We talked briefly about remarketing recently, and now we’ve got the basics out of the way here are a few thoughts on how to increase sales using remarketing.
A quick recap
Remarketing is the name for the type of advertising which involves showing your adverts to people who have visted your website when they’re browsing the web as normal. Every now and then, I hear someone exclaim that they’re seeing ads from a particular shop all over the internet – chances are, they’d visited that website earlier and the company is using remarketing to make sure they keep being reminded of the fab product they’d been looking at.
Why bother?
Google’s view is that if you use remarketing to support your PPC ad compaign, you should find it improves conversions for your whole campaign. The theory is that people who have visited your site are already aware of you and potentially interested in your products. If they keep seeing your ads, you and your fabulous products will stay uppermost in their minds and so they’re more likely to get the wallet out.
Targeting your campaign
Just as a well targeted PPC campaign is often the most effective option, so too is a well targeted remarketing campaign. Instead of setting it up so that anyone who visits any part of your site is served with a generic ad, think about what each visitor is most likely to buy and set up several variations.
For example, a fashion brand might choose to serve shoe ads to visitors that have spent time on their shoe pages and menswear ads to visitors that have spent time on the menswear pages, because if customers have already expressed an interest in a particular product the chances are that’s the product they’re most likely to buy from you.
Think, too, about how interested you want your visitors to be – you could, for example, choose to target only customers that have put items into a basket but then abandoned it without checking out. These people are likely to be the easiest to convert because they have already displayed a high degree of interest in specific products.
Fine tuning
You can select on what types of site, and even what specific sites, within the Google Display Network you want your ads to run. Do it. You should have an idea of the demographics of its typical customer – you’ll get the best results if you choose to run your campaign on sites which fit that demographic, thereby advertising products in which people have expressed an interest on sites which reflect that and related interest. Otherwise, you run the risk of foisting yourself on people who are generally not interested in what you have to offer but happened to be considering a gift for someone. If you’ve ever eyed your Amazon recommendations list shortly after a present-buying spree, you’ll know what I mean – I bought a colleague the DVD of the 1950s version of ‘War of the Worlds’ as a secret santa gift once and until I told it not to base recommendations on that particular item, Amazon was apparently convinced that I wished to collect DVDs of every 1950s sci-fi film in its warehouse.
In summary, remarketing can be a really powerful tool to help improve the conversion of your whole campaign, but you should make sure it’s as well thought out and carefully tuned as your standard PPC campaign if you want to get the best results. To get the ‘how to’ nitty gritty straight from the horse’s mouth, read Google’s Getting Started with Remarketing section.
