Most of us are well familiar with how Google Adwords works – you simply put in your ads, pick a budget and then let the thing run. When it runs out of money, it will ask whether or not you want to add additional funds to your account. You can also allow the thing to pick how much you are willing to spend on any particular kind of ad so that you don’t go broke paying a fortune for your clicks. But what if I could show you a way to grab those customers who have not yet made a purchase but who were once interested? That would be worth something to you, wouldn’t it?
The Other 98%
Here’s a sad fact about Internet marketing – many people consider it pretty good if you are able to grab just 2% of the visitors to your website. Get 10% of your visitors and you are doing exceptionally well. But what about the other 98% of your visitors? Are you just going to let them walk away? Many marketers do exactly that. However, it turns out there is a way to get more of those visitors to come back and make a purchase.
Ad Stalking
Recently, some people on an e-mail list I subscribe to were discussing the idea of taking a cruise as a vacation. Out of curiosity, I went to check out a few cruise lines and see what the prices were from my hometown (it happens that I live in a port city). I thought perhaps next year I might try going on a cruise somewhere. Well, as soon as I did that, I started seeing cruise ads everywhere I went – usually for the very same cruise lines whose sites I’d already visited. What happened? I was being ad stalked.
Google Display Network to the Rescue
The Google Display Network is a way to use Adwords to reach out to customers who have visited your website and who may now be more likely to make a purchase. Ordinarily, when you set up an Adwords ad, they display only when people visit a page related to the specific niche you are in. Thus when I visited some forums discussing reviews of cruises, I got to see ads about cruising. However, by simply turning on this feature in Adwords, you can display ads out of context – they’ll show up for people who have dropped by your site regardless of what they happen to be looking at.
In order to set this up, you simply need to visit the Control panel and library section of Adwords. Then, look for “Audiences” and make a new audience. The new audience should be anyone who has visited a specific page on your site. The audience can be set up for specific pages so for example those who visited your checkout page see one particular ad while those who visit your about us page will see a completely different ad. You can also tell Google how long people should be bombarded by your ads – anywhere from one day to 18 months. Most people just go with the 30 day default but it really depends on what kind of product you have for sale. So for example, a relatively inexpensive product will probably warrant no more than a day while someone who visited a site with listings of homes for sale may well be a prospect a year later.