Official Google Partner
Official Google Partner
Sadly, not everyone who visits your site converts into a customer. Some people arrive there by accident, some realise you don’t offer what they need, some are researching on behalf of someone else, some go with *gasp* a competitor, while others just get distracted and put off the purchase for another time. Those last two categories hurt – the could have been sales.
The good news is that no one who has visited your site and then disappeared into the aether has truly gone forever; we can follow them. Okay, so that sounds creepy – what I really mean is that the cookies or pixels we place on our site can remember who visited and give that data to Google to allow us to show them our ads again.
How many times have you bought from a company after seeing them once? Not often, I bet. That’s why this is so useful and such an important part of our sales and marketing efforts: we don’t need to consider someone a lost lead until much, much later. We can remind potential customers to come back and complete purchases, make an enquiry or find out the information they need to be ready to purchase.
There are countless tools for retargeting and you should do your research to find which one works best for your needs and industry. Both Google and Facebook allow you to do it through their platforms so they are an ideal place to start if you are a beginner and are already familiar with their interfaces, but, for the purposes of this article, we’re going to focus on Google Remarketing.
Remarketing lists will help you segment your visitors and control their journey back to your site. For example, if you have a ‘Best Selling’ category on your site, you can save a list called ‘best sellers list’ so the tag will tell Google to save the people that visit that page so your ads can ask them to revisit that page or show them a selection of the best-selling items they’re missing out on.
These are the actual campaigns that will make use of these lists. Once you know what lists and pages you want to direct people from and back to, you can build your campaigns with specific messaging and ads that Google will show them as they go about their usual internet usage.
The way you decide to use Google Remarketing will be individual to you, your business and your industry, your budget and your aims. Remarketing with responsive display ads, that also utilise the familiar visuals is a simple and easy way to quickly get your remarketing campaign. The instant recognition will help catch the audience’s attention and instantly build trust.
You can also remarket with YouTube Videos, which can be an excellent tool to hold prospect’s attention and increase brand awareness overall. To use this feature you simply need to link your YouTube account with your Google Ads account and create a specific list for this purpose.
Dynamic remarketing means that you can show past visitors the products and services they viewed on your site again as they browse other websites and apps which are part of the Display Network. This feature will help you create image ads so you don’t have to create an ad for each individual product. If you’re an online retailer with hundreds or thousands of products in their line, Dynamic Remarketing can be an invaluable tool.
You can choose to target only the people who have browsed your mobile site or used your mobile app and advertise to them as they browse other sites or use other apps, the same way the Display Network works elsewhere.
RSLA is a feature that allows you to show your ads to past visitors as they continue to search for related searches after leaving your site. You can set bid modifiers across search and shopping ads to bid more passively or aggressively depending on what people on your audience list search for.
Google Analytics is going to be a vital part of your retargeting strategy. The statistics you receive here on geography, time, and actions will be the best way to create your retargeting lists and campaigns. Pay attention to the pages that receive the most visits and the most amount of time spent on the page. Remember that people who have spent some time searching through your site and looking at product or service information are going to react to your retargeting efforts a lot differently than the people who have scanned the homepage and bounced, and you should take this into consideration when you create your campaigns. Separate these two audiences and create different messaging for each.
Don’t forget to retarget by the actions the prospect takes on your site or by how they get to your ad. Behaviour segmentation is vital to choosing the correct messaging for each type of visitor and you’ll be able to see trends and forecast the kind of actions they are likely to take.
You can choose how many times a prospect is shown your retargeting efforts before you consider them a lost lead, so pay attention to this, do your due diligence and don’t spend your budget on lost leads. Don’t let it go on infinitely – especially for more invasive ads like YouTube retargeting. I’ve had one YouTube ad come up for me for about three months, and I must have seen it over twenty times. The thing is, I am not their target audience. I don’t use what they sell. I dread to think how much they’ve spent on me though I will never convert. Be smart. There will always be new prospects.
It’s important you consider GDPR when you plan your remarketing campaign. Though GDPR won’t stop you from remarketing with Google Ads, you should be aware that you need to ask the visitor to give their permission before you use a cookie on them. A simple pop-up to agree or disagree when they land on your page for the first time will suffice. Another requirement of GDPR is that you need to keep a record that they gave their consent and that you update your privacy policy, and that should include information about any third parties that may have access to your visitors’ data.
Good luck with your retargeting campaigns!
