Google AdWords has several different uses depending if your website is e-commerce or not. With an e-commerce website, it makes a lot of sense to pay for online ads that drive traffic and hopefully result in sales. Remember that driving traffic does not result in sales unless people like your website and it's easy to use.
Normally when people think of AdWords, they think it will cost a lot of money for per click, and that the monthly cost will drown you. Honestly it's no different than the money a jewelry store pays for a billboard or a radio ad, and the results are at least trackable. There's no way to track the number of people who read your billboard and take action, and there's only guessing when it comes to tracking radio ad results. So switch your billboard and radio budget to AdWords and don't worry about being drowned.
On the other hand, if you don't have the typical $3000 - $5000 per month for full scale AdWords there is a much smaller option for you when you use AdWords Remarketing.
The Remarketing feature allows you to secretly tag your website visitors. Once they are tagged they will see your ads all over the internet on various random websites, and even in YouTube videos.
Unlike a normal AdWords campaign that brings customer to your website for the first time, remarketing only shows ads to people who have already been to your website. You could use all the free inbound marketing techniques like Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and search engine optimization to bring people to your website. Once there they get tagged.
As soon as someone is tagged, they will start to see your ads. Here's an example of how the tagging and remarketing works:
1. Someone is browsing your earrings, but get distracted by a Facebook popup notice on their phone.
2. They jump over to Facebook to see what their friends are talking about.
3. While reading Facebook they follow a video link over to YouTube and start watching a video.
4. During the video, they see a banner ad for the earrings you sell on your website.
5. They are reminded about your website and probably are surprised that they were just on your site and now they see your ad. From their point of view, it's a coincidence.
6. They continue to see your ads a few times a day on random websites for the next 6 months.
When they eventually click one of those ads you will probably be charged on average $1.07 per click. I'm helping a few jewelers whose daily visitors range from 5 to 35 on average. Their remarketing budget is only $30 monthly. I've also helped jewelers who have 100 average visitors per day and their remarketing budget is only $150 monthly.
The intent of Remarketing is to bring back a once prospective customer and get them to finish their purchase, or to get them to come into your store. It's not simply an ad to get their attention, but rather an ad to make you look more attractive.
Even if you currently do not offer sales or discounts in your jewelry store or on your website, the remarketing ad could offer a special deal if the person takes action today. The ad could say something like "use discount code 1234 during checkout to get 20% off your order" or it could say "click here for 20% off your next in-store purchase."
The discount code would simply be added to your e-commerce system, but the in-store purchase is a little trickier. You would need to land the customer on a special hidden website page that gives instructions to print it out and bring it into the store. You should have a time stamp and expiration on the hidden page. You could also require them to fill out a form to get the special discount/offer.
The intent here is to make the customer feel like they found a special offer and were rewarded for not making the initial purchase. From your point of view you got them on the hook once, but you needed to use a different lure to get them to bite down and swallow.
As I said above, you can track someone for 6 months, or you can track them for up to 540 days. However, you should stop tracking people once they take action. In AdWords there's a way to deactivate the tracking after someone has completed a certain action. With e-commerce sites this action is usually when the person reaches the payment confirmation receipt page.
I suggested that you require your users to fill out a form before they get the printable offer/discount. That same form would also be programmed to deactivate the remarketing tag.
There's no sense in maintaining a tag on someone and wasting AdWords click money on someone who's already completed the action you wanted them to complete. Of course you could have multiple tags on your website for multiple reasons, and only deactivate one at a time, but that's the discussion for tomorrow's Nugget.
