Whoever said, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression” never met Google. When the company rolled out its AdWords remarketing feature in March of 2010, they gave advertisers a powerful tool to increase conversions by getting a second chance at potential customers.
It’s basically a way to retarget previous visitors to your site who didn’t click through an ad for some reason, and the responses to the feature have been encouraging. So much so, Google is in the process of providing a few enhancements to further improve remarketing results.
Improved Remarketing Tag
To take advantage of the remarketing feature before, it was necessary to place code on every page you wanted to include in your campaign. Now, the remarketing tag will only need to be placed on the site once. Advertisers will then have the option of creating campaign-focused lists to target specific keywords. In addition, Google Analytics users will be able to create and manage those lists through the Analytics interface as well.
Improved Audience Targeting
The Google AdWords Keyword Tool has a handy little feature to help with keyword research. Once you generate a preliminary list of keywords in the tool, you can click a dropdown menu next to any word in the list, and select “Show more like this.” Another list will pop up, showing you several more options closely related to the term you selected.
Imagine if you could use a “more like this” function to expand your audience, something that would help you find more people who are similar to those you’ve already targeted, but who, for some reason, fell outside your targeting parameters. Now you can.
Over the next few weeks, Google will be adding a feature allowing you to display ads to users similar to the ones you already have in your remarketing lists, but who haven’t even visited your site yet. You’ll be able to expand your reach—and hopefully increase conversions—with minimal effort.
Search Ads Beta Testing
If you have a managed AdWords account, you can participate in the expansion of a search ads beta test in which search campaigns can be customized according to remarketing lists in AdWords. The campaign customization comes from sites users have visited, increasing relevance of the ads displayed.
By seeking the help of a pay per click management professional, you can greatly improve the ROI of your AdWords campaigns, whether you participate in the beta test or not.
It’s encouraging to see Google taking steps to improve their marketing tools, which, in turn, gives advertisers the ability to work more efficiently. We’ll keep you posted on further changes and updates to the remarketing feature.
