahead and run some Google Ads campaigns only targeting the custom audience we built from Taboola!

If you followed these instructions you’ve managed to:

• Create intent with a piece of engaging content
• Remarket to people on Google based on high intent keywords they’re using

Pro tips:

Putting it all together

In this post, I’ve explained and outlined what direct advertisers have done for years, which hasn’t been possible for affiliate marketers.

‘Old school’ tracking software are “campaign centric” and are not built to track users or websites, which makes running funnels across multiple networks impossible.

This powerful marketing flow we covered is only possible when your data is where you can actually use it. And now that you can finally become the master of your data, you have instant access to marketing capabilities and benefits that you couldn’t even dream about.

Yet, while this marketing flow is powerful, it’s more of an art than a science.

You should take a step back, look at your current campaigns, and start thinking with a more data driven perspective.

You can and should experiment with the strategies you learned today for your next campaign, and try stringing together multiple platforms for your marketing funnels so you have a cohesive marketing plan.