How does remarketing work?
Remarketing allows you to communicate with people who’ve previously visited key pages on your website, giving you a powerful new way to match the right people with the right message.
Example of remarketing
Online shoppers looking for new running shoes visit a popular online store, FastSneakers.com, to browse the different styles. Some shoppers leave without buying anything. FastSneakers.com could add these shoppers to a "Site Visitor" list. This will enable FastSneakers.com to reach out to these potential buyers while they browse other websites, with a compelling call-to-action or offer that will encourage them to return to FastSneakers.com to complete a purchase.
How remarketing works
To create remarketing lists, you need to enable the Audiences tab and set up a campaign that includes the Google Display Network, which is typically opted-in by default.
Next, a small piece of code called a remarketing tag is embedded on your homepage, for example. This code tells AdWords to save visitors to your "Homepage List." When people visit your homepage, their cookie ID is added to the remarketing list. Once the remarketing tag is in place you can create an AdWords campaign that targets messages only to people on your "Homepage List" while they browse the Web. Your remarketing messages won't be shown to people who aren't on the list.
The remarketing tag can be embedded on any page within your website, not just the homepage, so you can develop more detailed audiences. For each remarketing list that you want to create, embed a different tag. If you want to create a "Homepage Visitor" list and a "Completed Conversion" list, you need two separate tags -- one to go on the homepage, and one to go on the conversion page. Learn more about remarketing and users' cookies.
There's a balance between creating very detailed and broader remarketing lists. While detailed lists allow you to further target your message, you'll get the most scale and volume with broader lists. Read more on strategies for your remarketing lists, and learn how to tailor your creatives to these lists.
Strategies for setting up remarketing campaigns
Here are some strategies that you might consider:
Add all site visitors
- The most basic way to remarket is to add all the visitors to your website. If you're new to remarketing, this is where you should probably start.
- To create this list, you need to generate the remarketing code, and put it on every page within your website. You can do this easily if you have a standard footer template for your site.
- Alternatively, you can put the remarketing code on your homepage. As most people enter your site through the homepage, you'll be adding almost all visitors. This is easier since you have to put the code on one page only, but it's not quite as comprehensive as putting the code on all pages.
Add users to a category
- If you're a retailer with several different product categories, then you may want to remarket with a creative that is specific to that product category. For example, you can show a more targeted message to users who browsed the "Women's Apparel" page vs. users who browsed the "Men's Apparel" page.
- In this case, you can create a remarketing list for each product category. If the two categories are "Women's Apparel" and "Men's Apparel," then you need two tags, one for each remarketing list.
Add only users who don't convert
- Let's say you want to reach only site visitors who don't convert, not the visitors who actually completed a conversion. In order to exclude converted visitors from seeing additional messages, you can create a second list that adds people who completed a conversion (you'd put this code on your "Thank you" page). Then, you could show your creative to people who visited your site minus those who actually converted, by creating custom combinations.
Add visitors who abandoned shopping carts
- Sometimes, people put items in their shopping cart, but don't complete the purchase. Since these people are highly qualified and close to purchasing, it may be very valuable to re-engage these people with a strong call-to-action so that they complete the purchase.
- To do this, you'd create a list of people who have put at least one item in the cart -- this usually means placing a tag on the View Shopping Cart page.
- But, you don't want to include all the people who actually completed the purchase. So, you'd create a second list of people who completed the purchase -- this usually means placing a tag on the Order Confirmation page.
- Then, you can remarket to the people on the "Shopping Cart" list and not the people on the "Order Confirmation" list. Learn how to create custom combinations.
Target people who convert with up-sell/cross-sell messages
- If you've created a "converted users" list, you can take advantage of that list to deliver cross-sell and up-sell messages.
- Typically, there will be few users on those lists, so the scale of your campaign will be smaller, but potentially very effective.
- You can take advantage of text ads and Display Ad Builder to easily tailor messages.
- Create product-level lists in order to cross-sell. You can reach customers who have converted for one product with an offer for another product.
Target users a month after they completed a purchase
- Let's say a group of users buy a gaming console, and you know that these types of users typically look to buy more games a month later, but stop buying 90 days later.
- So you want to reach the user within a window of 30 days after the purchase, but within 90 days.
- Create one remarketing list to reach everyone who completed a purchase, and set a 30 day membership duration. Then create a second list using the same tag with a 90 day duration. Learn how to create a duplicate remarketing list with a different membership duration.
- Create a custom combination that represents all the people in the 90 day list AND NOT in the 30 day list. Learn more about custom combinations.
Posted by , Online marketer
