Most online marketers today are familiar with retargeting—the practice of serving display ads to users based on their online behavior. The most common form of retargeting is known as site retargeting: The ads are displayed to users who have visited an advertiser's site, with the ads seemingly following the user around as he or she travels around the Web.
But, contrary to popular belief, site retargeting isn't the only form of retargeting. In fact, a newer retargeting method, known as search retargeting, is on the rise and it's changing the way people think about retargeting.
Search retargeting serves display impressions to users based on the keywords they've typed into Google, Bing, Yahoo, or other search engines. So, for example, if you search for "Nike Air Jordan" in Google, that search data can be used to target you with display ads for Nike shoes once you leave the search engine.
It's a uniquely powerful approach to display advertising, because it's based on the intent that's revealed when someone performs an online search. In other words, it works for the same reason that search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns work. And because search retargeting doesn't rely on visits to an advertiser's site, it can be a great tool for bringing in new customers.
If you're unfamiliar with ad technology, search retargeting can sound complicated. And there is certainly a lot of complicated technology behind it. But for marketers who want to take advantage of this new tool, the process is relatively straightforward.
Let's take a look at six steps that can help you launch a successful search retargeting campaign.
1. Choose your DSP carefully
In search retargeting, or any other form retargeting, your campaign is only as strong as the data behind it. A display side provider (DSP) that runs search retargeting campaigns collects data from partners. These partners, in turn, drop cookies onto the browsers of users who arrive on their sites via search engines. The top search retargeting vendors capture billions of search terms, but some DSPs capture more than others. And the more search data you have, the more customers you're going to be able to target.
2. Determine your keywords
Many search retargeting campaigns begin with keywords already being used in SEM campaigns. But, in some cases, advertisers turn to search retargeting because they're being priced out of keywords on Google. Indeed, search retargeting is on the rise in large part because advertisers are discovering that they can purchase keywords at a fraction of the cost they'd pay on Google. The good news: if you don't have a keyword list, a smart vendor can also help you form one by studying your traffic.
3. Review your creative
Let's face it, if you don't have a strong creative, brilliant retargeting technology is only going to take you so far. You need creative that gets right to the point with a strong call to action. And that creative needs to take the user to a simple and straightforward landing page if you hope to see any conversions.
4. Place your bids
SEM marketers often catch on to search retargeting quickly because the process is the same at the fundamental level. Once you know the keywords you want, you bid on them in real-time auctions. In the display world, the real-time bidding takes place in ad exchanges. The advertisers or vendors determine how much they're willing to pay to serve impressions to specific (anonymous) individuals, and the algorithms do the rest.
Let's take an example. Say you're a designer-purse retailer and you want to target users who have searched for "Gucci purses." Once a user performs that search and travels to the site of a publisher that's participating in your ad exchange, your creative will appear as long as you've placed the winning bid for that impression. And you often would place the winning bid because you knew the impression's hidden value. Knowing how much to bid is really the key to the process; and, again, the more data you have, the better off you'll be.
5. Monitor
Once your campaign is up and running, the real work starts. A good search retargeting vendor will monitor the behaviors of the clickers and converters. If you want clear benchmarks that will help you push consumers through the sales funnel, you need the right metrics in place at every stage of the process.
And remember, you can't afford to ignore view-through attribution, which measures the number of people who arrive at your site after being exposed to one of your ads. In display campaigns, click-throughs don't tell the whole story. In fact, as many studies have shown, clicks alone tell you very little about how a display campaign is performing. After all, just because someone doesn't click on an ad doesn't mean the ad had no effect. If that were true, all offline advertising would be useless.
6. Build on your past successes
Figuring out what works is only the first part of a successful search retargeting campaign. Once you're seeing the conversions roll in, you've got to keep moving. You need a really good DSP that can uncover new keywords for you to target based on patterns revealed by your current campaign. This process, known as look-a-like targeting, requires sophisticated data analysis, but it can be an incredibly valuable tool for finding new customers.
