Google rolled out Remarketing in early 2010, as a feature that tries to reach users who have clicked on an ad or browsed a website but did not convert into customers. Remarketing can be considered as a second attempt (or third, and fourth) of advertisers to try and convince customers who abandoned a call to action after showing interest in their product/service.
Basically, here is a simplistic portrayal of remarketing:
Remarketing in PPCI visit website A >> I fill up a form >> I change my mind and do not click submit. >> I close window of website A.
(Background – Website A tracks me and my search behaviour via cookies)
I continue with my browsing >> I am on website B >> I see ads of website A’s products on Website B. (>> I feel stalked!!) >> I open website C >> I see ads of website A’s products on Website C. ((>> I am definitely being stalked!! HELLLLP!!!)
Wondering how remarketing is done?
It’s really as simple as adding a small piece of code to all the webpages on your website. This piece of code is called the Remarketing Tag. Then, whenever a visitor lands on your website, you add their cookies to different remarketing lists based on their search behaviour and start showing them ads relevant to their searches.
What? Remarketing sounds like stalking!!
It is, and isn’t! There is a lot more you could do with your remarketing lists. You could write separate ad copies or create a separate AdWords campaign to be shown only to people on your remarketing list, say, for example, offering discounts on the products they were searching for earlier. There is a good chance that the users would land up on your website again and convert into customers!
Overdoing Remarketing – No stalking please!
Remarketing will actually feel like stalking if you bombard the user with your ads at every site that he/she visits. Would you want that to happen to you? No, of course no one would. So, it’s a sensible idea to make use of caps on frequency to contain the number of times your ads are shown to a user. We do not want him to get irritated and remember our brand in a bad way, right?
Remarketing for converted customers
It makes sense to keep the converted customers out of your remarketing campaigns, doesn’t it? Wrong. In fact, based on the type of industry your ecommerce site is in, you can play with “related products” advertising in a way that could help you in upselling with converted customers. For example, if I buy a sofa set for my living room, and I see ads of centre tables via remarketing, I might go back to the site to check out some more furniture.
A disclaimer here, though! Ensure that you are not persisting too much! Never annoy your customers. See the point above this one.
About bidding higher
Once you have identified which customers previously showed interest in your products or services, you can bid higher for those people’s subsequent searches and ensure that they see your ads.
Remarketing, Retargeting… isn’t it all the same?
Basically, retargeting is to target customers who previously visited your site, by displaying ads about the searched products on the other websites that they are browsing. So, one can safely categorise retargeting under the broader perspective of remarketing.
Remarketing also includes Email Remarketing, which is done to target users who have abandoned a form or not completed the purchase of their shopping cart items. Both the terms can be used interchangeably. However, remarketing can result in upselling, related product selling, etc.
So how does one do Remarketing?
There are some tools, other than the Google AdWords account that can be used for retargeting, such as Retargeter, AdRoll, Fetchback, Chango, etc. Companies like Springmetrics are also being used by e-commerce sites to execute retargeting strategies.
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