Remarketing – The Modern Marketing Ninja

  • Santoso

Google Remarketing post for B2Bento-02There is a scene in Minority Report, where an advertisement ‘follows’ the character wherever he goes. The information displays along his journey show a particular advertisement targeting him as he passes them. I remember watching this on DVD and chatting with my father as to how feasible it would be  (this was in 2003). I said that a person just needs to carry a transmitter which might be a tiny chip implanted in his body and a receiver in the information display will detect it and trigger the relevant content”. My father said “I’d like to see that in the near future”. Guess what – the future is here with Remarketing.

Just that it is not a chip implanted in your body, but a cookie placed in your browser. Well, that’s your ‘body’ in the internet world, isn’t it? When you visit a page that is coded with a remarketing tag, Google leaves a cookie in your browser. Wherever you go and whatever sites you visit after that – if the sites are a partner of Google’s display advertising network, for instance – you will see a banner advertisement of that brand.

That is Remarketing. Sounds creepy? Read on to see why it may not be and how you can make the most out of it.

Are you an annoying stalker?

Google for one makes it very easy to get started with remarketing. You have a “main list” that is pre-created by Google. This is the list of people who have been to your site. To start populating this list, you need to copy the tag given by Google to your entire site, i.e., all pages whose visitors you want to your ads to follow after they’ve left them.

If you are a lazy marketer, that’s it. You can now relax and let all your remarketing ads do their job. Question is, are you sure you are following them with the right content, with the right offer – or are you perhaps behaving like an annoying Chinatown tout who follows every tourist and offers them all kinds of keychains and trinkets?

Watch when they come, follow when they go

You can create rule-based lists, and this should be your next step after placing the provided tag across your site. Now that Google knows when someone arrives at your site, get Google to work harder and give you more information about them before you decide how you should approach them next. For example, you could make a list of people who browse information about your cloud offerings, or people who download a whitepaper about video conferencing, or people who browse different types of your storage and servers. With the ability to set rules with URL “contains…”, “starts with…”, “equals…”, etc – you can categorise your leads and approach them with relevant offers, something that most likely is a solution they are looking for. Here’s a quick primer from Google on this:

 

Send your ninjas on missions

Google Ads are your ninjas in mission.Your ads should work like ninjas being sent by their master to follow different targets with different missions. Prepare an interesting cloud offer to follow those who browse your cloud solutions, and a trial license offer for those who read about your range of SaaS. Your ads should have a specific mission and target: display network only, targeted placement, and a target audience chosen from the list.

Ninjas get tired too, and people change

A while after sending your ninja out on the mission, you need to pull him back and maybe send another ninja to follow the same target. That is your next offer.  Because even repetition and regular touches increase the chance of conversion, after a period of time the same offer will reach a point when it ceases to be effective. The IT manager who was looking for a storage solution might have already gotten it and is now looking for a mobile collaboration solution. Just don’t send the wrong ninja, that would be embarrassing.

Monitor how your ads perform, make sure it’s linked to Google Analytics so you can track when a conversion happens and which ninja completed the mission.

What else could a marketing ninja can do? Chime in or talk to us.

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