What is Google Remarketing & Is It Right For My Service Business?

Most small busi­ness own­ers have heard of Pay Per Click (PPC) by now. You guys have also heard of Google Adwords too? Well, Google has made over 90% of their mon­ey through com­pa­nies using their Google Adwords ser­vice over the years. In recent years, Google start­ed anoth­er type of paid adver­tis­ing which is known as ​“remar­ket­ing.” So what is that all about and is it some­thing I think can work well for your busi­ness?

Remar­ket­ing Defined

When a vis­i­tor enters your site and then leaves to con­tin­ue his (or her) brows­ing, will he ever return or remem­ber your web­site? In most cas­es the vis­i­tor will for­get he came across your web­site. Sor­ry to dis­ap­point many of you, but peo­ple have a very short atten­tion span these days. Take a look at your ana­lyt­ics. My guess is that most peo­ple search­ing for a ser­vice con­trac­tor are not spend­ing more than a minute on your site. If your site is amaz­ing, maybe some will stay on for 2 to 3 min­utes, but don’t get your hopes up. Remar­ket­ing basi­cal­ly makes sure that when a per­son leaves your site, he does­n’t for­get your brand! 

How Does It Work

Google will install a ​“cook­ie” (aka a track­ing code) on his brows­er when he leaves your site and fol­low him around and post your brand on sites that allow for Google Adwords: Text or Image Ads. Let me give you an exam­ple of how this works. Two days ago, I typed in my search engine the words, ​“Bre­ville Espres­so.” I was look­ing for a pic­ture of my espres­so machine I owned to send to a friend of mine. We were com­par­ing cof­fee machines! I found the espres­so machine image I want­ed from Macy’s. Macy’s is using a remar­ket­ing ad cam­paign (with Google or someone…others do it to). I did­n’t know that at the time…but two days lat­er I went to a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent site to down­load a cus­tom FONT for my com­put­er. Here is what I saw on the FONT page:  Check out the ads on the top and side­bar: Bre­ville Espres­so Machines and oth­er mod­esl from MACY’S. That is remar­ket­ing. They knew that I did not order an espres­so machine from their web­site, and they are send­ing me lit­tle hints to not for­get about them or what I was look­ing for the oth­er day. Pret­ty cool, eh?

Should Your Busi­ness Give Remar­ket­ing a Try?

I have spo­ken to a few paid search com­pa­nies, and they’ve all told me that remar­ket­ing is still VERY cheap com­pared to most pay per click cam­paigns. As long as the pric­ing stays rea­son­able, I’d say it is a good idea to cre­ate and run a remar­ket­ing cam­paign for your ser­vice busi­ness. You don’t need to spend a lot of mon­ey on this, but to be able to stay in the minds of a con­sumer after he leaves your site is pow­er­ful. Maybe he is just doing some research on painters, remod­el­ers, plumbers etc and not ready to buy just yet. In 2 – 3 weeks…he sees your ad pop up again, it should trig­ger his mem­o­ry that he’s been to your site before! Now there are oth­er ways to stay in the mind of a con­sumer doing blog­ging etc. But for the price and ease…give remar­ket­ing a shot as part of your mar­ket­ing plan.