What Are Remarketing Campaigns?

Remarketing campaigns have been in use by sophisticated PPC advertisers for some time now, and you may have heard about them or are wondering if they’re right for you. First a quick definition:

Remarketing campaigns (aka retargeting campaigns) serve text or image ads to people who have already visited your website.

That’s it. It’s a simple concept and can be a highly effective way to reach customers who already considered your product or service (we know this because they visited your site), but decided not to take action. Without a remarketing campaign, those previous website visitors would be difficult or impossible to reach. With remarketing, you can serve up custom messages or promotions to potential customers who visited your site, but weren’t ready to buy just yet.

Consider this example:

-Stephanie visits your Portland Fuzzy Socks site, puts a pair of alpaca socks in her shopping cart, but abandons the purchase.

-Your remarketing campaign “cookies” Stephanie and — while she visits other websites or performs a related search — displays an ad offering 15% off her next purchase.

-Only people like Stephanie see that special 15% off ad, so you can laser focus your offer to just people who placed an item in their shopping cart, or visited a certain section of your site. The targeting criteria is up to you.

Google, AdRoll, Bing and other PPC platforms now offer remarketing campaigns. Google has also introduced the capability to target users whose email addresses you have with targeted ads via their Customer Match program.

PPC has moved beyond basic Search campaigns with text ads — try a new tactic like Remarketing to supercharge your campaigns and improve your ROI.