Must-Read Tips for Creating a Successful Retargeting Campaign

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1 10 Must-Read Tips for Creating a Successful Retargeting Campaign Retargeting, a.k.a. remarketing, is today s hot paid advertising choice for marketers and it is only getting more popular as time goes on. This paper takes a deep dive into retargeting through Google. Why is Retargeting Hot? On average, just 2% of website visitors convert. That means 98% of the people that come to your site leave without making an inquiry or purchase. Site retargeting ad campaigns allow you to deliver ads directly to the 98% of users that come to your site and then leave. Why is this so novel? Well, your brand is already on a consumer s radar, re-engaging them can be incredibly beneficial. For example, not only do these types of ads boost ad response up to 400%, 1 but retargeted consumers are 70% more likely to convert on your site than a nonretargeted consumer Tips for Running a Successful Retargeting Campaign For marketers new to developing and managing ad campaigns, site retargeting can raise a few questions: What is it? How does it work? How can I run my own campaign? What are some best practices? The following 10 tips answer these questions and provide a solid foundation for getting your Google remarketing campaign started. 1. Where do Consumers See Retargeted Ads? When using the Google Adwords remarketing tool, your retargeted ads are distributed across Google s Display Network. The Display Network is a group of millions of news, blog and niche websites that contain open ad space that Google fills the network reaches 90% of all Internet users worldwide. When setting up your campaign, you can have your ads available to be displayed on any of the sites in the network, or you can add parameters and limit the sites it is allowed to be displayed on. For example, if you do not want your brand associated with a certain industry, category of products or even a specific website, you can filter those sites out of your display network pool moz.com Community Elf 1

2 2. How Does Retargeting Work From a Technical Aspect? The essential component to retargeting is a few lines of code called a retargeting tag. Once you set up your retargeting campaign account, Google will send you the tag. You or your webmaster will need to place the code on the backend of your website, on every page. This can usually be done by simply adding it to your webpage template. The retargeting tag places a cookie on each visitor s computer and adds them to your audience remarketing list. This list is stored in your Adwords remarketing campaign account, which is used for managing and running your ads. By default, Google creates an audience list that includes all visitors to your site. However, you can create other types of audience lists for hyper-targeted ads (see Tip 3). 3. Deliver Hyper-Targeted Ads by Segmenting Your Audience Not every visitor is looking for the same type of product or information on your website. That is why Google gives you the ability to create different audience lists based on each page s URL. For example, if your website is you may have internal pages that have these URLs: Within the Audience section of Adwords, you can create a list that stores information for just the people who go to a page that has food in the URL. The same can be done for people who visit a page that contains kitchen in the URL. What is the point of segmenting your audience based on the pages they view? Well, you can deliver a different set of ads to each audience list. In fact, you can create a list for people who visit one particular page on your website and then offer them a special promotion through the ad. For example, if you have an audience list for people visiting the pizza product x page, you can show them ads that offer 10% off of the pizza item. 4. Deliver Hyper-Targeted Ads by Combining Audience Lists With the ability to create audience segments comes the capability to combine two or more lists together to serve ultra-targeted ads. For example, if you are an electronics store that wants to offer a promotion for $10 off the purchase of a tablet and case, you may only want to serve it to people who looked at your tablets page and at your tablet cases page. To do this, you would create a list for each product category and then only 10 Tips for Successful Retargeting 2

3 deliver the ad to visitors that show up on both lists. A great use of this feature is to weed people off of your retargeting list once they have converted. You can do this by creating a thank you or confirmation page that each visitor is directed to after converting, and then create an audience list for that page s URL. You would then combine this list with all the others so if someone appears on the converted list, then the remarketing ad will not be shown to them. 5. Setting up Your Google Remarketing Account Retargeting through Google is done through the Adwords tool, so you need to have an Adwords account. Once signed in to your account, select Campaigns in the main navigation and then click on Create Your First Campaign. From there you will need to give your campaign a name, and then select the campaign Type as Display Network only this will bring up an option for Remarketing (see figure below). Next you will be asked to select your bid strategy (see Tip 6), given your retargeting tag, and sent to the tool's interface for setting up your campaign parameters. Figure: Setting up a Remarketing Campaign in Google Adwords 6. Paying for the Ads - Bid Strategy There are several different payment options to choose from that affect how your ads are displayed: Cost-per-click (CPC) means that you only pay when a person actually clicks on your ad. You set a daily maximum to be spent, and then Google serves the ads and sets the bid amount to optimize for number of clicks per day. Cost per impression (CPM) means you are charged for every 1,000 impressions your ad receives. This method is optimal when you are trying to increase awareness about a brand or event, not necessarily drive website traffic or conversions. Cost-per-acquisition (CPA) is an advanced bidding method that optimizes for on-site conversions. For this method, you set a limit for what you are willing to pay for a conversion, and then Google serves your ads to individuals most likely to convert (which Google determines through data). Google Community Elf 3

4 sets the bids for each ad and tries to get you as many conversions as possible. For this option, you must have conversion tracking set up on Google. Enhanced cost-per-click (ECPC) is another advanced bidding method that optimizes for sales and conversions. Google looks for the placements that will get you the most bang for your buck and will bid up to 30% more than your max bid. Alternatively, Google will lower your bid for placements that do not seem promising. 7. Where Should a Retargeting Ad Lead? Retargeting programs are more than likely meant to acquire customers and increase sales - so, they should always lead to a landing page. Your ad s landing page should do two things: 1. Fulfill any expectations the ad sets Example Retargeting Ads 2. Provide something beneficial or valuable to the user to create interest or foster goodwill. Great ways to do this include offering special promotions, sales or free quotes. offering educational or instructional information that is valuable to your target audience and can be put behind a lead generation form. providing value-add information on a specific product or topic that the visitor had shown interest in (you can track these interests through audience segmenting, as described in Tip 3). 8. How Often Should Consumers See Your Ad? As a consumer, it is more than likely you have had a brand or product follow you around the Internet after visiting a particular website. You may also have noticed a particular brand or product relentlessly showing you multiple ads on the same page and/or having ads appear on every page you visited thereafter. As you may imagine, this kind of in-your-face saturation can get irritating. When setting up your campaigns, set a limit for how often a person will see your ad in a day. Based on your product or service, first consider how long the sales cycle may be and during what time period an ad may be effective. If the person does not buy in a week, is the chance of making a sale extremely low? Or does reminding consumers of your business 30 to 60 days after a website visit make sense? Then, determine how many times someone should see your ad in a day. A good rule of thumb to start with is no more than 7 times per day. But keep in mind, this number can be a process of trial and error based on the interaction you get. 10 Tips for Successful Retargeting 4

5 9. Create a Variety of Ads (Variations and Sizes) Ads placement spots on websites vary in location and size. For this reason, it is a good idea to create ads in multiple sizes so you have an ad ready to go for any type of placement. There are at least 15 different sizes, but these four are the most common (sizes are in pixels): 336 x 280 large rectangle 300 x 250 medium rectangle 728 x 90 leaderboard 120 x 600 wide skyscraper It is also a good idea to create 2 or 3 different ad variations per size so consumers are not bombarded by the same ad over and over again. This way you can also test if one ad is performing better than others and then optimize for that one. 10. Do Not Sideline Customer Acquisition Campaigns Your retargeting campaign is only one part of the equation. In order to retarget visitors, you need to have some first. So, do not forget or sideline your other customer acquisition methods. General ads leading to your site, concentrated SEO efforts, content marketing and social media marketing are still very, very important components of your marketing strategy. These acquisition efforts should also be factored into your retargeting effectiveness tracking if someone converts off of a retargeted ad, it may be that they first got to your site from an acquisition ad, which contributed to the sale. Bonus Tip: Search Retargeting There are many different forms of retargeting, two common forms are site retargeting (discussed here) and search retargeting. Search retargeting is a different form of remarketing that is gaining in popularity. Unlike site retargeting that targets people who have visited your site, search retargeting displays ads to consumers based on the keywords they search for on search engines you target consumers that have never been to your site. This form of retargeting gives brands the ability to target people based on interests. As of now, Google does not offer a tool for this type of retargeting; however, there are other companies that do. In fact, Facebook will soon be offering spots to serve interest-based ads. About Community Elf As a leader in social media strategy and content marketing, Community Elf manages the online digital marketing presence for brands from planning to daily execution in a way that grows a brand s awareness and following among their target audience, engages and encourages advocacy, and motivates consumers to take action with the brand. sales@communityelf.com Community Elf 5