5 Tips for Using Google Remarketing Advertising
Online Advertising is still a very effective way of generating sales of your products and services. Despite the importance of Social Media, advertising also has its place. Social media is all about building a relationship so if the consumer does not buy now you should still be in contact with them when they do decide to buy. But with online advertising a potential buyer may come to your site and leave without even giving you their contact details. So how do you track people that have left your website so that you can continue to promote your products and services to them and convince them to buy today, tomorrow or maybe even in a years time?
The answer to this is Remarketing. This article will show you how to convert more of your website visitors to sales by continuing to advertise to them after they have left your site.
What is Remarketing?
Have you browsed the web recently and noticed the same advertisement appearing wherever you go? And it just so happens to be an ad for a product or service that you were actively searching for?
Recently I went to the Adobe Digital Marketing Conference in London and needed to find a suitable hotel. With no sense of direction somewhere close to the event was perfect for me! I looked at a Hotel in ‘Sloane Square’ but for whatever reason I opted out of booking. For the next few days while browsing the web, I kept seeing advertisements for the same Hotel in Sloane Square, which actually made me reconsider my decision and so I took another look.
This advertising is known as remarketing, and an example of this is Google Remarketing. How does this work? Well Google has a display network with millions of sites that agree to have Google Advertisements displayed on them. When you are setting up your advertisements using Google Adwords you can firstly choose to have your ad appear within the Google Display Network, and then you can set them up to be remarketing advertisements.
So when your visitor leaves your site and later visits another website on the Google display network you can display an advertisement directly related to the product in question, based on the criteria you set. While I was looking for a Hotel I also searched the Airbnb site which has private accommodation available for rent. After visiting this site I started seeing lots of advertisements for Airbnb as I continued to browse other websites. For example the following was displayed on a Newspaper site.
So how could you get more business using this? An example would be if you had an online shop and someone abandons their purchase at the last stage of the purchasing process just when they have to enter their credit card details. Instead of losing this customer altogether, you could target them using remarketing with the goal of convincing them to return and complete their purchase. If you decide to set up a remarketing campaign here are 5 tips that will help to make your campaign more successful .
1. Consider an Additional Incentive
If you have a physical shop and someone is about to buy and then decides not to go ahead with it you wouldn’t think twice about offering them a discount to incentivise them to buy. With remarketing you can do the same. You could set up remarketing so that if someone reaches the final stages of purchasing on your site and then opts out or exits you can then display advertisements for the product or service at a discount.
This may have worked in my example of the Hotel that I was considering booking. A 5% discount could have got them the sale.
2. Target with Different Ads Depending on What They Were Doing on Your Site
You could consider displaying different advertisements depending on what page of your website the visitor was on and when they left. For example, if they exited your website on the page that showed delivery prices then you may advertise with a reduced or free delivery charge, whereas if they leave on the credit card screen then you could have an ad that offers a discount on the overall price.
3. Target the Next Purchase Not This One
Car Insurance is generally something you take out on the same date every year. So if a website visitor is even reviewing your option for car insurance then you know there’s a good chance their insurance is up for renewal. If they subsequently leave your website without purchase you could target them a year later. By default Google will only remarket for up to 30 days after someone leaves your website but this is configurable right up to 540 days.
4. Use Remarketing as a Branding Not Sales Exercise
When someone visits your website you may want to ensure that they keep your company’s name or brand in the forefront of their mind. One way of doing this is to continue to advertise to them as they browse the web. Normally if you are selling a product you will have a clear call to action in an advertisement such as ‘Buy Now’ but with this advertisement you may not have any call to action. Without a call to action less people will click on it which means it won’t be that expensive but it will still serve it’s purpose.
5. Remarket Through Other Channels Such as Facebook
Remarketing does not have to be restricted to just your website, you could also remarket to your Facebook fans. For example, if you were running a Facebook competition and people left your Facebook page without entering the competition you could retarget them with ads related to the competition. When they click on the ad this can bring them right back to the competition on your Facebook page!
Social Media is very effective for establishing and building relationships with current and potential customers and it’s an area that is becoming more and more important and is growing rapidly. That said, online advertising is also an effective medium for driving potential buyers to your website. As the online advertising industry matures there are constantly new and innovative ways to advertise online that make it very attractive and cost-effective. Remarketing is certainly a great example of this. By continuing to advertise to your website visitors after they have left your site you can improve your conversion rates significantly. Take some time to investigate Google Remarketing. Understand what it can do and see how it could improve your results.
We’d love to hear about your experience with remarketing either good or bad. Share your thoughts and experiences.