How to Take Your Remarketing Strategy to the Next Level

Christina Fournier - March 24, 2015

You’ve already invested money into your online marketing efforts. You’re driving traffic to your website through pay-per-click campaigns. You’re buying email lists and developing quality content to entice click-throughs. You’re building your social media following and are engaging with and promoting conversations with your audience. By all accounts, you are doing everything you can to fill the top of the funnel. But once you get prospects to your site, your active marketing comes to a screeching halt.

Sure, you hit them with your standard remarketing display ad and hope that when they see your logo, they’ll return to your site. But doesn’t it seem a little counter-productive to spend all this time, money and resources to drive traffic, only to turn your marketing efforts on auto-pilot after they’ve become a warm lead?

Use these four strategies to optimize your remarketing campaigns and leverage this powerful advertising medium.

Segment Your Remarketing List

All site visitors are not created equal.

• Did a prospect make a purchase?
• Did they fill their shopping cart, but abandon it before the sale?
• Were they just window shopping?

Each of these visitors are at different points in the buying cycle and, as such, should be targeted with different types of messaging. Take note, this is perhaps the most critical element in optimizing remarketing efforts – and the most often overlooked! Tailor your advertising based on consumer behavior.

Remarketing List for Search Ads

Now that you have your segmented lists, Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (or RLSA) is a no-brainer. RLSA allows you to customize keyword bids and ad text for those who have already visited your website. So, when they perform a Google search for a product or service that you provide, they’ll be served with your ad.

RLSA works similarly to a standard search campaign, but since you are only targeting your remarketing lists, users are much more likely to convert since they are already familiar with your brand. This means that you can bid higher and have your ads show on broader keywords. And don’t forget our first tip – make sure you are hitting them with an ad that’s specific to the actions they have previously taken on your site!

Dynamic Remarketing

Have you ever been researching a product, but just didn’t pull the trigger to complete the purchase; and then, as you continue to surf the internet, you notice ads with that product popping up all over the place? This is dynamic remarketing.

Remarketing to almost-customers is a huge opportunity to bring them back to your site, so they can finish what they started. Dynamic remarketing is available to both B2B and B2C businesses in all verticals, including:

• Hotels
• Airlines
• Real estate
• Classifieds
• Job postings
• Auto
• Finance
• Education

And, you have the ability to create and manage a feed of all your products or services directly within AdWords.

YouTube Remarketing

Video is a huge medium, and it’s only going to continue to grow in popularity. If you are already investing in creating video assets and growing your YouTube channel, it’s only natural to connect your AdWords account to YouTube.

Your segmented list for this type of remarketing is going to be different than your lists for dynamic remarketing and RLSA. Your video remarketing list can include ads targeted specifically to those who have:

• Viewed or interacted with your videos
• Subscribed to (or even unsubscribed from) your YouTube channel
• Viewed your YouTube ads
• Visited your channel

Utilizing YouTube remarketing is a great way to showcase your business across search, display and video.

These four tips just scratch the surface of the enormous benefit a truly optimized remarketing campaign can provide for your business. Even with the best intentions, setting up proper remarketing takes time and resources. Don’t worry, we’re here to help!