Ultimate Guide to Remarketing Ads

Options for Remarketing Ads

It's possible to initiate a remarketing campaign across multiple channels and platforms. Each option targets a different type of engagement with visitors and delivers targeted ads in a novel way. Combine multiple options to cast a wide net, with the ability to customize each for your specific targets. 



• List for Search Ads - AKA RLSA, this option targets a visitor already in your Search Network. Customize ads to put in front of these former visitors when they search through partner sites through Google.
• Mobile Apps - After a user accesses your mobile website or app, Google Ads enables you to place your ads in front of that user as they go to other websites and apps on their mobile device. 
• Email List - AKA Customer Match. Utilize email list opt-ins from customers to upload ads to them when they are in their Google account sites such as Gmail, YouTube, or Search.
• Video - Retarget those that have visited your YouTube channel. Deliver ads across YouTube and through affiliated Display Network locations. 
• Standard - Show ads to former visitors through the Display Network as they engage with websites and ads.
• Dynamic - Utilize Google Ads to place ads in front of visitors that have browed an offering on your site. 



Remarketing Code Essentials

Tracking codes set through tags and governed by analytics is the goal of remarketing. Well, the goal of remarketing is conversion and ROI but it's accomplished through coding.

Coding starts with establishing analytics to link the tags and insert the codes. From there, you select the tags you want and add one or more tracking commands. 



Finally, you want to follow up on each tag to optimize your targets and refine the ads and offerings delivered.



Find an Audience

Now that you've designated who to track, and how they should be tracked, it's time to look at the duration of your campaign and the frequency of ad placements.

The max duration that a cookie will stay in a browser is 540 days or whenever a user clears their cache. Some people clear their cache frequently while other won't do it at all. You can't control that behavior directly, but there are some ways to influence it.

Selecting a shorter duration helps you to track the progress of a campaign more directly. Many things can fluctuate over time, so you're better off launching a long campaign built on the data from shorter ones.

If you have seasonal offerings, you want the campaign to reach across the gap between to remind customers of your offerings before they are next needed. For subscription services, a 45-60 day duration covers the subscription period and some extra for those that forget to renew or are second-guessing a cancellation.



Modifying the frequency of ads is crucial. If a visitor sees your ads pop up every place they go on the web, you better hope they love seeing your ads, otherwise they are going to get annoyed and look for ways to get away from them. Industry research shows that 77 percent of consumers are looking for a reason to leave. 



The cornerstone of any marketing strategy is to identify target audiences and tailor offerings to them. You do this through a combination of data analysis and demographic earmarking. 

You don't need to approach each audience separately, many options target more than one at a time but you'll want to consider each separately for tracking and optimization efforts.

Filter audiences according to the criteria of your choosing. Here are a few starting points to consider.

• Duration of visit
• Total pages visited
• Geographic features
• Demographic features
• Distance into a checkout routine
• Specific product pages
• Specific product pages avoided or vacated instantly

These last two, used in conjunction, allow for the greatest fine-tuning in visitor behavior and audience targeting. Visitors that stop along the way to completing a purchase are the highest priority and also provide the most data.

A terminal page after a purchase, be it a thank-you or a check-out-more can both be used to collect further information by offering discounts, product holds, or additional specials available only to previous purchases. Visitors that reach a terminal page can be sorted to further remarketing lists for loyalty and repeat ads.

In the current climate, local search marketing is more important than ever. People are less likely to look too far afield. Couple this with restrictions in travel time and delivery times and you open up considerable opportunity closer to home. 

When it comes to finding criteria to create a dynamic remarketing audience, consider dynamic prospecting to get the ball rolling. 

Avoiding annoyance is more important than being seen. Annoyance cancels out other marketing efforts, especially the crucial word of mouth avenue. For offerings that are personal in nature, you want to be exceptionally infrequent so as not to remind the customer of their issues.

Subscriptions and monthly offerings can be fairly regular as people are already thinking of them often. Seasonal offerings or those with a long shelf life can be kept infrequent. It only takes a few scattered impressions to keep your brand in mind when people go to re-up on these services.

For a business that thrives on daily repeat customers (restaurants, grocery and corner shops) high frequency works well, people need something to eat every day and they're always forgetting to pick up some household items.



When your duration and frequency cap line up with customer expectation, they feel catered-to and appreciated, not put upon. 



Optimization Tips



Putting your campaign into action is only the first step. Collecting data from an initial launch enables you to make changes and optimize the campaign to fine-tune results.utting your campaign into action is only the first step. Collecting data from an initial launch enables you to make changes and optimize the campaign to fine-tune results.



Optimization is a multi-level ongoing process. While many of the things need to be adjusted you also can't adjust them daily or it will skew data and over burden your systems.



Start with affordable web design for your websites. They need to work fluidly and well. A website that crashes, hangs, or loads slowly will drive visitors away and make locating your audience almost impossible. 

the landing page, in particular, needs to not only work mechanically but deliver objectively. Experiment with your messaging, check it against competitors' language. Does it provide novel information, does it direct a user to vital locations?

Combination Testing

With so many options to reach your selected audiences, you may be doing more than you need. Targeting is important and too much overlap leads to oversaturation that you can't control through frequency caps.

Make sure that that your overlaps don't create rejection zones by putting yourself behind the keyboard of an ideal visitor. 

Frequency Testing

Set out a period to increase the frequency week by week. You are looking for the breaking point where you start to see engagement drop and audience size dip. Doing this for one offering gives you more information to adjust others.



If you are seeing a low conversion, up the frequency on your most popular items until you run into the restrictions above.



Ad Testing

How about the ads that you are placing in front of visitors? You've done all this work to get the message in front of people the right number of times for the correct length of time but is the ad itself effective?

Consider how your ads convey your branding and your offerings. Do they include calls to action? Do they visually catch without distracting?

For remarketing ads, focus on branding at the core. When you sell the brand with your ads, you sell easier recognition that flies under the radar. Hooking in with brand loyalty gives you a second glance that even interesting ads don't receive. If a visitor trusts your brand, they're more likely to wait and see what you have without scrolling away or closing an ad spot.

Click Early, Click Often 

Using remarketing ads is a vital and powerful tool for promoting offerings. A business can't afford not to hitch their ads to a potential customer and follow them where they may go.

Making a campaign work takes a lot of small tweaks to remain subtle and effective. When done right, it's easily one of the highest ROI tools in the marketing arsenal.

Call the top-rated Atlanta Web Marketing Team  to learn more about how our team may be able to get your site  Click Ready?