Why Remarketing?

Alexandra Hagler - March 26, 2010

What is remarketing and how can it benefit my online marketing strategies? Will I scare away potential customers? Is remarketing invading personal privacy?  These are often questions that arise when remarketing is discussed. 

Remarketing works anonymously through visitor actions that take place on your website. The specific visitor actions are determined by you the advertiser using one of two strategies, or even a combination of both.

Interest Categories — This is where you are targeting users based on sites they have visited throughout the content network (Google’s network of websites where AdWords advertisers can show their ads).

Example:  If you want to target sports categories, you can pick a list of users compiled by a database. The database collects a comprehensive list of users that visit relevant sites within the interest category and then your ads will be shown on those types of websites. If a user was on ESPN, Sports Authority, etc. the user would then be grouped with similar sports sites for which your ads could be displayed.

Custom Remarketing Lists — Custom remarketing lists relate to people that have visited your site and have performed a specific action.  To create custom remarketing lists, tags must be strategically placed on your website to track a specified action or behavior on your website.  Then when visitors complete the task specified, you will have the opportunity to remarket to them by showing ads as they navigate throughout the content network.

Example: You could track users who have abandoned the shopping cart on your site and offer them a discount or a “reminder” via your ads while they are on other websites.  You could also define users that have purchased a product and remarket to them 30 or 60 days after their purchase.

Banner or text ads can be delivered to the visitor on the content network as part of a remarketing program. You may put a frequency cap on a user so your ad will not continuously bombard them. Remarketing is meant to be a subtle marketing or branding technique to enable your brand to stay in the minds of your potential customers.
Another great aspect is that remarketing strategies have trended to achieve a higher ROI than most marketing techniques.  Try remarketing today to reach attain new customers.