What is remarketing?
Remarketing, also called “Retargeting,” as well as “Remessaging,” is an automated display media that allows advertisers to publish image or text ads on partner sites around the web to users who belong to selected audience lists. These lists are made up users of who have picked up a targetable cookie during the course of web browsing. When a user acquires a remarketing cookie ad servers are able to recognize them as special in the ad auction and display the appropriate ad. The length of time these kinds of cookies stay active (duration), and correspondingly the length of time a user sees your remarketing display ads, are all controllable by the advertiser. Impression frequency caps are also often employed to tailor the media run to fit an advertiser’s needs.
A slightly “creepy” media?
Remarketing is often described as advertising that “follows” users around the web. While it is hard to argue that it does seem slightly “stalker-ish,” it is important to point out that these ads are actually great relationship building tools (following people around in real life, however, is not). This technology allows advertisers to display ads targeted for very specific user groups – oftentimes offering them special discounts and messaging made specifically useful for them!
How Google makes this easy!
Remarketing is not a new concept. Cookie-based targeting has grown steadily over the past 6 or 7 years and more recently has become an incredibly versatile tool, especially for marketers with access to the major ad exchanges, which act like “giant cookie databases,” allowing advertisers to slice and dice who they want to “follow” around the web! Fortunately for the rest of us, Google has taken a different approach, and has made remarketing an incredibly simple tool to use by building it into adwords as a “self-serve” component.
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Professional personal trainer Carl Juneau put the theory of video-as-a-conversion-tool to the test with a series of A/B or "split" test scenarios on his website (www.sixpackabsexercises.com). Juneau had heard that his competitor was getting more sales thanks to the use of video on his website, so Juneau decided to try it himself. He even included a control agent in each test that did NOT feature video as an option, just to be fair and impartial. What did he find? In each of the A/B test scenarios conducted on his website, viewers 'clicked-through' to the next step in the sales process at a higher frequency when a video option was involved. In one of the tests, the click-through rate was increased by 46%.
This makes sense, as Internet video marketing saves a viewer time compared to reading lengthy website content, is often more entertaining, involves more of the senses and is a more holistic learning tool. You can read about Juneau's exercise in video marketing here in more detail, sponsored by Visual Website Optimizer.
We continue to tout the exceptional advantages of Internet video marketing as a way of advertising your company's products & services on the Web. Afterall, Internet videos are inexpensive, appeal to all generations of viewers, and basically give your website 'wings' since the videos can be seen on YouTube and other video portals as well as on your website in strategically placed locations. We'd like you to think about Juneau's findings....Internet video marketing is definitely not an exercise in futility!
1 Comment »Your open rates stink. Your click-through rate is below your industry's average. The conversion rate on your landing page is… wait, you're not using a landing page? These are all signs that your email marketing program is failing. Here are 4 reasons why.
Number One – Your messages contain too many images.
I know you like using fancy fonts, buttons and gradients in your messages, but anyone who receives your message in Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo!, AOL, or Hotmail is required to manually turn on the images for each of your messages if they have not added you to their address book or white-listed your email address.
I'm not going to tell you to give up all of your images. Spend five extra minutes and determine which parts of your message must be an image and change the rest to HTML.
Number Two – You're not using a relevant landing page.
What is the purpose of your email? Is it to generate sales, collect new leads or convert old leads? Then why do the links in your message point to your home page?
You need to create new landing pages that makes it easy for your subscribers to complete your desired action. Send them to a shopping cart that already has the product in it or display a lead form that's populated with the information you already have about the subscriber. Keep the action obvious and the process simple.
Number Three – You let a Web designer code your message.
There are a lot of people out there who know HTML or think they do because they can use Dreamweaver. Unfortunate, HTML renders differently in email than it does on websites. And to complicate matters even more, some email clients render email HTML differently, strip out style sheets, and don't display background images.
Needless to say, there is a lot to consider when coding HTML for email. If you want your message to display consistently for all of your subscribers, you need the person coding your HTML to know the specific changes that need to be made.
Number Four – You aren't using calls to action.
Why are you sending email if you aren't looking for a specific response? It doesn't matter who you are or why you are sending email, everyone is looking for some sort of conversion. Just like with the landing page, you don't want people guessing what that conversion goal is. Use calls to action in your subject line, throughout your copy, and as the text on buttons. If you have different calls to action in your message, create a separate landing page for each of them that easily allows the specific action to be taken.
1 Comment »Many businesses want to do more with Internet marketing and they automatically think search engine optimization is the way to go. The problem for many businesses is that moving up the organic rankings sometimes takes time. For this reason, PPC is an attractive option for businesses trying to get in front of users while organic efforts are busy building steam. With that said, even though PPC can turn around results quickly, it is something that needs to be approached with thought and care. As someone that has seen a fair share of poorly structured accounts, I wanted to give 5 simple tips on what NOT to do:
- Have tons of keywords in an ad group – PPC is all about relevancy. Ad groups contain two things: keywords and ad copy. If you have too many keywords within an ad group, it is almost impossible to have relevant ad copy. Limit your keyword lists to groups that are very similar to each other, and make your ad copy speak to those keywords.
- Target desktops/laptops and mobile devices in the same campaign – People search differently if they are on a desktop versus a mobile device. Plus, keywords are generally less expensive on mobile devices. Why would you want to pay more per click if you don’t have to? Instead, create mirrored campaigns, one for desktops and one for mobile devices, and decrease your bids on the mobile targeted campaign.
- Run your keywords in only broad match – You may be showing up for irrelevant searches and therefore hurting the click-through rate and quality score of an account (which makes it more expensive to advertise). Check out other match types like phrase, exact, and broad match modifier.
- No negative keywords – As the name implies, negative keywords work in opposite of regular keywords. Using negatives allows you to disqualify irrelevant but similar keywords from triggering ads and increasing cost. Similar to running keywords only in broad, running your campaign with no negative keywords can mean irrelevant searches costing you money.
- Taking your keywords to the home page – Searchers want to get what they are looking for with as little clicks as possible. Having potential buyers land on your home page and expecting them to then hunt for what they were initially looking for can lead to high bounce rates and low conversion rates. You already paid for the click; get the people what they want with a targeted landing page!
Not sure if you can do this on your own? Want more tips? Get help from PPC experts and contact Fathom Online Marketing Today! We can help with campaign structures, landing pages, optimization, and much more.
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