Remarketing (also known as behavioural targeting) is a Google Adwords feature that allows you to get your message across and connect with your users based on their past interaction and visits to your site. Some people think that remarketing is akin to stalking or spying on your customers, but rest assured – if it’s done in the right way, it’s simply a very clever marketing tactic.
Remarketing works across Google’s Content Network and allows you to target visitors to your site with customised messages and offers. Because you know that visitors have already expressed an interest in what you are offering (they’ve browsed certain pages or abandoned carts, for example), they are generally much more receptive to remarketing ads. And as you might expect:
Remarketing campaigns are especially effective & popular with retailers and e-commerce sites.
Each time you visit a website, a cookie is created and stored in your internet browser. This cookie is accessed by advertising networks which then use the information to target you with ads relevant to the pages that you have visited previously.
For example, perhaps you are looking for flights or special holiday offers to Europe. You click on a few options, but decide that you can’t afford it, or you’d like to look for a better deal. Later, while you are online again, you notice ads about flights or package holidays similar to what you were browsing before. These ads and special offers are remarketing campaigns and are based on the principle that it takes a certain number of times (apparently 7) for a person to recognise and remember your brand, and to convert from a regular browsing visitor to a paying customer.
Remarketing campaigns can be set up through the ‘Audiences’ tab in Google Adwords and you can run a number of them at the same time. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular segmentation options you can add to your remarketing campaigns.
- ALL SITE USERS: This is the easiest, most basic setup you can have, and is best for those who are new to remarketing campaigns. It works like this: a remarketing code is generated and put on either your homepage or every page on your website and captures visitors as they land. It’s more comprehensive if you put this code on all the pages, but it also depends on where visitors enter the site most.
- CATEGORIES: This is a very effective segmentation to employ and is fairly simple to set up. Remarketing campaigns based on category segmentation can target those who browse the male or female pages of a site (such as clothing), shoes, sporting equipment etc. You would, however, need to create a separate tag for each category that you wish to gather data from.
- USERS WHO HAVEN’T CONVERTED (YET): Of course, you don’t want to annoy people who have already made any type of desired conversion. In this case, you want to keep those who have converted on one list and those who haven’t on another. Your remarketing campaign will target the latter. The best way to do this is to include a code on the check-out/payment confirmation page to ensure that users who convert don’t get targeted again. Your campaigns will only be shown to those who have browsed particular pages of your site, or went through the initial stages of ordering, downloading or enquiring about a product or service.
- USERS WHO HAVE ABANDONED SHOPPING CARTS: Campaigns based on this have shown very successful results, and yet, surprisingly, only a small percentage of marketers create remarketing campaigns based on abandoned cart data. This is targeted at people who have added items to a cart and then abandoned them before making a payment.