You’re running a PPC campaign on AdWords, and you captured people’s attention. They checked out your website or app, but they didn’t convert or take action. What seems to be the problem? If you’re facing this predicament, consider remarketing.

Remarketing is a feature in AdWords that allows marketers to show ads to users who already checked them out—whether through a site visit or app download. It’s like saying, “Hey, please come back and take a look at us again and when you do, please buy from us, submit that form, sign up for a subscription or perform the action we intend for you to take.”

Remarketing is a strategic tool to compel people to give you their time and see what you have to offer the second time around. Let’s face it. Some visit your website or download your app when they’re just in the process of shopping around or exploring options. If they leave without taking action, you can do remarketing so that people can remember you and hopefully, do business with you.

Remarketing is a clever way of reaching out potential customers again, and here are five tips to make it work for you.

1. It’s all about the message.

The key with remarketing is to stand out within a given space and to reach your target audience amidst the myriad of elements present in a web page. So how do you do that?

The key is to create a call-to-action that compels and banner ads that create impact. Incorporate powerful design, creative ad copy, and large, clickable buttons. Likewise, it’s important to keep it within context, which means that retargeted ads should be able to make users remember the first time they learned about you.

2. Take advantage of YouTube.

With 4,950,000,000 videos watched every day, YouTube is evidently a great avenue to showcase your remarketing ads. However, some marketers are discouraged from doing remarketing on the said platform because they don’t have the capability to create videos. If you’re in the same position, don’t let that stop you. There are organizations as well as easy-to-use editing software that can help you create video content.

You can showcase your video through In Stream or an advert prior to the actual YouTube video the user wants to watch.

3. Link to your Google Play account.

You can link your Google Play account into AdWords, so that you can engage people who have tried your app. They can help you encourage users to use your app again after not using for a while. At the same time, you can also promote new versions or updates of the app.

4. Sort your remarketing list.

When doing remarketing, you need to understand that visitors are not the same. Segment them according to behavior and create ads accordingly.

Meanwhile, you can also consider excluding some from your remarketing lists. For instance, you can filter your list for search ads and exclude people who have already carried out a certain action on your site.

For instance, you have an online shopping website.  If they already registered within your e-commerce platform, you can already exclude them from the list to avoid paying for their clicks. Remember that there are some cases when people don’t key in the URL, they search for the website to log-in, and you wouldn’t want to be paying extra for clicks from users who already converted.

5. Create concrete goals and test strategies.

Just like when you first started using AdWords, create measurable goals when remarketing. Keep track of your progress, continue testing your strategies, and make adjustments if needed.

Source: Google

Google has just tweaked its Maps feature, bringing new improvements that highlight local search ads. This is a great advantage for businesses, since it means that another avenue for internet-inspired marketing and advertising has opened up. In addition, having a search presence in Google Maps will also help in your overall online rankings. “With location-related mobile searches growing 50% faster than all mobile searches, it’s clear that consumers are moving seamlessly between online and offline experiences. So it’s important to help marketers think this way too,” Google mentions.

How can you take advantage of this new opportunity to make internet marketing work for you?

1. Be familiar with promoted pins.

The new local searches on Google Maps rely heavily on local businesses, and the changes reflect this. In the new search criteria, Maps will display promoted pins on a client search. These pins will display not just the whereabouts of the business and how to get there, but any current deal or promotion too. This works in your advantage, since it will make your business stand out from others in the area. For example, customers who are asking where to get medicines are more likely to go to your pharmacy if you have a current deal or promo, since your ad will be on top of the search list.

2. Check out the revamped local business pages.

If you already have a business page linked to Google Maps, you will have to check and update it. Google has integrated new customization options with the business pages. Now, promoted pins will be linked to your business page, and on-going deals and promotions will be displayed along with business information. Apparently, Google also wants customers to check out product inventories even before they decide to go to a business place, and will add this feature soon.

3. Keep data feeds up-to-date.

This is one of the key information that doesn’t change in every search apps or business pages. You will need to regularly check and update contact details for your business, since much like Google Maps, internet search features are always in flux and are getting upgrades regularly. These improvements may have added (or deleted) a line or two from your contact information. Data feeds are not limited to contact details though; with the new update, you should also regularly check your product or service inventory, as well as shopping and promotion feeds. Much of the system involved in customer matches has to do with updated information. The more useful and current data you add to your business page, the better your online presence.

4. Improve page rankings.

Soon, Google will roll out a full version of a filter feature for Google Ads, including those pop-ups in Maps. This means that users will be able to whittle down their search results based on a number of options like popularity, most rated, nearest place, and such. A constant top ranking for your online presence through competent and skillful internet campaigns will go a long way towards being a top search result in Google Maps.

“We’ve been testing this layout for a long time, so some people might see it on a very small number of commercial queries. We’ll continue to make tweaks, but this is designed for highly commercial queries where the layout is able to provide more relevant results for people searching and better performance for advertisers,” Google mentioned on its statement about the change.

Internet marketing experts and specialists speculated as to why Google rolled out those changes in AdWords. Most assume that it’s because the leading search engine wants to increase their revenue, while others cited reasons such as enhancing user experience from desktop to mobile and a cleaner layout.

Impact on Marketing Campaigns and Businesses

The recent change Google implemented on AdWords have implications on different areas of a marketing campaign.

The most obvious impact would be the probable increase in competitive bidding for keywords and costs per clicks, which ultimately leads to bigger expenses. Because there are fewer slots available, competition for those spots would become more steep, pushing businesses to increase their spending.

Meanwhile, the increase of ad spots from three to four will further push organic results down. As organic spaces becomes more valuable, more focus on SEO becomes imperative.

How to Adapt

While Google’s recent changes can cause a feeling of doom and gloom, there are ways to adapt and maintain your competitive edge.

“Cost. The big impact is it’s going to raise the cost. Better for Google, not for us. So we’re getting better at optimizing, presenting solutions and then using other tools to make the value of the pay per click campaign more effective,” mentions Peter Liefer, CEO of PrimeView. He says that it’s all about making the most of the ads by stepping up your follow-up process once a client reached your landing page.

Other experts suggest going for a lower PPC position and increasing efforts on the more organic side of internet marketing, which ultimately provides a better experience to users. Meanwhile, businesses who don’t want to increase their spending can improve their quality score to keep their bids and cost per clicks leveled.

It May Not be as Bad as It Seems

Wordstream analyzed the click volume that right side and bottom ads receive, and found these ad placements only account for 14.6% of click volume. Since bottom ads are not affected by the change that Google rolled out, less than 14.6% of clicks are will be lost from the change.

“Now, those “lost” impressions and clicks can more than be made up by A) the addition of the new fourth ad spot B) 78% of SERPS have fewer than 4 ads above the organic results – there’s plenty of room for that to go down and C) the addition of up to four ads below the organic search results. It’s like we just re-organized the naming of ad positions,” says Larry Kim, founder of Wordstream.

Making your Business Stand Out

Despite the changes that Google rolls out, your business can still maintain its foothold if it has a strong core. Internet marketing efforts will only be as good as the quality of service, product, or information you provide to users and your target audience. So build your brand, have a strong website, and see to it that all marketing efforts are well integrated. This way, you’re positioning your business as an entity that people think of even before they enter a search query in Google.