Its been in beta since March 2009 and now, one full year later, the public can finally take a peak at what all the fuss has been about... and yes, the fuss has been warranted.
Im talking about Googles AdWords Remarketing feature which is a type of behavioural targeting that allows you to connect with users who have, in the past, performed some pre-defined action on your site.
How about an example:
Suppose youre a Sporting Goods Retailer and a user comes to your site, looks at a new set of golf clubs, adds them to their shopping cart, but doesnt actually complete the purchase. Wouldnt it be great if within the next few days, you could put an ad in front of them that promoted your upcoming sale on Golf merchandise?
That would be fantastic! And thats exactly what thousands of advertisers have been testing out over the past year... and now you can take advantage of this powerful tool too.
Have you seen the Audience tab appear in your interface recently? Well, this is where all the remarketing magic will happen.
Before we get started, here are a few things you should know:
- Set your strategy! Before you jump into this, make sure youve thought through who it is that you want to remarket to and how youll be segmenting these people
- This is available on the Content Network only and you apply it at the Ad Group level.... but we recommend creating a Campaign dedicated specifically to Remarketing
- Make sure you have Conversion Tracking (not required... but you want to find out if this is working or not, dont you?)
And now, its time to get started...
- Create a new campaign (Call it Remarketing for now) and target it to the Content Network only... Relevant Pages Across the Network.
- Be fairly aggressive when setting you initial bids. Remarketing campaigns dont get any preferential treatment, so youll want to ensure your bids are high enough that your ads will actually show.
- Add your Text/Display Ads
The next step is to create your Remarketing Lists:
- Click on the Audience Tab and then Add Audiences
- Click Create and Manage Lists
3. Name your new list, write up a little description and set your cookie length
4. You can generate a new Remarketing code here, or you can pull from existing Conversion Codes. If you generate a new code, you will need to ensure it is placed on the appropriate page, between the <body> tags.
5. You can now add these Lists to any ad group and view them under the Audience Tab
That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you get started with the new Remarketing feature. This was a very high level look and there is LOTS more to it... but well save all the cool Custom Combinations and Negative Audience settings for another post.
In the meantime, jump into the Remarketing game and starting testing this out!
-Tyler