Google AdWords ReMarketing: The Most Powerful Tool in Online Advertising?
You may have noticed while browsing the web that certain ads seem to follow you around, especially those from websites you have recently visited. The rise of this type of advertising can be attributed Google’s recent introduction of Interest Based Advertising in partciular Remarketing and the still-in-beta Interest Category Marketing
Introducing AdWords Remarketing
There is nothing new with the concept of remarketing, which is essentially allowing you a second chance with a potential customer who visited your website, the ability to do this quickly through AdWords makes it an extremely important tool for online businesses.
The premise of AdWords Remarketing involves the creation of different audiences or lists which are determined by setting a cookie with your website visitor at certain key points of your website. Typical audiences you would want to utilise are:
- All Site Visitors (have visited any page on website)
- High Interest Visitors (have visited sign up page/product page)
- Converted Customers (have purchased from you)
This is the easiest and most obvious audience to create. Targeting all visitors to your website allows a quick method of communicating a message to those who have had enough interest to visit your website at least once.
Visitors who have completed some action on your website, or have engaged at some level are obviously worth more than normal visitors. This is why targeting this audience allows for focused messaging. Great examples which have worked for me are Save offers (special discounts) and call to actions for completing an interaction (Hey, we saw you checked out our XYZ…)
An important but sometimes forgotten segment. It is crucial to create this audience – if only to use it as a negative list to the above audiences. Knowing that someone is a customer allows you to use different messaging as well, such as up-selling or reminders.
The possibilties are endless depending on the type of business you have, you can even leverage your network of sites by creating an audience based on a visitors interaction with another website within your control. You can also create combinations of these lists in order to further target the message you want.
By segmenting these different audiences – you can further increase your relevancy and as a marketer, that’s an incredibly powerful ability to have. We invest heavily in demand generation to our websites and with remarketing we have the ability to get a second chance with those visitors and develop stronger relationships with both our visitors and customers.
With this level of control available if you are not already using Remarketing – you have got to ask yourself, Why not?
Google have finally created the ability for web visitors to opt out from having their information stored through Google Analytics. While this is a positive step for those who are concerned over their privacy – it is something which I think will only be used by a minority of web users.
Interestingly, you can also opt out from Google Advertising, which I see as much more relevant to those who are concerned about the data which Google are storing about them.
The recent innovation of audience creation in AdWords allows advertisers to create even more relevant content due to the information which Google stores on peoples browsing habits. Good for advertisers but a worrying trend towards utilising browser behaviour to segment audiences.
You can’t have failed to have heard the following ad for IKEA Kitchen Party recently with its insanely catchy lyrics and hipster styling.
IKEA have got it spot in on with the style, tone and theme of the ad perfectly fitting the target audience of twenty somethings with their never-ending love affair with the 80′s. The very market where the growing trend is shifting more to socialising at home.
It’s also no surprise that the song is actually a cover from the 80′s, with the #2 hit from Jona Lewie. The cover song was created especially for Ikea with the help of the Mother London ad agency.