I’ve already told you that you should be using remarketing campaigns to drive traffic and boost sales. If you haven’t read that article, click on this blue text (that’s a link) and read up. Like I say in that lovely post, remarketing is a seriously powerful tool in a PPC marketer’s chest that takes your campaigns from zero to hero.
So now you’re serving ads to every Tom, Dick, Joan, Jane, Harry, and Sue that visits your website. Time to sit back and watch the millions roll in right? Well… no. Three weeks in and you see that your conversion rate has fallen faster than Blockbuster stock and your boss has already started interviews for your replacement. What happened? Ameet told me that I’d be rolling in the sales now that I’m not just letting people walk away empty-handed! That LIAR!
First of all, I would NEVER lie to you, I respect you too much to do that. The real mistake you made was thinking that I would be able to give you all of my secrets in one short blog post. I’m generous, but even I have limits. Now… let’s dive into what REALLY brings in the dollars!
Doing More Work.
Seriously, everything I’m about to tell you is that next level of PPC that you only get from someone willing to spend more than 20 minutes a month on your campaigns. You think I’m exaggerating, but I’ve audited enough Broad Match-only “professionally managed” Google Ads accounts that I could have started a company with the slack that’s out there.
Wait.
Anyway, you’re not here to listen to me throw shade (that’s what my Twitter account is for), so here’s your content!
Remarketing to customers successfully means taking four essential actions:
- Using Dynamic Remarketing Ads
- Avoiding Ad Fatigue
- Using Bespoke, Unique Landing Pages
- Following Up On Ad Placements
Dynamic Remarketing Ads
Have you ever gone to buy a pair of shoes… and then reconsidered? Perhaps you weren’t sold on the price. Maybe you thought “I have enough low black tops, I really shouldn’t…”. Maybe you just got distracted by your latest YouTube binge and closed the tab accidentally. Whatever the reason you left, and you aren’t coming back.
Except wouldn’t you know it, that same pair of shoes is right there on the sidebar of the page you’re on! Not just any pair, but YOUR pair. High tops. In Black. Right there.
OKAY UNIVERSE. YOU WIN. BUY BUY BABY!
Scenarios like this are made possible by some clever wizardry (and coding) that tracks which pages a customer goes to on your site, then serves ads based on this dynamic data; sadly, the universe doesn’t care what’s on your feet. There are several ways that you set these campaigns up (and while they are mostly straightforward, you should look up your particular eCommerce solution’s steps to make sure it’s done right) but they all rely on your GTM set-up being correct. Google can’t serve the right ad if it has no idea what pages go with which ad campaigns!
Dynamic Remarketing allows your audience to be automatically segmented into lists that are bespoke to each and every item or service you sell. I’d tell you how to do it, but there’s a great writeup here on the steps you take (if you use Google Shopping as your marketplace).
Segmenting your ads based on product is an excellent way of avoiding the next thing on my list..
Ad Fatigue
Nobody likes someone who endlessly repeats themselves. I mean they heard you the first time, and nobody likes someone who endlessly repeats themselves. All joking aside it’s a proven fact that repeated viewings of the same ad diminishes that ad’s effectiveness. Using Dynamic Remarketing is a great way to avoid this, but what about the vast majority of companies that don’t have the luxury of multiple product offerings?
Thankfully I have a few ideas for you poor souls too. A great trick I use is to set up timed campaigns. This means you set up your remarketing campaign to start on a graduated timeline. Maybe you have some simple cart abandonment or “hey did you forget about us?” ads that start on day one. Day 3 might put that customer on a list that shows a discount ad, or an offer for one of your more popular services. You can continue this gradual shift in your message by using a few different campaigns set to start at various dates from their first visit or triggering action.
Another tactic is to build in some buffer time to these delayed-release campaigns to avoid seeming too desperate for attention like a high school first crush. You gotta be cool and leave them the hell alone for a while… absence makes the wallet grow fonder after all. Try setting up a timed campaign with designed 1-3 day breaks in between ads campaigns to allow for a cooling-off period. You can even take a week off… it’s not a bad thing!
Another thing that gets boring is having the same landing page for all of your ad campaigns. Guess what tip #3 is?
Use Bespoke, Unique Landing Pages
Your campaigns are different, your targeting is different, even your ad text is different… so why do all roads lead back to Rome?
Leave the Legion behind and embrace a strategy designed for A.D.by creating landing pages that speak directly to the ad that brought in the click. By now, you should be running separate ad groups for separate messages designed to bring in relevant clicks. Let’s say you run an auto body shop. You may service brakes, do oil changes, and repair mufflers. You should have separate ad groups designed to target searches for each of these services, and ads that mention these keywords.
Now imagine they all just get dumped onto a page that lists all of these services in alphabetical order. How does that make the customer feel?
Like a number. You don’t actually care what they want, you just want them in the door!
Avoid this 1984-esque treatment by creating separate pages for each campaign. I’m not saying they need to be so radically different that you spend thousands of dollars on website development, but even just changing the order of sections on the page to put the most relevant one at the top is enough to boost conversions.
If you want to be extra and go all out (or only have a few campaigns), try to create completely tailored pages for each ad group. Maybe some items you sell are customizable, so you put an order sheet together with custom fields. Maybe you have a service that needs to be booked in advance, so you put a calendar there. Any way you slice it, the more tailored the landing page is to the search that brought the customer there… the better your results will be.
Okay, so you’re ALMOST firing on all cylinders. Guess what? Your last check is a re-check.
Follow Up On Your Ad Placements
“Set it and forget it” only works on rotisseries from the Home Shopping Network, not your ads. In order to get the maximum benefit from all of your hard work creating the smartest, best-managed, most custom-tailored ads, you need to make sure your ads are being shown in the right places. While you can’t pick and choose what websites, placements, or even exact time (sometimes) your ads are shown, you can absolutely whittle it down to a greatest hits album.
By checking the “where ads showed” tab of your Google Ad results dashboard, you can easily see what placements should be culled from the herd immediately. This is low-hanging fruit, yes… but you need to crawl before you can walk. Exclude that site from your eligible placements and thank me later for saving you money.
Like the other steps, this isn’t a one-time deal. You should be checking this list frequently to start (Like once a week for the first month) and then periodically as your campaign matures. As a handy side benefit, you could identify potential partnerships if you see a particularly lucrative CTR coming from a site that makes sense. On the flip side, you can catch potential click fraud (but as technology evolves this has become less likely) by identifying placements with oddly high CTR that don’t make sense… like maybe on a site controlled by the shady Agency you employ…
I hope you have made it to the end of this post just a little bit wiser, and maybe a little bit more charged up to get YOUR campaigns running like a bullet train to Tokyo. Let me know in the comments if my tips raised your ROI, or if you have any questions about how to max your Remarketing ROAS.