Remember the feeling when you went on your first ever date? Sweaty palms, uncomfortable silences. Did you wish you had a second chance to make a first impression?
Google Adwords Remarketing
With Google’s contextual advertising network Adwords, you now get the chance to reposition your advert to someone who has previously shown interest or as google call it remarketing your ads.
It works like this. If you have your ad on the Google Display Network and someone clicks your ad but doesn’t actually convert into a sale/lead you can choose to have your ad re-pitched to them. Not very intuitive in itself you might think. But let us say your visitor went through 4 pages before getting to the price and then exited, you can be quite sure that they left because they didn’t see value. You can then choose to show them a different advert, re-positioning your pitch to show the ROI they can expect. This is all done automatically and it is incredibly powerful.
Let Google Turn Your Visitors To Buyers
The visitor has shown interest and in order to close the sale, Google will virtually chase them until they surrender (or your ad credit runs out). It’s as if we had the following conversation.
Visitor: I like your product but your price is excessive.
Google: You might think so but here is the ROI you can expect.
Visitor: Ok that is fair, but it wasn’t engaging enough.
Google: Well look here, we have a community section where we constantly interact with our clients.
It’s like you have your own personal closer, one who will chase the sale for up to 18 months on your behalf.
The Process Of Setting Your Adwords Ads For Remarketing
The setup level is intermediate, first login to Adwords and click on “Control Panel And Library” under the list of campaign folders, on the left-hand side of the “Campaigns” tab. Then “Audiences” and “Create a New Audience”.
Next, you pick a name and description for the list, and set the membership duration, then tags. I don’t know how you feel, but I wouldn’t like to be targeted for 18 months seeing the same advertisement, but be aware that you can set it that way if you wish.
How Google Adwords Remarketing Really Works
It really is laser-targeted advertising. The system will track their page views and see where they exited and base the next advert on their onsite behavior. Examples might be as such:
- If they visited your pricing page then exited, you can show them an ad with their projected ROI.
- If they read about the product but then exited without going further you can show them a competitor comparison ad.
- If they visited the support section you could reinforce your commitment to customer service.
- If they signed up to your opt-in list and then exited, you could show an ad referencing the mailing you will be sending them.
Hopefully you will now see the power of the system, you can tailor their user experience in such a defined manner that they can’t help but be impressed, it seems like all their queries are being answered without even interacting directly with you.
You are going to need to tailor the list so that if they visit your site a second time they are removed from the first list and entered into a second, otherwise they will be seeing the same ads when they have already been influenced by them.
The Google Display Network is more suited to image adverts rather that textual ones and re-marketing also applies to images so you certainly should utilize this option, especially if you are happy with creating and editing images.
Summary
You just do not get this kind of laser targeted accuracy with other advertising networks. Once someone has shown an interest in you, the chance to follow it up rather than lose the lead altogether is absolutely invaluable. With the system being in a relative state of infancy, you are going to be among a select few who are using it, giving you the necessary marketing edge.
Dave, this is fascinating – I need a moment to take on board the impact of this!
A prospect may need 6 touch points to make the sale, to trust you and this a terrific way of automating the whole process until the prospect is ready to make the sale.
I need to think how I can make this work for my adwords.
Sarah, thanks for the comment.
I agree about the touch points. Much like email marketing, you need to build trust with your visitor and re-marketing gives you more of a chance to do that than traditional PPC does.
Thanks for the info. I am trying to establish myself in my local community and I was wondering if you had any insight into the best tactics to getting local internet marketing to the local businesses.
That way when someone performs a search in their community the businesses in their town are on the front page. I am finding that Google Places seems to dominate the middle page, on these types of searches, any tips on how to get a higher listing in Google Places?
Thanks Todd
HI Todd,
Firstly, Google Places is a great place to start for local business, they are geographically targeted to your direct clients. Onsite SEO is not so much of an issue in this case because Google Places is all about driving traffic, what happens when the traffic arrives, that’s down to your site.
Google Places gives precedence firstly to the profiles that are complete so be sure to complete all sections. There has been some incorrect information posted online that you should be added to certain directories to increase your exposure and from my own testing it is completely incorrect.
First thing is first, make sure you have no duplication issues, if any of your information is duplicated across a different listing (i.e. where you provide multiple services) then that is going to harm your listing. Next, having your keyword in your title (i.e. Music Teacher Chicago) doesn’t actually help (as opposed to traditional SEO), but make sure to have your keyword in your ad, once is enough or the limited space will make it look artificially generated.
The one thing I have noticed to give me the biggest benefit though is Google Maps. So first you need a Google account, once you have it, sign in and go to Google Maps. When there, click on “My Places” the “Create Map” Then in the title, something like “Music Teachers in Chicago” and in the description “A list of my favorite music teachers in Chicago” Save the map and then find your placemarker on the map and click it, choose add to map and you’re set.
It won’t work immediately but once it does, it gives a lot of authority.
Dave.
Very valuable information. For my business adwords is a good platform to promote my website. Google Adwords remarketing was finally realised and now I need to find out how to set up my Adwords remarketing campaign.
I have actually been reading about this process more and more. I found one author that says if you running a FB PPC campaign to your Fan Page you actually embed the Google code into your Fan Page and then use Adwords to follow them around the net with your message. Very powerful.
Thank’s Clint, I believe the full power of this has not quite been released yet. It will be interesting to keep an eye out.
Dave.
This is very powerful. I am applying your recommendation to start with Google Map and create a map. This is all new for me; I appreciate your article since steps are easy to follow, thanks.
Not a problem Alicia.
Dave.
Not having must success with AdWords I see that this is a way to remarket myself. Thanks for the information. I would have never known about this without you post.
You’re welcome Joyce.If you need assistance with it, just let me know.
Dave.
Hi Dave, I’ve been at the “consumer” end of those kind of adverts, I know what was happening now. I had been shopping online for a gown and came across a site in Asia, where tailors made a huge variety of gowns to size. I looked at the site a couple of times, and then I purchased.
However, for about a month afterwards, where ever I went on google, I saw that site’s advert pop up. It was easy to pick, because there was a picture of a beautiful gown on the small banner. I wondered why it kept showing up, especially on sites that weren’t at all related to clothing.
So, now you’ve solved the mystery for me. However, it also shows that sometimes money could be wasted on those adverts. Obviously, something didn’t register that I actually purchased from the site. Most likely because I went back to the site directly?
Regards from Julieanne
Hi Julieanne and thank you for this insight from the consumers point of view.
That is an interesting quirk to the system. I think in this case Google would be the ones losing out in not positioning newly relevant ads. It wouldn’t actually cost the advertiser unless it was clicked on again, but admittedly, if that add was following the consumer around the internet for the next 18 months, chances are it would be clicked on again.
I might look into the technicalities some more, maybe Google need to look at dropping a tracking cookie directly onsite.
Thanks.
Thanks again Dave, I will certainly do that and look forward to future posts.