During our recent webinar, How to Step up your Retargeting Strategy for Higher Conversions, many of our audience members asked very informed questions. We want to share the Q&A portion of the webinar as the questions & answers are very valuable, if you are looking to improve your own retargeting efforts for your organization.
Question: Can retargeting engines provide enough data about our anonymous digital property visitors so we can understand their demographics and modify the user experience to align with it?
Answer: Given that you’re looking to customize your user’s experience depending upon demographic data, it may be more advantageous to look into what data management platforms (DMPs) can enable. A DMP allows you to aggregate 1st, 2nd, 3rd party data in an effort to tackle a number of different marketing and advertising goals through customer experience management. For example, you could utilize a DMP to recognize audiences as they reach your site and customize the landing page experience specifically to that group.
Question: Considering all the remarketing vendors you mentioned, is there a documented “coverage” map that each vendor reaches (either geo, or vertical?)
Answer: By and large most retargeting vendors offer extensive network placements that extend a far reach geographically and vertically. It’s worth looking into their specific partner-offering to see the quality of inventory they place advertising on.
Question: Is retargeting available in the free version of Google Analytics?
Answer: Yes it is!
Question: Can you only retarget in text or banner ads, or can you retarget by utilizing video such as pre-roll?
Answer: You can retarget to people who have been to your site using video as well. Any list you create in AdWords or Google Analytics can be used in AdWords Video Campaigns for retargeting. On the flip side, you can also retarget text, banner, or video ads to people who interact with your YouTube videos or channel via AdWords Video Campaigns.
Question: Can you target people searching for competitor’s terms that haven’t visited your site?
Answer: You can. This would be considered search retargeting and involves setting your retargeting campaign to show to those that have searched for terms contextually relevant to your specific products/services. In this specific situation, you’d want to target those users that have searched for competitor’s terms. You’ll want to ensure your actual campaign creative reflects the value-add of your products and services over those of your competitor.
Question: Do you have any stats on the effectiveness of remarketing in a B2B market?
Answer: Not finding anything particularly interesting, but this at least addresses retargeting for B2B. View link: https://www.komarketingassociates.com/blog/ppc/guide-retargeting-remarketing-b2b-marketers/.
Question: Does Bing offer remarketing?
Answer: Bing Ads does not specifically offer retargeting from the platform itself, but you are able to utilize retargeting solutions through Microsoft Advertising specifically.
Question: Does retargeting require GA’s Universal Analytics code version or does it work with classic analytics?
Answer: Retargeting works with both Universal and classic Google Analytics. For both, you’ll need to make the adjustment to your code to turn on retargeting.
Question: How does Google charge: CPA or CPM?
Answer: You can use CPM, CPC, and CPA bidding for retargeting through Google. If your goal is to drive conversions, stick with CPC or CPA bidding if you have enough conversion data for Google to make accurate bid adjustments. If your focus is on branding, then CPM bidding might be a good option. With CPA or CPC bidding, you’ll only be charged when someone clicks your ad. When using CPM bidding, you’ll be charged per 1,000 impressions of your ad.
Question: Can we do dynamic retargeting through the Google network?
Answer: Yes, you can do dynamic retargeting via Google AdWords. When you create Retargeting lists in AdWords for the first time, it will ask you to choose dynamic or regular retargeting. When a user visits your site, the dynamic code will track what product pages the user visits and will plug these product images into dynamic ads and show them when the user is on other sites on the Display Network.
Question: For search retargeting, are you retargeting through text ads or display ads?
Answer: With search retargeting (RLSA) you are showing retargeting ads to people on Google search, so they will have to be text ads.
Question: How do you set up a social media remarketing campaign?
Answer: Multiple 3rd party vendors allow you to action your messaging via the social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Here are a list of some of the current vendors offering retargeting on Twitter for example: AdRoll, Adara, BlueKai, Chango, Dstillery, ValueClick, [x+1]
Question: How important are landing pages when for retargeting campaigns?
Answer: Extremely! Considering that you’re marketing back to someone that has specifically BEEN to your site or is of a similar audience type, the way you handle a site visitor will make great strides in driving conversions. Ensure that your landing pages are relevant to your campaign and help to provide additional information to assist the conversion event and drive that action forward.
Question: If one does RT campaigns with multiple vendors, and some vendors insist on placement of their RT tag, how can one avoid stepping on one’s own feet and generating excessive frequency?
Answer: This is exactly the reason for careful planning, and careful execution. With so many networks buying inventory across similar sites, it’s important to understand where and when your ads are showing, and more importantly where overlap may occur. Stagger campaigns, set up testing, and always review placements after campaigns have run to keep this in check. Furthermore, utilize frequency capping to keep impressions served from going overboard.
Question: If we’re running an AdWords campaign, have AdWords/Analytics synced, is it more beneficial to create the remarketing list within the Analytics environment or AdWords environment? Are there more benefits with one versus the other for where remarketing lists are created?
Answer: There are benefits to using both AdWords and Analytics to create your retargeting lists. In AdWords, you are limited to defining audiences based on urls they did or did not visits. With Google Analytics, you can also define audiences by behaviors, such as new users, time on site, event completions, etc. A benefit of AdWords retargeting lists is that you can take advantage of Google search remarketing. This is where you can target search ads to people on Google search who have been to your site and are typing in keywords you’re bidding on. I recommend using both methods so you can take advantage of all of these features.
Question: Is it possible to add retargeting tags to a YouTube channel/video/list and then use the collected data to remarket back to website?
Answer: Yes, you can create lists based on people who interacted with videos or subscribed to your channel within AdWords. You can then retarget to them on the Display Network with text, image, or video ads.
Question: Is there really a way if someone went to Google and typed in one of my SEO keywords, that one of these platforms could identify that audience even if they didn’t come to my web site? Say I sell “Dinosaur Eggs” and someone types that into a search engine, sees my web site first but goes to my competitor’s site, how can I capture that customer? What platform would I use to retarget these?
Answer: Yes, via search retargeting. Here you’ll want to market to those potential customers based upon the contents of their search queries. So you’d effectively bid to show your ads to folks that have searched for content related to ‘dinosaur eggs’.
Question: What is an optimal duration for a user to stay on a remarketing list?
Answer: There is no one optimal duration. It will depend on many factors include your remarketing goal, purchase cycle duration, etc. The best thing to do is test different durations and see which leads to the most interaction and conversions for your website.
Question: Where do you actually make your rules for retargeting, in analytics or or the ad network /media optimizer tools or both?
Answer: You can make rules for retargeting in both Analytics and the ad network. Each provide benefits the other does not, so make use of both depending on the audience you want to track.
In addition to the Q&A, during the live webinar we asked our audience to evaluate their primary retargeting method?
Here are some of the responses from the audience poll. Not surprisingly, 31% of the webinar audience reporting they are not currently retargeting their site traffic at all.
Organizations need to seize the opportunity of increased conversions and better qualified leads that retargeting efforts can offer.
In case you missed the live webinar, we would like to offer you a chance to view the archived version online.
In this on-demand webinar, learn how to take your retargeting to the next level by:
- Integrating your analytics data using Google & Adobe platforms
- Understanding the different types of retargeting
- Identifying appropriate follow-up channels
This session explores real-world retargeting scenarios and will be useful for anyone who is tasked with acquiring customers for their organization.
There’s a wealth of intelligence available that you may not be tapping into in order to get the most from your retargeting (also referred to as remarketing) efforts.
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ABOUT THE PRESENTER
Alan Amerault
Associate Director, Digital Marketing, Cardinal Path
Alan comes to Cardinal Path following five years in both the search and display media divisions of Microsoft Advertising. From Seattle to London, he has collaborated with clients across several North American and European markets and a wide range of verticals. While at Microsoft, this included agency management and Search/Display media buying service to top clients such as eBay, Booking.com, Thomas Cook, Amazon UK/France. His current role with Cardinal Path spans delivery across a range of leading client organizations and a variety of online channels, as well as conducting formal training to help people get the most out of their Google and Microsoft investments.
ABOUT THE PRESENTER
Dave Eckman
Co-founder, Principal Consultant, Cardinal Path
Dave oversees the design of efficient and cost-effective solutions for Cardinal Path clients and establishes lasting relationships through exceptional customer service. Keeping the company apace of the latest trends, Dave is an expert in the technology that drives the industry and has managed a diverse portfolio of projects for some of the most recognizable brands including Trader, Visa, YouTube, and Electronic Arts, among others. Dave holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Victoria’s School of Business and a Certificate in Multimedia Studies from the UBC Continuing Studies program.
