Remarketing is a specific form of PPC that has unique advantages for marketers, business owners and webmasters in that it allows them to reach out to visitors and customers that have previously demonstrated an interest in the brand. This has huge implications and many applications for the savvy advertiser.
What is Remarketing?
Google remarketing is an option open to those using Google AdWords. Essentially it works by letting you use cookies in order to track visitors to your site and then target them specifically with your advertisements. This has many benefits for businesses and specifically for specific industries.
Chances are that you will have experienced remarketing yourself at some point. If you have ever been looking at holidays and then found adverts popping up promoting the very same hotel you were looking at, or if you have ever seen Amazon adverts promoting the products you were thinking about buying the other day – that's remarketing.
The reason remarketing works so well is that often we will decide to 'think over' a purchase and will come back to it later. Unfortunately for sellers though, often buyers will then forget all about the item or will find a better offer elsewhere.
The idea of remarketing is that they will then have their memory triggered and see the thing they were thinking of buying. With it only a click away, they may then decide to go and buy it anyway. This can be very effective for selling 'big ticket' items. Remarketing can also be useful for promoting similar items to the ones your visitors looked at or bought, especially if they have purchased one item in a set for instance.
Remarketing works by using cookies stored on a user’s computer. When they visit your web page, those cookies are saved in their browser and these can then be ‘checked’ by other sites – such as Google – in order to identify whether or not those users are the same ones that arrived earlier. This is also how you stay logged into websites.
Remarketing isn’t only available through Google AdWords. Facebook also has a form of remarketing, as does AdSense and many more platforms. You can also use powerful tools like Volusion which is an ecommerce and autoresponder tool that lets you send emails to people on your mailing list who have been to specific pages on your site – or even spent a minimum amount of time on those pages.
How to Make the Best Use of Remarketing
In order to make the very best use of remarketing, it is useful to consider the many different ways in which it can be used and the psychology of what makes people buy. Remarketing is at its most effective when it targets those people who have shown an interest in a product but who have not yet placed a purchase. The idea is to prevent them from forgetting about the item and to instead encourage a more impulsive decision.
This is the thing to remember:
Most people buy on impulse, based on emotions.
When you think about the last few purchases you made – other than food and supplies – how many of them were practical things that you really needed? That you really couldn’t do without?
Chances are that you weighed up the pros and cons of making the purchase and eventually decided to do so only when your excitement for your product – and anxiety at the thought of losing out – overwhelmed your reason.
This is why so many examples of sales letters and advertising campaigns will focus specifically on this type of selling: they aim to make the reader or viewer as excited as possible about the product. They use highly emotive language and escribe what the product feels like to hold, how many other people all have the same product, and just what it is that makes it special and unique. They focus on the value proposition.
Life will never be the same again because you’ll be:
- Fitter
- Happier
- Healthier
- Richer
- Sexier
- More productive
- More accomplished
- More impressive and higher in status
Most of us know better. But sometimes the marketing is so good that we get caught up in the moment and click buy. The genius of remarketing is that it allows you to reach your audience at the time when they are perhaps a little weaker. When we are tired, we are less reasonable and more prone to impulsive action. Therefore, if you use AdWords to schedule your advertising campaign, you can remind visitors to your site that they were interested in your products in the evening.
Or how about waiting until after pay day? Or the run-up to Christmas? Or remarket when you have a deal or discount on – this way you can introduce some urgency into your campaign – the user knows that if they don’t buy now, they may lose out on the opportunity to make a saving. With something like Volusion, you can even decide to market to people only once they’ve demonstrated engagement and loyalty by opening and responding to emails.
Combining SEO, PPC and Remarketing for the Ultimate Approach
Often when you talk to someone about promoting a website online they will discuss two avenues with you, those being SEO or PPC. Both are valid options - you shouldn't be choosing between SEO or PPC but rather looking at how you can use them both in conjunction to deliver a powerful one-two punch that puts your site at the top of the search rankings.
By combining these two tools of the website promotion trade you can actually accomplish even more impressive results than either could alone and this is potentially a highly lucrative strategy. And that’s especially true thanks to the power of remarketing.
Let's look at some ways you can tag team the two...
The Two Pronged Attack
First of all, you can of course use SEO and PPC to practically dominate a SERP. Getting the to the top of the organic search results of course is going to bring you huge amounts of traffic but there will always be those people who clicked the 'sponsored' links at the top - and conversely when you use AdWords many people will still scroll down slightly and click the top link. By having both these positions covered then you can of course get a higher proportion of the traffic. Alternatively, you could attack different keywords with your PPC and your SEO.
Using PPC for Research
PPC can also be a very useful tool for keyword research. By using AdWords, you can target specific search terms and immediately start getting traffic from them. By trying a few different terms then and comparing the results of each, you can quickly identify which is the most effective and then know where you should direct your time and energy using SEO to make it a permanent position.
Google Remarketing
Then there’s Google Remarketing. This is an effective way to get visitors back to your site and means that you're advertising to people who you know have an interest in your site. This way you can use SEO to get the traffic there initially, and then use PPC to bring them back again.
And again, you can use this in order to target the audience at the time when they are perhaps the most vulnerable to your advertising by choosing the right schedule for your advertising or by choosing the right keywords.
For instance, if someone looked at your site and left after lingering on a checkout page, it might be that they liked your product or service but weren’t in the market at that time. But if they’re later searching for ‘fitness ebooks’ on google, it suggests that they are now ready to buy. This is when you need to get ready to remind them you exist!
