Google has been giving out free consultations to help with your paid search campaign so I figured I would take them up on it and schedule a call. One of the things they were pushing was setting up a remarketing campaign. Now even though I tried a remarketing/retargeting campaign with this client it started me to thinking about this post and what you can do to make a remarketing program work for your PPC marketing campaign.
Interest Based Advertising
When you think of pay-per-click advertising, you think of keywords, ads and paying every time someone clicks on your ad. That is all true. However, paid search has come a long way and is continually evolving. There have been lots of developments that could change your methodology, preferred tactics, and PPC management focus. One of the most interesting has been the development of interest-based advertising, which removes keywords from the PPC equation.
Interest-based advertising has a couple different name. Some people call it retargeting others called following but within Google it’s called Remarketing. There are a handful of 3rd party companies that provide this remarketing service such as Media Forge but I am going to focus on Google AdWords since this is the easiest entry point for most advertisers willing to try this strategy.
The PPC Methodology & Tactic Behind Remarketing
So the main goal of remarketing is to target a user who has already visted your website and to get them back so that they can finish what they started such as complete a lead form or check out their shopping cart. It might even be for them to sign up for your newsletter or repurchase. Let’s take an example of this process:
- Matt comes to Frank’s Golf World and search through a wide variety of drivers. He put the new Taylor Made R11s driver in his shopping cart but did not pull the trigger and left.
- Matt starts to visit other sites, some related to golf such as a cigar site or luxury watch site and he sees an advertisement from Frank’s Golf World about the new Taylor Made R11s Driver that offers free shipping!
- Matt’s interest has been re energized to buy the driver and clicks on the ad to Frank’s Golf World and goes to the site to buy it.
In a very simplistic form, this is what remarketing is. Setting this up is very easy as all the code you need is done by Google’s interface. All you need to do is add a snippet of tracking code to your website (the code is provided by Google), when a user visits your website that code drops a third party tracking cookie onto their computer. Also, within the Google AdWords interface you just need to set the proper campaigns and advertisements.
You will need creative assets such as banner ads but once you have those assets added into your account your ads will appear on websites that are opted into the Google Display Network. These are websites that display text and images ads distributed by Google. You’ve seen the block of ads on a website that read, “Ads provided Google.” That is where your remarketing ads would appear.
Now you are going to pay per click for every visitor that does click on these ads similar to anyone who clicks on a text ads in the search network. The difference is that you are targeting or advertising to users who type a specific keyword but users who have already expressed an interest in your product/service by visiting your site (hence the name, interest-based advertising).
Tips & Tricks For A Successful A Remarketing Campaign
First thing you must understand is that the overall audience for a remarketing campaign is much different from your usual paid search audience. Most visitors who come from PPC are looking for a product/service such as “Taylor Made Driver” and they have not heard of Frank’s Golf World. Most don’t even care about who the site is they are going to buy the product from as long as the price is right. Now a remarketing audience, they already know who you are because they’ve been to your website – but now, you have to convince them to come back and take action (or take an additional action).
Something that is extremely powerful with remarketing is the ability to segment your audience and serve highly specific, targeted ads to individual users. This is where you can really get into each segment and maximize conversions. Let’s use my current Frank’s Golf World example:
- Frank can target users who have purchased products already. Call it the “Two off the first tee” campaign and offer an additional 15% for return customers.
- Frank can target users who did not purchase a product. Call this the “Mulligan” campaign and offer 20% off plus free shipping.
- Frank can target users who visit specific brands or product pages. These campaigns can be based on “the largest selection of drivers online”!
- Frank can also target users who purchased products that need to be replaced such as golf balls. Call this the ” Out of bounds” campaign and offer 20% off all golf ball purchases.
• Image ads – They are a must as users who have been to your site may recognize and respond to your logo, color scheme, products faster with images. As mentioned in one of the examples above, if a user visits a product on your website, you can later serve them an advertisement that displays that specific product.
• Segmentation – The examples above describe why segmentation is so important and effective. With remarketing you can get really specific in regards to which ads are shown to which users. Take full advantage of this opportunity.
• Test different offers – It is not whether you have an offer or not but what offer works! You need to make your your target audiences feels special.
Final Thoughts On Remarketing
Make no mistake about it, traditional paid search marketing is where you are going to get the majority of your business from. However, now you can have a backup plan for users who don’t make purchase or users who are likely to purchase again. So, that initial click from the search engine actually gains a little bit more value. Using these tips on remarketing you can now go out there and make it happen.
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