It’s Not a Coincidence; It’s Remarketing!

Have you ever been reading an article online and suddenly noticed an ad for the same pair of shoes you were looking at onthe Nordstrom sitejust minutes before? A few days later, you were researching machines on the Nespresso site, and lo and behold, you were presented with the exact machine that you were considering buying!

Tracking your internet activity is no coincidence

At first, you thought it was just coincidence. “Amazing! I was just looking at those shoes!” But it’s no coincidence. Both the shoes and Nespresso machine are examples of remarketing campaigns–where advertisers can track your internet activity and serve you ads based on actions you’ve taken.

Here’s what’s happening: Online activity is being tracked by cookies

When we land on a site where we may make a purchase, that site installs cookies on our websites to track us. This is generally transparent. These cookies can tellwhat pages wevisited, whichproducts/services welooked at, how long we stayed on the site. They can tell if we’ve added an item to a cart, then failed to complete the transaction.

We may/not receive a message that we’re being cookied, via a cookie consent notice. After Facebook’s recent episode over client data abuse, we can expect these notices to be more evident and comprehensive. Protecting online privacy has become a vital matter.

Who should be using remarketing?

Think about this. How many highway billboards have you driven past that hold absolutely no interest for you? Or how many mindless commercials do you sit through while watching your favorite TV programs? It’s endless; we’re constantly bombarded by advertisements for things in which we have no interest.

Remarketing, on the other hand, helps us reach a predetermined audience

Remarketing campaigns are known for their high level of personalization—we’re generally seeing ads for those items in which we’ve previously expressed an interest. This personalized approach can help increase conversion rates, as it helps bring previous visitors back to finish the shopping experience they started.

Remarketing has become an integral part of many digital marketing efforts because it works

• Economics. Advertising becomes cheaper because these online ads are only being served to the people who want to see them. We’re spending less money for more qualified traffic.
• Personalization. We’re marketing to those who have already shown interest in our products—and we know exactly which products those are.
• Consumer habits.Let your own behavior be your guide. You don’t make a purchase based on your initial visit to a site; rather, you do some comparison shopping. When you see an ad promoting that product, it’s a brilliant way to remind your audience that the product is still available.

Remarketing campaigns aren’t just clever; they’re effective

Remarketing isa strategic way to marketto people who’ve previously visited awebsite. These ads help keep brands top of mind, enticing visitors to come back to purchase. Economical and efficient, remarketing is becoming an important part of every digital marketing plan.

Are you thinking about creating a remarketing program? Talk to us at Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and internet marketing specialists.

Keywords: It’s Where the Online Journey Begins

Our economy has moved online and those businesses that can’t be found online will be challenged to succeed. Keywords are the building blocks that are fundamental to every journey that results in our landing on a website.

Here are some ways that keywords are deployed.

1. For Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

This is the most obvious–we need keyword research to optimize for organic search. Organic search is what we do a gazillion times/day; we key a word or phrase into a search engine such as Google, hoping to get an answer to our question. SEO helps Google bots crawl and index our websites to rank on search engine results pages (SERPs). One of the ways that search engines decide what to rank is by crawling for keywords that show the relationship between the user’s search query and the content on a corresponding website.

2. For maximizing content strategy

We’ve all been told about the relationship between SEO and content. Without content on your website, strong SEO will not follow. Building a comprehensive presence in the online space means updating your website and social media sites with fresh content.

“Effective content strategies start with keyword research,” says Search Engine Land columnist Nate Dame. “Modern keyword research provides significant insight into what audiences want and need.”

Content should have a relationship to keywords

Every single piece of content on your site—a 300-word blog post or 5,000-word white paper, should be related to keywords that strike the right balance between high search volume and competition. To keep in mind: Maybe you did keyword research four or five years ago when you created your website. It might be time to redo this. Google changes its algorithms some 500 times/year and this affects search terms and competition.

3: For Paid Campaigns/Pay-per-Click (PPC)

Paid campaigns–PPC ads, display ads, remarketing or social media campaigns–are also keyword focused. Paid search is an auction where you bid on individual keywords

Keywords once again are the building blocks that make up ad groups, and these ad groups are the basis of campaigns. If your keywords have low search volume, then your ads are going to get little or no traction. If your keywords aren’t relevant to your target audience, you won’t be attracting the audience you’re courting–completely wasting your marketing dollars.

The bottom line: Keyword research is ground zero for all search marketing campaigns

But more than that, identifying your keywords and using them throughout all of your online communications is critical to their success.

Do you need help with your PPC or other online marketing program? Talk to us at Top of Mind Marketing. We’re internet marketing specialists.