Remarketing has existed in the online advertising world for a while now. However the feature is fairly new to Google AdWords & still causes a fair bit of confusion among AdWords users.

In its simplest form, it’s a way to show ads to people browsing the web – but only to those people who have already visited a particular page on your website. The benefits are improved ROI & more powerful search marketing strategies for your business.

How does remarketing work?

To use Remarketing in AdWords, you first need to ‘tag’ visitors to your site. Then you’re able to show ads (on Google’s Display Network) to those people & only those people. This gives you a number of strategies.

The type of visitor you tag is entirely up to you. For example you may choose to tag some or all of the following types:

• all visitors regardless of which pages on your site they visit
• visitors that view a ‘category’ of pages within your site (eg mens, womens & childrens; or, luxury, business & budget)
• only visitors that successfully performed an action on your site (eg opted-in, bought, downloaded a pdf etc)
• only visitors that placed an item in the shopping cart but then abandoned the cart & left the site without buying

Each type of visitor is then stored in it’s own remarketing list. You’re then able to market to individual lists, or even combine lists for more advanced strategies.

You can even combine your Remarketing lists with other AdWords features such as Geo-targeting, frequency capping, image ads and more.

A popular remarketing strategy

One of the more popular remarketing strategies is targeting users who left your site without purchasing anything. Since one of the most common reasons for not making a purchase is price, why not target these people with a special offer & either add value, offer a better bonus or discount the sale price?

To set this up create two remarketing lists. The first is for all your site’s visitors & the second is for your ‘buyers’. Google will give you two different code snippets – one for each list. Install the code on your site (eg snippet 1 on all pages, snippet 2 only on the thank you page). Now target the ‘audience’ that consists of all visitors but not buyers.

Customise your creative

As with anything in marketing, you’re only as good as your offer. So try different creatives for your remarketing campaigns. You already know which parts of your site they were interested, so try cross-selling or up-selling related products & services.

Once you find an offer that works, you can quickly roll out new text ads with variations on that theme & even add new image ads if your budget allows.

Another great feature is that you have control over the length of time that users see the ads. Google’s default time is 30 days, but you can always adjust this to the timeframe you think is reasonable.

For more information visit http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=173945

You’ve probably already heard of James Schramko… the guy’s a legend online & is quickly building an eight-figure business.

He’s also holding the event of the year: Fast Web Formula 2 in September (hurry there are still a few tickets left). This is NOT a pitch fest. Just hours & hours of useful, practical, detailed how-to information from the likes of Ed Dale, John Carlton, Brian Johnson & many more.

I’m delighted to have been asked to talk about the latest developments in Google AdWords, so come & join James, myself & a couple of hundred likeminded people in Sydney in September.

UPDATE: James just interviewed me on some of the recent updates to AdWords. If you want to get a sneak peak at my talk for FWF2, have a listen – particularly the parts about remarketing & our latest system for digging negative keywords out of your AdWords account

listen here

It pisses me off (really) how many small businesses are being ripped off by website design companies.
Companies that are more than willing to take $5-10k for a 6 page site that won’t ever be found online – and when occasionally someone stumbles across it, it won’t DO anything.

Websites that are at best pretty, and at worse damaging those businesses.

So here for you today is my quick & dirty guide to building a great website, for very little money.

Please, please use WordPress. (make sure you use wordpress.org NOT wordpress.com)
Fancy designers will turn up their noses, but it’s free – as opposed to being locked into an agency’s own, proprietary system (which means they’ll charge you $100-150/hr for all changes!)
It rocks! and best of all, it enables YOU to be in control & easily change info whenever you like (as easy as changing a word doc)

Check out the Fantasic Thesis Theme, or the better looking (but less powerful) woothemes.com for some ideas on design
A typical theme (the look & feel) will cost you $50-100
WordPress is free (we like free)

Google Analytics (for tracking) is free
Google AdWords will get people to your site for around $1 a time (ask us if you want some training!)
And if you really need more, all the wordpress plugins (extra bits that do all sorts of fancy goodness) are either free or very cheap

also check out 99designs.com (a great little Melbourne company) where you can get a ‘custom theme’ created for you for about $300-500
the best thing with 99 is that you get to see ALL the designs & then pick the winner.

You’ll need a domain name if you don’t already have one – I recommend Net Registry for .com.au domains (Melbourne IT charge way over the odds!)

And you’ll need hosting – we use WebCity & love them. #update – we use the Business Pro#1 pack – just $9.95/month

Oh & if you need images use iStockPhoto.com ~$3-7 each

And there you have it…

everything you need to get your old website replaced for under $1000.

So you can focus on what you do best – and not being ripped off by graphic designers that don’t know the first thing about marketing ;)

Google AdWords has introduced a new way to manage your accounts if you’re using Conversion Optimizer (if you’re not using CO already, you should at least test it on one campaign).

You can now choose a Target CPA instead of a Max CPA. So what does this mean and, more importantly, how does this affect you?

Max CPA

Is how Conversion Optimizer has traditionally worked. You set an amount that you’d like Google to not exceed for each conversion, for example you’d set a max CPA of $10 to get a new subscriber on your list.

In the past the result of this has been that your average CPA has generally been less than this Maximum (much like a Max CPC bid of $1 generally means you’ll pay an average of say 50-80c per click).

Your new option is Target CPA Bidding

Now you set a ‘target’ rather than a ‘maximum’ which means your average CPA should be a lot closer to the CPA bid that you choose ($10 in our example). The cynics will say this is another money grab by Google, but this should give more control to advertisers & help achieve CPA targets more accurately.

As with all bidding options, go to the Settings tab under the Campaigns tab & scroll down to the ‘bidding & budget’ section.

Following on from news this week from our good friends at Rocket Clicks & Redfly Marketing, we’re delighted & humbled to announce that WebSavvy is the first Australian company to be awarded the coveted title of Google AdWords Certified Partner

What does this mean for you dear reader?

Well, the new exams that have to be passed test more than theoretical knowledge… they test real-world practical skills. And with our main AdWords account about to reach it’s 2000 day birthday (!) it’s pretty safe to say we’ve been doing this longer than almost any other company in Australia.

Important? We think so. Because we’ve seen inside hundreds of AdWords accounts we can help you improve your account faster & increase your ROI – that’s what online marketing is all about, measuring & improving results.

Certified Partner Exams

It’s great to see more advanced exams (some questions are very tricky!) and to see that Google have plans for many more exams in the near future

Because the managed spend threshold to become qualified has dropped considerably, we’ll see many more companies with Certified Partner Status over the coming months… we’re just stoked to be the first.

Thank you!

Thanks to Steve, Justin, Issie & Steve for all their hard work over the past few months – it’s been a big year already & it’s about to get even bigger!

Thanks also to our wonderful clients – without you we’re nothing.

Fabian wrote this week to ask me for some ideas/guidelines for creating minisites – I thought I’d share my answer to her with you:

Typically the reason for the minisite is to create a segment of the main business website. This might be to laser-target a particular niche, or it might be to create a special offer that you wish to keep separate from the main site (eg discounts, added value, time limited offer etc)

Another reason is typically to improve your SEO results.
If the main site doesn’t rank well for a particular term (or group of terms), then a minisite may be a solution.
Because the domain name is a major factor in how well a site ranks, choosing an keyword-rich domain will often prove to be a shortcut to better rankings.

Guidelines for domains:

Obviously the main thing is to include the main words of the niche you’re targeting!
Keep it as short as you can (1-3 words is best).
Don’t use dashes, hyphens or underscores if you can avoid it (particularly if you’ll be advertising the site offline)
Only consider using dashes IF you’ll only advertise the site online (ie people will click a link, not have to remember or spell the domain) AND if the domain without dashes has been taken (& isn’t for sale)
Do some basic keyword research to determine the phrase(s) that most people use when searching in the niche & choose the domain accordingly (contact us if you’d like us to do that for you)

We recommend using DomainFace if you want to look for domains for sale, or domains about to expire.

The goal of the minisite …

will typically be to capture a visitor’s email address, or possibly even create a sale.
Either way it will usually be some sort of direct response offer, so the site should contain:

• some sort of form to capture the information & send that through to your email/CRM
• a static ‘thank you’ page. That is a second page that the user is directed to after they’ve successfully completed the form. This is then used to track how many users managed to complete the form – which gives you your conversion rate… a VERY important number to know
• Analytics tracking installed on all pages (we recommend Google Analytics NOT AWstats)
• As few form fields as possible. Preferably you’ll only require the user to give you an email address. Every field you ask for in addition to this (eg name, mobile, address) will reduce the conversion rate (in almost every case – although of course there are exceptions to this)

Additional pages to consider for your site:

Don’t just build a site with the landing page & a thank you page.
Users (& Google) won’t like it as much as something that offers plenty of value

At a minimum you should also include: a privacy policy page (essential if you’re collecting personal information), an about us page, a contact us page & possibly an FAQ page

You might also want to consider 5-10 pages of relevant, unique & valuable content that the user would find helpful in making their purchasing decision
Each page might contain 300-500 words & be about one particular aspect of the targeted niche.

How to build the site:

There are literally hundreds of ways to build sites these days & no shortage of bespoke systems to help you do so. The problem with those systems is that once you use them, you’re beholden to the owner of that system forever more – which can mean costly changes down the track.
Far better to use open-source software such as WordPress - as this is not only free (!), it’s also being continuously improved by a world-wide army of geeks!
WordPress (WP) is also very easy to use & is very well optimised for SEO without you having to change anything – it just works!
And because it’s open source, there are no shortage of helpful how-to videos on  the web explaining every aspect of how to use the platform.

Where to build the site:

You can of course use your usual web development team & pay accordingly
But increasingly it’s getting cheaper & easier to use web designers from around the world.
Sites like elance.com, odesk.com, rentacoder.com & guru.com make it easy to find, work with, then pay a freelance designer anywhere in the world
The huge benefit of this is cost – you might expect to pay ~$500 for a complete site, assuming that you provide the copy & images to be used
Stuck when it comes to finding images – head to iStockPhoto.com & choose from millions of shots for a few dollars each (the medium size is fine for website work)

That’s it.
Once the site is built, we can help you ’split-test’ the site… for example testing 4 different headlines to see which works best.
Small changes to headlines (and other copy, the offer, the colour scheme & other elements) can have a massive impact on your conversion rate.
It pays to test!

Let me know how you go with your site & good luck!

James Schramko’s excellent Fast Web Formula is now in it’s second year.

I highly recommend going – there’s a great lineup of speakers:

• Ed Dale
• John Carlton
• Kenny Goodman
• the guys from Flippa.com
• me :)
• and many many more…

I’ll be revealing some cutting edge AdWords Strategies & some very cool new ideas.

James is one of the Internet’s good guys, 100% genuine and totally focused on delivering value. This will be an awesome event – make sure you’re there.

Sydney, September 10-12 2010.

And keep your eyes peeled for some great bonus content coming out in the coming weeks…

Just a quick update on some of the funky new changes Google is bringing to the AdWords table!

Remarketing is coming to Google!

http://adwordsagency.blogspot.com/2010/03/now-available-reach-right-a…

Think of Remarketing as ’stalker banner ads’ – Ads that follow you around the web.

Once someone has visited your site & didn’t buy, you can now elect to show them (& only them) a different ad to everyone else – for instance a special pricing deal, or a free trial. This is very powerful stuff.

From the post:
“Here’s an example of how it works. Let’s say your client is a
basketball team with tickets to sell. You can put a piece of code on
the tickets page on the client’s website, which will let you later
show relevant ticket ads (such as last minute discounts) to everyone
who has visited that page, as they subsequently browse sites in the
Google Content Network. In addition to your own site, you can also
remarket to users who visited your YouTube brand channel or clicked
your YouTube homepage ad. ”

This is a game changer!

Below the Fold Impressions

You can now filter out your content network ads & stop them showing if the placement is below the fold on the target page.

I think this is going to be particularly useful for CPM campaigns where you really don’t want to be paying if nobody has seen the ads. But worth testing for a number of different types of campaign

http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=173715

Google considers that ads are above the fold only if they’re 100% on-screen when the browser window loads.

Conversion Reporting Makeover

This I think is huge.

Some major additions to the conversion tracking reporting that are rolling out over the coming days/weeks. Now you’ll be able to see which keywords caused impressions & clicks (for that user) before the final keyword/ad that caused the actual conversion.

Being able to walk backwards up the path that lead to the conversion is useful is so many ways, eg:

• Did those brand terms convert because someone had already searched for a different keyword?
• Did someone convert on the first search or the 6th?
• Do most conversions happen on the day of the first search, or a week later?

Too be honest there’s probably too much data in these new reports for most of us – but great to have it if we need it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wwj5W0UzAlo

A mentoring client just asked for some guidelines on using Google Image Ads – here’s some of what I had to say – it might help you get your first Image Ad Campaign up & running…

How to use Google Image Ads

Setup a new campaign, set to ‘content network only’, use CPC bidding.

Create a number of AdGroups, each with 2-10 keywords (use the “wonder wheel” for help choosing relevant keywords)

You don’t need to set “placements”, you can let Google find the best sites on which to show your ads (to start with – see below)

You absolutely must utilize conversion tracking, or forget the whole thing

Choose a ‘conversion goal’ that will allow you to get at least 5 conversions a day – this means that you can graduate to utilizing Conversion Optimizer as soon as possible, a great tool! So for example if you’re selling products & only making 1 sale a day, choose an earlier step in the process (eg, adding a product to the shopping cart) as the conversion. You need data & the faster you can get it, the quicker you’ll be profitable

Conversion optimizer rocks! One reason you want to get lots of conversion data is to start using this tool as quickly as possible

Run placement reports regularly (at least weekly). For ‘Content Network’ campaigns, exclude ‘bad’ placements just like you’d add negative keywords. You might also want to bid a little more on sites that generate cost effective conversions to get even more traffic from them

ONLY create 300×250 ads to start with. Create a number of different ones (different images, different copy etc) & test test test. Only when you have a decent amount of data, should you choose the best ad & create the other sizes.
This gets you 2 big benefits:
1. it’s cheaper to only create 1 size – which means you can try a wider range of tests
2. you get better much faster

Other thoughts:

If starting out with standard image ads (ie not animated), create your images to be 300×239 pixels (google adds an 11 pixel footer & you don’t want google resizing your images!)

Match the image in the ad to the landing page where possible (yep that means multiple landing pages if you want to test different image ads – use Google Website Optimizer to easily see which page converts best)

Depending on your market, start with ~$1.10 bids (so many people start at $1 & you want to just beat the majority without spending a fortune). See how many impressions you get & adjust accordingly

You may want to exclude certain categories of placement, eg death, tragedy etc

Have lots of AdGroups on ‘tangents’ to your main topic, eg what other topics are people looking at that are interested in your product… think about their demographics & psychographics

‘Peel & stick’ winning placements into a new campaign (& consider running this as a CPM campaign)
remember to add these sites as negatives in the original campaign!

Finally, when you think you’re done testing, test some more!

If that all sounds like too much work – fill in the form below & request a sneak peek of our upcoming module from the AdWords Bootcamp on Using Google Image Ads in Your AdWords Account.

I’m not in the habit of quoting other writers in entirety, but Seth Godin’s post a few days ago deserves to be seen again (& again & again).
If this strikes a chord with you (or if you disagree) then you might want to read Chris Anderson’s brilliant new book ‘Free!’

Remember – ot’s not want you want the market to do that’s important (to them), it’s what they want to do.

You can fight the trend of ‘free’ for as long as you like – but your (smart) competitors won’t. They change & adapt. What will you do?

Here’s Seth’s post:

Do you really expect that the first time we transact, it will involve me giving you money in exchange for a product or service?

Perhaps this is a good strategy for a pretzel vendor on the street, but is that the best you can hope for?

Digital transactions are essentially free for you to provide. I can give you permission to teach me something. I can watch a video. I can engage in a conversation. We can connect, transfer knowledge, engage in a way that builds trust… all of these things make it more likely that I’ll trust you enough to send you some money one day. I can contribute to a project you’re building, ask you a difficult question, discover what others have already learned.

But send you money on the first date? No way.

The question then, is how much time and effort does your non-profit/consulting firm/widget factory spend on pre-purchase transactions and how much do you spend on trying to simply close the sale?