Posted on October 30, 2013

Re-engage Your Website Visitors With Remarketing

You’ve probably seen this type of ad whether you were aware of it or not. Perhaps you went on a shopping website, and now as you browse the web you see ads for that website, and products related to what you were looking at. Or perhaps you were simply doing some research and a banner ad for the website follows you as you browse the web. This is known in Google AdWords as Remarketing.

What is Remarketing and why is it important?

Remarketing, also known as retargeting and often called Behavioral Marketing, is a method of Pay Per Click advertising that allows you to target users who have visited your website, or even specific pages on your website, in the past. Combined with a custom landing page, it is an excellent way to re-engage users, stay top of mind, and increase your conversion rates. You can even custom tailor an ad with a special message or offer to users who have visited particular pages on your website.

Remarketing tools allow you to place limits as to how often the ad is seen, the period of time the ad will show, and the geographical locations the ad will appear.

How does it work?

Remarketing uses a special tracking code to place website cookies in the computer of people visiting your website, and then serves ads to those with that cookie, specifically, on the Display network. You can then adjust frequency and duration to meet your needs.

How does Remarketing differ from other Adwords option such as Search Network and Display Network?

In Google Adwords, you are given three ways to advertise. The first and most common method is the Search Network. These are the traditional text-based ads you see when making a search on Google or its partner engines. These ads are very effective, as we can target specific keywords in a specific geo-targeted area and deliver a consistent message to an audience actively showing an interest in your services.

The Display Network is a Google-approved and monitored network consisting of hundreds of thousands of websites that can display both image-based and text-based ads. Targeting options are much broader for the Display Network and include options like Keywords, Age, Gender, Location, Topic, Category, and even gives you the ability to target individual sites that are on the Network. However, as users are not actively searching for your product or service when your ad pops up, the Display Network is more commonly used a branding tool rather than a conversion tool. Clicks on the Display Network tend to be far cheaper than clicks on the Search Network.

Remarketing combines the best of both services. Although Remarketing relies on Google’s Display Network to present image and text-based ads, the people who see them have already shown an interest in your product or service. Knowing this, you can greet them with a specialized offer or message to get them back to your website. As with the Display Network, remarketing ad clicks tend to be far cheaper.

Why is Remarketing important?

Remarketing is especially important when we consider the life cycle of a potential lead. Perhaps when they first looked up information on your website, they were in the research and discovery process. With remarketing, you now have the ability to get the attention of this potential lead by placing your ad in front of them as they browse the web. This keeps your practice top of mind as your future lead browses the web. Serving this potential lead a unique and engaging message based on their interest will further help you bring them in the door. This cannot be done with any other type of marketing.

But I’m already doing AdWords – should I stop?

The short answer is no. Remarketing is a great companion for traditional AdWords campaigns. For example, someone in your geographical target may search “LASIK eye surgery” and see one of your ads. They click the ad and do some research but decide they’re not quite ready to commit. This is when remarketing is most powerful. Someone has actively shown an interest in a service you offer, and has seen your website – now is the best time to re-engage these users with remarketing.

If you would like to learn more about remarketing, its pricing, and how it could help your practice, Glacial Multimedia is here to help. Spenser Pontbriand, our Paid Search Specialist, is an AdWords Certified individual and is happy to answer any questions you may have about remarketing, AdWords, or Paid Search in general.