Through Google AdWords, remarketing is available to all online advertisers. Because remarketing targets interested Internet users who have already visited your site, the return on investment is quite high and something all online advertisers should be taking advantage of.
So, what is remarketing and how do you get started?
What is Remarketing?
Remarketing is the practice of first placing a cookie on your website visitors’ browsers. Next, those visitors go about their regular browsing habits. In the course of their web browsing, these visitors will now be eligible to be targeted by your ads. These ads can be text ads, image ads or even animated ads.
How Do You Get Started?
To get started with remarketing, you can either hire a consultant to set everything up or you can start an AdWords account, tag your site, create your ads and select your advertising settings, budgets and bids. Unlike traditional search or display advertising, there is very little risk of not doing it right. The only people who will be eligible to see your ads are a select group of people who have already visited your site. They have already shown some level of interest in your products/services, and your ad will serve as a reminder of what they have considered before.
Other Considerations
Business
Unlike traditional display advertising, we know something very specific about your remarketing audience: It's already been to your site once. This knowledge alone is very powerful, but we can make it even more powerful by better sculpting our remarketing lists. For example, we can effectively exclude people who have actually purchased a product on a website, while offering an exclusive offer to other visitors who abandoned the online shopping cart, all while promoting more general branding ads to the majority of your site’s visitors.
And in case you’re worried about annoying your audience, AdWords remarketing also allows you to control the “creepy” factor. If you’d like to limit how often a visitor will be eligible to see your ads, you can limit your impression count to as little as one time per day.
With the low risk, minimal bar to entry and the potential for a high return, Remarketing is an online advertising tactic most business owners should consider.
Nathan Pabich is the director of paid search at Digital Third Coast, a digital marketing agency based in Chicago. You can find Nathan on Google+.
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