About a year ago, I was looking at our datacenter’s website, and then suddenly I noticed their banner ad… everywhere! “Man, those guys sure know how to advertise.”
Occasionally, I’d notice other ads (Like the one on the left) following me around on the web, but it didn’t sink in.
Six months go by & I didn’t give it much thought. But then, at a software conference, one of the speakers said “You’re an idiot if you’re not using re-marketing”.
Well, being fast on the uptake isn’t exactly my strong suit, but it finally meant something to me. It turns out that creating a “Remarketing” campaign in Google Adwords was incredibly easy, and actually is proving to be a very inexpensive way to reach our audience.
What is remarketing?
Remarketing (also called retargeting) is the word for those ads that follow you from site to site. Sometimes they’re a bit creepy, but they’re incredibly effective of reminding you of which other site’s you’ve visited.
The way it works is you set up a remarketing campaign in Adwords (although there are other options out there), put a special piece of tracking code at the bottom of a specific web page or your whole site, and create the different size ads you want people to see.
Why would you want that?
Folks on the web have short attention spans. I know I’ve said, many times, “That’s a cool website, I’ll take a look at it later”, then never get back. Having a remarketing ad is a way to remind people who’ve already been to your pages about you.
What’s even neater about remarketing ads is that you only pay when people click on them. So for most of the people who’re being exposed to your message… you’re not being charged very much or very often.
Our results so far
At StonExpo, someone came to our booth saying “I don’t know how you got an ad on my local car dealership’s website, but I looked at it last night in the hotel. Now I’m here at your booth.”
That’s cool, but what’s even more impressive is the number of views the remarketing ads have been generating. Over the last few months, the number of impressions is over 1000 per day, and climbing.
Because we’re only allocating a small budget, we’re probably limiting the audience a bit. Even with those thousands of potential views, only a tiny handful of people click on the link. That means that the cost is small, especially if you compare the cost to trade shows, print advertising, or even regular online ads.
It’s a little tricky to know the cause for sure, but our overall website traffic has been growing since the time we started our remarketing campaign (along with doing more consistent email marketing, more content on our blog, and use of social media) It looks like the numbers are at least 20% higher.
If you’re not already doing remarketing, you should sign up right away. For the investment of a few hours and only a few dollars per day, you can make sure you’re reaching your customers and prospects long after they leave your website.
Want to know more? At Moraware, we make software for countertop fabricators. CounterGo is countertop drawing, layout, and estimating software. JobTracker is scheduling software that helps you eliminate the time you waste looking for job folders. RemnantSwap is a free place to buy and sell granite remnants with fabricators near you.
