digital marketing
By Carrie-ann | Mar 31, 2014 | Internet Marketing

What is Remarketing?

People can assume once a visitor has left a site, they are gone for good. However, we now know more about how people shop. A visitor may in fact be browsing more than one site, for example to find the best deal. Remarketing allows you to encourage them to come back to your site more quickly using the power of a particular form of Adwords’ cookie.

What is remarketing?

Remarketing allows you to serve up highly targeted ads to people who have visited a particular page on your website. Text, image and video ads are placed on the Display Network only to people who have been on your site or on a specific page on your site.  My clients typically use Google’s search network for advertising. However there are some circumstances where placement on the Display Network, using remarketing is very useful.  If you know your visitors shop around then remarketing enables you to make a direct appeal to those people without displaying your ad to people who have not visited your site. There are no other advertising opportunities which offer this level of targeting. It can therefore be extremely cost effective. Sectors who are regular users of remarketing include all manner of fashion and car retailers.

Why should you consider using it?

Most small businesses don’t have a brand in the conventional sense of the word. Shoppers are rarely looking for you by name. Every visitor counts.  It’s not unusual for visitors to initiate the buying process but leave a site after they have added a product to their shopping cart. What if you could encourage these specific shoppers to come back to your site? These people are after all more likely to buy than anyone else. You get the right message delivered to the right people hence the ROI of specific campaigns can increase dramatically.

How does it work?

Remarketing works by using a tracking code (the remarketing tag) to place a cookie on the browser of people visiting your site. It’s that cookie that triggers ads being served. It is similar to but not the same as the Google Analytics code. The tag should be added to all pages but this can usually be achieved by adding the code to the footer since on most sites the footer remains the same throughout.
Once the tag has been added to your site you can then create remarketing lists in your Adwords account. For example you can create a list for your best selling product or a product that is on special offer. The tag tells Adwords to identify these visitors by having their cookie ID added to the list. Only then do you create your Adwords campaign (ads) specifically for people on that list. This can be served on the Display or Search networks. This is because there are various types of remarketing available: For mobiles and apps, for the display network, remarketing lists for search ads.
Setting up the marketing codes, making decisions about member duration and frequency capping or making use of custom combinations can be quite involved if you haven’t done it before and are uncertain about budget implications. This is where training can help.

Restrictions and Google Policy

If your business operates in the European Union you must notify your visitors you use cookies. In addition your Privacy Policy must make explicit reference to any Adwords feature you use and you are prohibited from collecting personally identifiable information. Finally, you are prohibited from using what Google refers to as ‘sensitive’ information and certain products are excluded. Extensive information and help is available at Google Support.