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Remarketing: A Powerful E-Marketing Tool You Need To Try

 In PPC, PPC Optimization

Imagine an e-marketing tool that enables your ads to follow your customers or prospects around the Web, ensuring that your company’s products and services stay “top of mind.”

Then imagine that this tool is also likely to increase your conversion rate – from a mere click to a sale – by 1% or more, which can translate to a 30% increase in sales.

Remarketing Banners

Remarketing Banners (not actual size)

It may sound too good to be true, but that tool, called “remarketing,” is only a few clicks away and is very effective for targeting both businesses and consumers.

So whether you are a B2B business looking for leads or a B2C looking for sales, remarketing can help. It’s easy to set up on your own or with the help of a search agency.

One of the biggest benefits of participating in remarketing is that you get more chances to convert  leads and sales that you didn’t get the first time someone browsed your site.

It’s also a way to keep your brand and your products or services visible to people as they journey across the Internet as you only pay for the clicks and not for the impressions.

Bicycle Buys

Bicycle Buys Remarketing Banner

Here’s an example. A prospect is thinking of buying one of the kitchen utensils you sell and, in fact, clicks on your PPC ad or simply visits your site to learn more. However, they’re not ready to buy — yet. Now, every time they visit a Web site that shows Google ads, a banner ad showing your brand with a promotion appears on that page. The prospect may wonder why this is happening, but this direct, targeted form of advertising is likely to convert to a lead or a sale when and if the prospect finally decides it’s time to buy.

Ronen Chen

Ronen Chen Remarketing Banner

But wait – as they say in infomercials – there’s more! Perhaps your customers and prospects don’t click on your PPC ads. Does that mean they’ll never be added to your remarketing list?

You may never learn this elsewhere, however Google has informed us that you can also build up your remarketing list with people who open your e-newsletter! When they receive it in their “inbox,” the mere act of opening it will add them to your remarketing list. That function is currently in “beta testing” at Google but it works nonetheless.

Independent Living Aids Remarketing Banner

Independent Living Aids Remarketing Banner

Sounds great, you say, but isn’t this costly? Actually, the extra service itself is free if you already use Google Adwords. The only additional cost is that of creating the banner ads – generic ones or ones displaying targeted offers — that will appear on subsequent Web pages. But the good news is the per-click cost for a banner ad is less expensive than the per-click cost for a Google text ad.

Even less expensive is what is known as an “assisted conversion.” Say a prospect who you remarketed to sees your banner ads on various Web sites and decides to buy your kitchen utensil. But, rather than click on the banner ad, they go back to your Web site and purchase it there. That’s counted as an “assisted conversion” and that costs you even less than if they had clicked on your banner ad.

RemarketingGiven all the advantages of remarketing, are there any disadvantages? Not really. What you need to do is overcome the fear of annoying your prospects which, we know, is a key concern. Yes, your ads will be following them around from Web site to Web site. And, instead of their seeing, say, a banner ad for a Chevy truck, they’ll see your brand. But isn’t one of your banners more likely to be appealing to a prospect given the fact that they have already shown interest in your products or services?

And should that remain a concern of yours, you can exercise the “frequency tagging” option which enables you to limit the number of ads per day that an individual will see – anywhere from one per day to unlimited — as well as the number of weeks the ad will show up.

Remarketing is an e-marketing technology that ought to be considered, mainly because the ROI is very impressive. Typically a PPC ad that gets a 3% conversion rate is considered very successful. But that leaves 97% of clickers “unconverted.” If remarketing is able to raise the conversion rate by 1% (that’s over 30%) or more, why would you not be interested in participating?

And, even if you don’t raise your conversion rate, the fact that prospects will be seeing your brand over and over again – well, that’s what branding is all about, isn’t it? 

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