Remarketing: what the heck is that? Is it just like marketing, except you do it…twice?

Were that everything could be that simple. Alas, remarketing is not. Actually, remarketing is a powerful tool for marketing your services and products to people who have already shown an interest in what you do — which is pretty nice, right? There’s nothing better than getting your advertising in front of someone you already know is potentially interested.

There are many advantages to using remarketing. This is especially true if you provide services and products that potential customers usually take some time to consider (as opposed to purchasing immediately after an initial search) — major purchases such as home improvement, for example.

Those leads might not contact you immediately after doing research on your website, but remarketing lets you continue to promote your business to them even after they’ve left your site.

For most websites, only 2 percent of Web traffic converts on the first visit. Retargeting helps companies reach the 98 percent of users who don’t convert right away.

As for how remarketing works, that’s a little more complex (but it’s not too bad, trust us). As always, we’ll break it down for you as plainly as possible:

The basics of remarketing

While remarketing (also known as ad retargeting) can be used as a generic term, we’re going to talk exclusively about Google’s service, which is technically called Google AdWords Remarketing or simply Google Remarketing. For simplicity, we’ll just call it remarketing from here on out, but remember that we specifically mean the Google service. As Google explains it, the bottom line of remarketing is that it give you “another chance to close the deal.” And that’s a pretty good definition.

People searching for a service or product that’s somewhat substantial don’t usually stop researching after checking out just one provider. They might check out your website, leave and check out several others while considering their options.

Remarketing lets you keep your business in front of those interested parties even after they’ve left your site. This makes it an incredibly beneficial complement to pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, because remarketing is directly promoting your products and services to people who have already checked you out.

(Additionally, remarketing can be paired with dynamic advertising: This means you can create highly relevant customized ads that specifically remind shoppers of items they’ve seen or bought in the past on your site and suggest other products they might like.)

How it works

Remarketing uses a simple a Javascript code to anonymously follow your audience across the Internet. To do this, your webmaster will place a simple piece of code, called the remarketing tag, to each page on your site. (The tag is invisible to site visitors.)

Every time a new visitor comes to your site, the code adds an anonymous cookie to the visitor’s browser. Whenever the visitor surfs the Internet after leaving your site, the cookie will prompt ads you’ve created to appear before the visitor through the Google Display Network (GDN). (The GDN is what displays ads on a massive spectrum of sites all over the Internet.)

As with everything Google does, the remarketing tool can be modified to give you more precise targeting with specific messages and promotions for people who have taken specific actions or visited particular pages on your site. This ensures that you’re communicating the most precise pitch to past visitors, based on what they’re looking for. Your Ring Ring Marketing professional can show you how this works in more detail.

Remarketing advantages

There are many advantages to a tool as powerful and effective as this, but here a few of the chief ones:

Increase site conversions: Remarketing has proven to be extremely successful at turning site traffic (visitors in general) into conversions (visitors becoming actual customers). Remarketing lists can be easily customized to specifically target visitors who have shown a likelihood of converting.

Gain brand visibility: Remarketing helps promote your business across the wide spectrum of partner sites across the Google Display Network. You can engage your target audiences on a variety of sites while they browse the Web.
Employ all sorts of different ads: Google lets you create and distribute many different types of ads with your remarketing program. Text ads, image ads, product listing ads, mobile ads, banners, and much more: Virtually every kind of advertisement is an option with remarketing.

Great return on investment: Compared to PPC advertising in general, remarketing is an excellent value. Proper optimization can reduce your remarketing cost to just 20 percent of all other PPC marketing investments over time. This can be achieved through precise targeting of leads after your initial campaign. (It’s best to start with remarketing to all your site visitors before focusing your ads more precisely).

At Ring Ring Marketing, we’re very excited about how much more efficient and effective your marketing campaign can be when you employ the powerful utility of remarketing.