How Remarketing PPC Ads Can Give Your Small Business a Boost
- Written by Alex Jones
Being visible online is vital for small businesses, and one way to get the right type of visitors to your website, is to use remarketing. In this article, Adzooma, the all-in-one digital marketing platform, offer tips to businesses and beginners who are undertaking PPC advertising.
When you run a small business, you’re bound to want to make sure every penny you spend is worthwhile.
That’s why many small businesses use digital advertising - it is often more cost effective than traditional forms of marketing. In fact, a recent survey of 350 small businesses found that 49% plan to increase their digital marketing spend this year and 28% plan to spend more on PPC ads. If you’re spending money on PPC advertising, using remarketing can help you get the good return on investment you’re after.
What is remarketing?
Ever found yourself being followed around the web by a particular ad? That’s remarketing being used! It works by targeting ads at people who have previously visited a particular website. So that next time they are browsing another website, they’ll see an ad from the site they’d previously visited.
To start using remarketing, you need be sure you’ll get at least 1000 unique visitors to your site during the timeframe you plan on running your campaign.
How small businesses benefit from remarketing
Remarketing has a number of benefits to small businesses. To begin with, it will help you use your PPC budget more cost effectively because you can make your ad more targeted, rather than simply bidding on generic keywords.
You can increase your chances of getting conversions by targeting customers who have previously signalled they are likely to buy from you. For example, you can target people who have abandoned items in their shopping cart. According to the Baymard Institute, the average online shopping cart abandonment rate is 69.23% - so there’s clearly a lot of untapped potential there! You could target such people with a discount on the product they showed an interest in, to nudge them towards completing that purchase.
You can even choose to only show your ad to people who recently visited your website, so you can reach them while they are still interested in making a purchase.
Another way to identify which leads to pursue is to segment your audience based on how they behaved on your website, rather than assuming every visitor you get is a qualified lead. You can do this using metrics such as the time they spent on your site, the number of pages they visited and the products they browsed.
If you are looking to grow your business, then focussing on getting repeat customers is often easier than attracting new ones. Remarketing can help with this by enabling you to upsell and cross sell to existing customers.
Remarketing is also a brilliant way for small businesses to gain brand awareness. It allows you to stay at the forefront of people’s minds. A study published in the Journal of Advertising concluded that people’s recall of an advert increases linearly until eight exposures are reached. It then plateaus and after 10 exposures it begins to drop, along with the consumer’s attitude towards the brand. Even though these conclusions were drawn from an experimental setting, the principle is generally thought to hold true in reality, although you may be able to slightly increase the number of ad exposures.
Remarketing can also give small brands the kind of exposure that is typically reserved for bigger players. You can use it to get your ad featured on incredibly popular websites that are part of the ad display network, such as The Guardian newspaper. Just imagine how much you’d have to pay to advertise in the print version of such a publication.
You don’t need a huge budget to create a captivating ad either. Google’s ad gallery offers a range of free templates you can use to create professional looking ads.
How you can start getting results from remarketing
By now I hope you’re convinced remarketing is worth a try, so here are some tips to help you get off to a good start:
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Make sure your ads are highly targeted by catering them to the stage of the conversion funnel they apply to. To do this, begin by looking at user behaviour on your site to work out what stage of the funnel they’re in. For example, people who browse several pages, including product pages, are more likely to be at the end of the funnel. While those who only look at one or two pages and have a high bounce rate may be at the start of their buying journey.
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Make your landing page work as hard as possible by featuring information on it that is closely related to the ad. Make it as easy as possible for customers to carry out the action you want them to take once they’re on the page.
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Don’t forget to apply the core principles of effective PPC advertising - such as testing your landing pages and CTAs and making sure your copy is well written.
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We’re sure you’ll agree that constantly being followed around by an ad can get creepy. So, put a cap on how frequently your ad is shown and make sure you set an end date for it too.
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Focus on high performing sites. If you notice a particular website is not delivering results, stop wasting money by advertising on it and focus on those that are working for you.
Conclusion
From increasing brand awareness, to getting more repeat customers, and growing your business, remarketing is a great way for small business to put their PPC budget to good use.
