Remarketing With Google Analytics Practical Tips, Professional Advice & Retargeting Explained
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2. About This Whitepaper This whitepaper has been put together by various members of the paid search team at SEO Positive. Its primary purpose is to guide you through what’s involved in successful Google remarketing and the return on investment you can achieve by using this marketing method to its full potential. Whether you want to learn more about the concept of remarketing, are keen to look at ways to incorporate this marketing method into your existing PPC campaign or simply need more information about how to implement the practice cost-effectively, you’ll find all the information you need within this document! *NOTE: While some marketers may dispute the alternating usage of the phrases ‘remarketing’ and ‘retargeting’, for the purpose of this document we are referring to the same marketing practice when mentioning either of these terms.
3. What Is Google Remarketing? Google remarketing, often called ‘retargeting’, is a hugely popular marketing approach that allows you to remain engaged with users who have previously visited your website. As far as your business is concerned, it’s efficient, cost-effective and is known to generate a fantastic ROI, which is why companies of all sizes and budget should implement retargeting campaigns where possible.
The advertising model is a type of behavioural targeting, an approach described by Wikipedia as ‘capturing data generated by website and landing page visitors’ to help ‘online publishers and advertisers… increase the effectiveness of their campaigns’.
Remarketing allows you to bid for ad space on Google’s Display Network, which encompasses approximately 80% of websites of all kinds from all corners of the globe.
4. How It Works In essence, you can use retargeting to show ads to users who have landed on your site before, regardless of whether they actually made a purchase or decided to leave the page in a matter of seconds. All you need to do to achieve this is place a piece of code, or ‘tag’, into all the pages of your website. This tag will then develop a list of users that visit your page by leaving anonymous cookies in their browser. The list of users that’s created will then be used to display your adverts to those who may still be inclined to buy from you. Depending on your site’s buying cycle, you can choose exactly when each user sees a certain ad. Remind them of your brand days, weeks or even months after they initially bought something from your site – you choose the approach that you think is going to convert best based on a broad list of data generated by Google Analytics. You can automate your bid budget using Google’s Conversion Optimiser or adjust your CPM and CPCs manually. More information on the Conversion Optimiser can be found within the ‘Advanced Remarketing’ section of this whitepaper. Remember, though, that you are auctioning for each ad, so there’s no guarantee it’s going to be shown for each and every Google Display network user who has visited your site.
QUICK TIP: It’s crucial that you incorporate a cookie policy into your website, as the entire concept of remarketing is based on placing cookies on visitors’ computers.
5. Practical Applications Remarketing is typically used for the following purposes:
Speed up the decision process of shoppers doing research on the web The majority of online shoppers spend time looking at other sites to compare their options. Remarketing allows you to identify potential customers that visited certain product pages, create a list for these users and present them with ads displaying that same product when they browse sites on the Google Display Network. By doing so, you’re shortening their search process and encouraging them to buy from you, not your competitors!
Re-encouraging your consumer base to take another look at your site If you notice that a large percentage of visitors to your site select an item, head over to the checkout but then fail to actually make the purchase, all is not lost – you can use retargeting to bring back those customers that have fallen by the wayside for one reason or another. You can specify which products they failed to buy and create display ads that are based on the actual category or collection that these visitors were looking at.
Cross-selling or up-selling products or services to customers who have already bought from you If, according to your data, you know that customers who bought a particular product are likely to be interested in another product on your site, you can customise your lists to display items of potential interest to those who have already spent money on your site. This could essentially be defined as either a cross-selling or up-selling opportunity.
Market to an audience from a specific location Remarketing is great for businesses that offer regional discounts and special offers. Companies can identify all users within a particular town, county or country and present them with tailored ads that communicate a promotion or event on their home turf, encouraging greater engagement and participation in the campaign from users with a presupposed interest in the offer.
Bring exclusive offers and deals to your loyal customers You could use remarketing to advertise special discounts or promotions to customers you regularly return to your site.
Increasing overall awareness of your brand Remarketing ensures that your customers are reminded of your brand at every turn, which in itself helps cement your reputation on the web as a well-established company and
communicates to potential customers that you take your own marketing strategy extremely seriously.
6. The Benefits You can spend less & advertise more Remarketing typically generates lower Costs Per Click and Costs Per Acquisitions compared to the Search Network.
You can use retargeting to achieve multiple goals It doesn’t matter whether you’re looking to increase online sales, get more people to subscribe to your content, or encourage users to fill out an enquiry form – retargeting is proven to work for all types of businesses.
Better define your company’s buying cycle & nurture leads effectively When setting up a campaign, you’ll need to answer the following questions if you’re to get the most out of the concept: What are the buying steps for your business model? How long does it take for the user to complete the buying cycle? How can you stand out from your competitors at every stage of the buying cycle? What are the post-purchase activities of the user? Do they return to your site to browse or to buy? Addressing these issues not only allows you to streamline your retargeting campaign – you can also apply your findings to all other marketing practices and gain a broader understanding of what it actually takes to secure a conversion.
You can enhance your existing marketing campaign Remarketing is often considered an essential component of the entire paid search process. Once you’ve used PPC ads to drive traffic to your site using specific search terms, you can then use cookies to follow these users after their initial visit and repeatedly remind them of your products.
7. Creating A Remarketing Campaign For Google’s Display Network Following the right steps to set up a remarketing approach will form the foundations of the entire campaign and determine its success further down the line. The new features rolled out in Analytics for all advertisers from autumn 2012 will undoubtedly help advertisers leverage the potential of remarketing quickly and easily. We would definitely recommend setting up an account if you don’t already have administrative access to the platform.
7.1 Getting Started Before you start, make sure you’re the administrator for your Analytics account. Click on the ‘Admin’ button in the top right hand corner of your interface, then click on the ‘Remarketing Lists’ tab.
7.2 How Do I Add A Remarketing Tag To Each Page Of My Site? To start the process, you need to embed the code into relevant pages on your site. Remarketing With Google Analytics, a feature which was rolled out in its beta stages in 2012 and will be available from September 2012 onwards, allows marketers to create different remarketing lists without tagging their site twice (once for Analytics, and once for Google Adwords). If you’re using Google Analytics to set up your remarketing lists, you can create each list by simply replacing one line of your Analytics tracking code. All you need to do is place one tag in the footer of your site - this means that you don’t have to make extra tricky changes to your code on every single page, speeding up the entire process. It also allows you to create more refined lists of your site visitors. Alternatively, you can choose to add the tag to your entire website by retrieving the HTML from the ‘Main List’ created by AdWords and placing it at the bottom of all of your pages before closing the </body> tag. More information on adding the remarketing tag to your site can be found here.
7.3 Identifying Your Audiences & Custom Combination Lists Each remarketing list is going to contain a set of criteria that describes the segment of visitors you want to show a particular set of remarketing ads. Lists will be automatically updated with a new visitor’s cookie as soon as a new user matches the specified criteria.
QUICK TIP: A remarketing list set up in Analytics and then made available to an AdWords account functions fully in AdWords.
AdWords provides you with the following default lists: All site visitors Users who visited a specific page of your website Users who completed a goal (bought a product, completed an enquiry form etc) However, you can map existing data from your AdWords account and shape your own remarketing lists by looking at a variety of performance metrics using the ‘Remarketing with Google Analytics’ option, including the length of the user’s visit, the pages they viewed and whether or not they completed their intended goal. Savvy marketers will use this information to set up custom combination lists that target either converters or non-converters. To set up effective custom combination lists, you need to identify the audiences you wish to target or exclude within each list. When you’re deciding which pages are used as triggers to retarget users and which pages will remove that targeting, you’re creating an audience. Put simply, you need to tell Google exactly which users need to see which ad when they visit a website on the Display Network. More in-depth information on setting up custom combination lists can be found here.
7.4 Creating Your First Remarketing List: Points To Bear In Mind The best way to approach creating a list:
Prioritise your products, categories and/or services. Consider which of your offerings bring in the most revenue for your business and look to target these in the short-term. You can always add a broader range of products or services into the mix at a later stage. Focus initially on the areas of your site that receive the most traffic or hold the most value. After all, these are the areas that are going to make the most money. Consider the membership duration feature. This tool allows you to choose how long a visitor’s cookie stays on your retargeting list if that person doesn’t view a page on your website again. Google’s default membership duration is 30 days but this can be adjusted depending on the duration of your buying cycle. Remember that, generally, your buying cycle is based on how long it would take the customer to make the decision to make a purchase. If the user doesn’t visit your site during their membership duration period, their cookie will be deleted from the list, but it will of course be re-added if they visit the site afterwards. If you change the membership duration for a particular list, the new duration will only apply to cookies that are added after you’ve amended it. Set up negative lists to avoid irrelevant audiences. Make sure that site users who have already converted aren’t targeted with your display ads. Go to ‘Negative Audiences’ and add a list of those visitors who have visited your conversion confirmation page (often a ‘thank you’ page or something similar).
QUICK TIP: Each remarketing list must contain at least 100 cookies from users before the ads assigned to that list will begin to be shown within the Google Display Network. In layman’s terms, you need to create a base of 100 visitors to activate this particular campaign.
Troubleshooting If you’ve been running the campaign for a few days but don’t appear to have many or any visitors on a list: Make sure the remarketing tag on your site is correctly added to your site, free from errors and typos and therefore working as it should. If your ad doesn’t appear to be showing: You may not have enough users on your list to start using the Display Network. The minimum is 100. Alternatively, you may not have approved your ad as ‘family safe’, hindering its progress, or your budget may not still be active. If you’re not receiving the site traffic you were expecting: Your list may be too specific. It may be wise to remove targeting restrictions or incorporating pages into your campaign that typically have a higher traffic volume.
8. What About Your Creatives? There’s no two ways about it - landing pages are a crucial part of the success of the campaign. Your ads could receive thousands of hits every single day, but if the user isn’t impressed by what they find once they’ve followed your link, they’ll simply leave the landing page and continue their search.
8.1 Ads: Plan Your Ads Well In Advance It sounds simple, but planning your ads ahead of time allows you to talk to colleagues to determine the best approach and re-think your initial ideas if necessary.
Relate To Your Audience Sending the right message to the right group of people is absolutely key to the entire remarketing process. Make sure that any ads you approve are relevant to the audience in each list.
Create Multiple Ad Variations Don’t just run a couple of ads simultaneously – put together as many as possible to appeal to a wider range of users.
Create Banner Ads Based On The Most Effective Text Ads Don’t waste time creating impressive-looking banner ads that simply won’t achieve tangible results. Test the effectiveness of basic text ads and tailor more sophisticated creatives to the messages that prove to entice more users.
9. Landing Pages: Design Your Landing Pages With The Look & Feel Of Your Site In Mind Keep your branding consistent to encourage familiarity. Customers are put off by landing pages that look nothing like the site itself.
Include Compelling Call-To-Actions Ask your potential customers to do something when they reach your page. If it’s enquiries you’re after, ask them to call your team directly to capture their data; if you want to generate more online sales, link them to a particular product page.
Include Information About Special Offers Everyone likes to think they’re getting a good deal. If you’re running any special promotions, be sure to mention them as a USP (in both your ads and your landing pages).
Use Google’s Display Ad Builder To Keep Costs Low Use the Display Ad Builder if you don’t have the money or the resources to build customised banners. This fantastic tool allows you to make image or video ads completely free of charge using your own text, logos and images.
You’ll need to test your creative in addition to the lists you have developed Creating a landing page is only half of the process. Once it’s up and running, you need to monitor its performance carefully and amend it if it’s not bringing the desired traffic to your site. Experiment by developing several pages and split-testing them over a set period of time to determine which one has the best effect on the user.
10. Advanced Remarketing We’ve covered the basics, but there are plenty more features you can use to enhance your remarketing campaign even further.
10.1 Conversion Optimiser Google’s very own Conversion Optimiser allows you to forecast the conversion rate of each ad that appears on the Display Network, which in turn can improve your cost-per-acquisition (CPA) figure. Its algorithm can also help you manage your bids more effectively. The tool monitors your site’s conversion tracking data to work out which type of auction is most likely to lead to a conversion for your business. It takes a number of different factors into consideration when analysing the performance of your campaign to come up with its predictions, including your keyword selections, ie the success of exact match vs broad match search terms, and the location and browser settings of the user (to name just a few!).
10.2 Frequency Capping Customers don’t like to be bombarded with the same message from the same brand time and time again. Frequency capping allows you to control the exposure of your ads by putting a cap on the amount of impressions a user sees in any given period. And, if you change the creative associated with each remarketing list regularly, you can deliver a slightly different message to the user throughout the course of a few days, weeks or months, gradually feeding them further information about what you’re selling and nurturing their interest in the product or service they were originally searching for. You can turn on this feature by going to ‘Campaign Settings’ and ‘Advanced Settings’.
10.3 Ad Scheduling Catch your potential customers at exactly the right time by taking advantage of AdWords’ ad scheduling feature. If you leave the campaign settings as they are, your ads will show as many times as possible and the programme will use up your entire daily budget. However, if you believe that consumers are going to be more susceptible to your ads at a certain time of day or night (and your performance metrics are confirming this), you can choose to schedule them in accordingly.
10.4 Topic Targeting If you’re finding it difficult to reach the right kind of market using keywords alone or are operating on a restricted budget, you can filter your audience even further by selecting a target topic. You can even select negative topics if you’d like to exclude pages associated with certain themes or subject matters. Whichever target topics you choose, make sure Google is going to limited your ad distribution according to this criteria by going to ‘Campaign Settings’ and making your that your creatives are only being triggered on ‘Relevant pages only on the placements, audiences, and topics I manage’.
10.5 Negative Targeting You can see exactly which sites your ads have been displayed on and even exclude certain sites, or ‘placements’, that you don’t want your ads to be associated with. This approach is called negative targeting and it’s similar to tracking down negative keywords for more cost-effective paid search campaigns. You can even exclude certain topics or categories to eliminate wastage further.
QUICK TIP: Build stronger, more relevant keyword lists using Google’s contextual targeting tool. Use this feature to get tailored ad group and keyword suggestions in minutes! Find more information here.
11. Analysing Your Campaign 11.1 Measurement & Reporting Tracking The Behaviour Of Your Users Using Google Analytics, you can take a look at the path your users took through your site once they arrive via a remarketing ad. We’d recommend measuring several statistics to determine which ads are working well, including the user’s average time on site and their typical bounce rate. Pages with high bounce rates need to be addressed if you’re to turn the user’s interest into a palpable conversion.
Measuring ROI It’s also important to measure ROI from your campaign based on your pre-determined goals. The statistics available from AdWords are entirely customisable and allow you to find out exactly where your ads have been shown and the impact they’ve had on your consumers.
11.2 Three Common Metrics You Should Consider When Evaluating Your ROI: Conversions (1 Per Click) –track how many users converted into a goal via your remarketing efforts. View Through Conversions – this conversion rate is defined by how many people saw your ad on the Display Network, did not click through to your site straightaway, but returned later to make a purchase. Cost Per Conversion – this is how much you, as the advertiser, are paying per conversion (for example per lead, per sale or per purchase depending on the definition of a ‘conversion’ for your business). Follow this link for more information on calculating your return on investment using a variety of approaches.
11.3 Want To Find Out How Your Ads Are Performing? Find out exactly how well your ads are performing on Display Network placements.
To generate a list of the URLs of sites where your ads have been shown: Go to the ‘Campaigns’ tab once you’ve signed into your AdWords account Head to the top right hand corner of the page and adjust the date range menu depending on the time period you’d like to evaluate Click the ‘Placements’ tab on the ‘Display Network’ tab and go to ‘Managed placements’ or ‘Automatic placements’ to take a look at the expandable tables. ‘Managed placements’ shows you where your ad has appeared based on websites you’ve already added – ‘automatic placements’ shows you where your ad was shown based on your keywords and topic preferences. Click on ‘See Details - > All” and the list will appear You can also download this list using the toolbar above the table Follow this link to discover more ways to judge the performance of your ads.
11.4 Creating Customised Reports Each business is looking for performance data to be displayed in different ways. AdWords makes it easy for you to customise your own reports by carrying out the following actions: Go to the ‘Campaigns’ tab within your AdWords interface Go to the tab containing the particular statistics table you’d like to download Customise the date range, columns, filters and segments according to the data you want to include in you report Click the ‘Download’ button in the toolbar above the table Give your report a name Select the format of the document All the reports you’ve generated will save automatically and be viewable within the ‘Reports’ section of the AdWords interface. You can also email each report to those with or without access to the account by following the ‘Email and schedule report’ link. More information on creating bespoke reports can be found here.
12. Privacy Concerns Marketers need to be educated about retargeting if they are to avoid passing up the opportunity to grab the attention of a huge consumer base. The methods behind retargeting are often misunderstood, which has led to much unfair condemnation of the approach. Despite the rumours circulating the web, remarketing doesn’t actually involve disclosing the personal details of users to the webmaster carrying out the retargeting campaign. Though many describe remarketing tactics as ‘creepy’, in fact, according to Bizrate Insights, the vast majority of consumers interviewed for a study into the marketing practice actually stated that they like being presented with remarketing ads that remind them of products or services they’d recently viewed on the web.
13. Summary There’s a lot to remember, but by taking the information in this whitepaper on board and following our step by step recommendations, you’ll be able to set up a tight, cost-effective remarketing campaign in no time. All you need to do to succeed is bear the following points in mind:
Establish Your Goals Early. Know what you want to achieve from your campaign before you begin the setup process. Tailor Your Campaign To Your Audience. Make sure that you’re reaching the right kinds of consumers by analysing previous data and tailoring your creatives to suit the needs of each audience segment. Use The Tool’s Functionality To Your Advantage. Explore all the features and techniques available to you to create a customised campaign that’s going to enhance your online marketing strategy, not hinder it.
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SEO Positive Ltd Milstrete House 29 New Street Chelmsford CM1 1NT Tel: 0800 088 6000 Email: info@seopositive.co.uk Web: www.seopositive.co.uk