How Remarketing Works

To make it clear, let’s say you’re an online retailer selling art supplies and you would like to reach out to visitors who add items to a shopping cart but for whatever reason, fail to follow through with a purchase. These individuals are much farther into the buying process than someone that executes a simple Google search for “art supplies” and are therefore more valuable. Using Google AdWords, you generate snippets of code to be applied to the shopping cart page as well as the order confirmation page of your website. Once active, these codes will collect users into lists. In order to target just those users that enter a shopping cart without purchasing, you customize a new list that includes all those that begin a cart and none of those that follow through with a sale or “conversion”. From there you create highly targeted ads specific to the potential consumer’s stage in the buying process, something like: “Your Shopping Cart is Still Active, Return Here & Take 20% Off Entire Order of Art Supplies”. These ads, which can include images or just text, will follow the audience throughout Google’s display network, appearing in the margins of websites they visit following their interaction with your site. A click from these users is highly valuable to you because of the high likelihood that they will complete their order.

Why Remarketing Works

We have found the remarketing model to be so successful for two reasons. First, the way in which advertisers can define and target desired audiences is extremely valuable. Generally speaking, good advertisers will “meet the consumer where they are” meaning they will tailor their marketing strategy to appeal to the underlying characteristic that defines the group being targeted. Thanks to behavioral targeting, remarketing does just that by isolating a group of users based on their position in the buying process and engaging them with highly targeted ad content. Audiences and their respective ad strategies can be highly differentiated, yielding superior conversion rates. Secondly, remarketing deals with those already familiar with a company’s website, products, or services so there is no need to introduce yourself but instead, remind the user where they were in the purchasing channel and re-engage them. Even if the user does not click on a shown display ad, they have still seen it. According to a study by comScore, users who have previously been exposed to display ads are 49 percent more likely to visit the advertised site. It’s the same idea behind aggressive political campaigns. If nothing else, make sure they know your name.

Privacy and Remarketing

The remarketing model has been criticized on the grounds that it invades privacy by tracking browsers across the web. It is important to remember that remarketing tags can only track information about where on a site a user spent time, nothing else. No identifying personal information is gathered. The model is sound and issues of privacy should be addressed and clearly explained but should not infringe on this viable tool for small and mid-sized online companies.

Pay Per Click Software

Free Must Have Software:

• AdWords Editor – Manage campaigns on your desktop then upload them to AdWords.
• Microsoft Desktop Editor – Import existing campaigns from AdWords and upload them to the Microsoft AdCenter ad platrofm.
• Jumbo Keyword – Append quotes and braces to expand with exact and phrase match with this online tool.

Paid Software

• We have been using Aquisio to manage our reporting and automation. This is a slick tool that uses native analytics from AdWords, AdCenter and Google Analytics. Its an expensive investment, but being a 5280search client makes it part of the service and more cost effective than purchasing it yourself
• Omniture Search Center: This is a powerful automation and reporting application that leverages the Omniture Site Catalyst platform. This one is typically reserved for the “big boys” in the search marketing world.
• Microsoft Excel:  your going to need Excel at some point when your are serious about Search Marketing. From reporting to generating keyword lists on your desktop, this is a must.
• Adobe CS5: This is one you might not think you need for search campaigns. But as AdWords and AdCenter expand we are finding we spend more time in graphical programs to generate banners for Display Ads and Re-Marketing programs.

Must Have Gear / Hardware for PPC Management

Managing campaigns requires you to be a multi-tasker loading multiple browsers and gathering data from multiple sources in most cases. Really there is not enough monitors in the world for all the applications you might have open while developing or managing a search campaign.

• At least a 23 inch main monitor. With this width you are able to have two browser windows open at one time. For instance, this is key to have AdWords and Analytics open at the same time to make good decisions. Also, you can test landing pages and make sure all of your ads are resolving as expected without opening and minimizing browsers. It’s also nice to have email open or excel open at the same time as having your favorite browser open while completing tasks.
• Keyboard with a 10 key numerical feature. Your not managing PPC effectively if you are single clicking on the top of your keyboard of a lap top. Its a time killer and a must to have an external keyboard to adjust bids quickly.
• An iPad is a nice little accessory to have to manage your music and keep notes on when meeting with clients and helps keep play away from business.

Those are the basics! Managing PPC campaigns is all about making quick and informed decisions based on the data and having the tools of the trade is a critical part.

Your Website Needs an Index, in the Web World that is Called a Sitemap

Thumbing through the yearbook looking for an individual person is a burden, that’s why they have that awesome index in the back that shows all the pages that students are mentioned or pictured. Your website needs the same thing, both for visitors and for search engines. Your site should have a sitemap that is accessible by users to see the most important pages on the site. Link the pages with keyword rich words and use formatting such as indentations to indicate relationships and topic areas. On top of a sitemap on your site, you should also publish a sitemap for the engines and submit it with your Google Webmaster Tools account. You can generate a sitemap using a free tool such as xml-sitemaps.com or you can use plug-ins or tools that are provided from your CMS (Content Management System) such as WordPress to generate your sitemaps and keep them fresh.

The Most Popular Pages Have a Lot of Links

In high school I was a varsity golfer (insert curious eye brow raise here). Besides that, I was not all that active in high school affairs. I really found my niche and friends on the golf course and spent as much of my time there as I could. Knowing that, its not a surprise that my name in the back of the year book only had a couple of numbers after it, the golf team page and the page that referenced my standard yearbook picture. Most of us have a similar story, but there is always that pocket of students who are super involved with high school. Be it in sports, theater, band etc, there are students that are standouts and it shows in the yearbook and in your local bars when the high school stand outs gather in the corner and relive the glory days. All you have to do is glance at the index of the yearbook to see who those kids were. The high school prom queen and king are sure to have a laundry list of pages associated with them and their antics. Think about your website, you probably have pages that you want your visitors to see most often because they are the most interesting, or they have the most compelling content to convert a visitor in to a sale. These pages need to be linked to more frequently than others. Use your footer and navigation to link to these important pages as often as you can, mention them in blog posts, facebook updates and tweets. The more links to a page tells search engines that he page is important. Even better, use keywords and phrases in your text link to help the engine understand the context of the page you are linking to.

The Most Important Pages Are Up Front

If your high school team won the state football championship their senior year you can bet it is one of the first pages in the yearbook. The most important stories of that year are going to be at the start of the yearbook and the less important topics are going to be in the back (sorry jazz hand band county champions). Your website should be the same. The most important pages should be linked from the home page and very close to the root of the website. Links from the home page carry a lot of weight in the eyes of search engines because they assume that they are important. Links in your navigation, footer and other persistent areas of your design are also going to carry a lot of weight because they are referenced on every page and link to high level pages. Make sure your home page links are text based (not caught up in an image or flash) and your navigation is search engine friendly so our search engine bot friends can sort through the clutter and find the good stuff.

External Sources Link To Content That is Interesting

You have to love celebrity yearbook pictures. They are classic. The very popular ones are referenced and linked to quite a bit on the web and on other outlets such as TV and print. Chances are your yearbook is not all that desirable, but there are some out there where a super celebrity is inside and people link to it all the time. If you think about it, this is what a search engine does as its purpose – find interesting content around a certain topic or keyword. When you write your content, try to make it compelling and interesting to an audience that is trying to learn, research, or consume content that they are searching for. Much like this epic picture of Ryan Seacrest, your work will be rewarded with a lot of visitors.