Google AdWords Remarketing: How to make it work for your business

Retargeting in Google AdWords, or Remarketing is the term used to describe targeting users in your campaign that have already visited your website or a certain page of your website. You have probably left an online store after adding items to your shopping cart without checking out at some point. After continuing your journey throughout the web you may have been served a sneaky display ad that said something along the lines on "Forget something?", with photos of the items you left in your cart on this particular online store - this is a perfect example of retargeting.

Retargeting may well become the most complex aspect of all of your online marketing; It can be used for far more than just serving ads to those that have already left your website. A great feature of Remarketing is the ability to target your existing customers and upsell them more products. When tied with the product specific targeting options available, advertisers are able upsell specific products based on what the customer has already purchased. For example, if somebody converts and buys business cards they could be upsold a business card holder. Adding an engaging headline such as "How do you like your new business cards?" would be likely to improve conversions in this situation.

Setting up Google AdWords Remarketing

1. Log into your AdWords account (just in case you didn't think of that) and navigate to the Audiences tab. When you get there, select the "New Audience" option. At this stage it is pretty simple to follow the instructions to create a list name, add a description and decide on campaign duration.
2. At this point, Google is going to supply with some remarketing code, grab this and add it to the landing page of your chosen list. Try hard not to confuse this with a conversion tracking code; doing that would be somewhat of a disaster.
3. Head over to your campaign settings and continue to navigate to Networks and devices.
4. Once you are here, select the display network and opt into only showing ads on pages that match all selected targeting methods.
5. Indicate your preferred impressions per user using frequency capping. Finding the perfect mix of impressions for your list group is crucial. Nobody wants to be served the same ads all day, every day - so be sparing with your frequency capping and avoid annoying your prospects. Don't forget that you have the ability with remarketing to intertwine it with your regular targeting methods such as location and language targeting.
6. Get started creating your Ad Group after you have configured those campaign level settings. At the Ad Group level you will have level you will add the audience. To avoid confusion, keep the Ad Group and remarketing list names the same.
7. Now comes creating your new Ads, if your targeting is spot on this is the bit that can make or break your click-through-rate.
   a. Create text ads
   b. Create image ads
   c. Test ad copy/graphic content
   d. Constantly consider the current stage of the buying cycle of users viewing your ads
8. Add your remarketing list as an audience
9. Remarketing is one of the most complex features of Google AdWords and simply cannot be used effectively by those without a certain level of technical experience. However once this feature has been tried and tested it can lead to a huge increase in returning customers, taking your search engine marketing to a whole new level.

Author Bio: Matthew Ozolins is a well regarded Australian search engine marketing expert specialising in Google AdWords management and optimisation. Matthew provides free content to his readers on a weekly basic on his company blog.