Google remarketing campaigns have become an invaluable tool for the online marketeer. Remarketing is positioning targeted ads to visitors that have already visited your site as they continue browsing elsewhere on the internet. Perhaps you’ve experienced this yourself where you’ve been looking at a product on the web and then when you go to another website the same product or similar are advertised.
The ads are managed in Google Adwords and are limited to those web pages which accept Google advertising placements. The ads can be text and/or images. Google remarketing campaigns have been proven to work particularly where it is a long and competitive sales process. Executed carefully without bombarding your target audience with ads can improve sales conversions and raise your brand profile.
The workings of Google remarketing campaigns
Clever, clever Google. Cookies are placed on the website visitors machine if they meet the criteria you have set in Google Adwords. The cookie ID is then added to your remarketing list and ads are displayed. You can have many different lists with different criteria.
For example:
– A list to target visitors who viewed a particular page but then didn’t go any further to make an enquiry or make a purchase.
– A list for visitors who have gone all the way through and purchased an item, but didn’t purchase any other related goods.
The list can go on and on.
Within Google Adwords there are several settings you can put in place, for example the length of time a particular cookie stays on the remarketing list, a maximum number of adverts to be placed in front of each visitor per day and the facility to block particular types of website from receiving ads.
Before a campaign can become active there is a minimum number of 100 cookie IDs per list.
Google Remarketing Campaigns are easy to set up, but to obtain a return on your investment it is essential your ad is highly relevant to what you know visitors are looking for and ideally something to encourage them back to your website (e.g. a new product or a special offer).
If your high level objective is to simply raise brand awareness then repeatedly displaying your brand over a long period of time will help achieve this. As Google Remarketing is part of Google Adwords you will be able to track whether your brand awareness activities have resulted in more visits.
