Remarketing is one of those things that many advertisers would love to try. For a lot of us, creative ideas on how to use it are never far away, particularly when you look at data on how it can increase your ROI. But have you ever actually implemented it? I’ve spent hours setting everything up correctly: getting all the tags, creating all the lists, double checking everything to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything, and it really can be a bit cumbersome.

No more!

Adwords has recently simplified remarketing implementation to the point that you now only need one tag for your entire site (which they have created for us to boot), instead of one tag per list, per page. Huzzah!

All you need to do is set up as many lists as you want or need.

A quick note for those who might not be familiar with remarketing:

Remarketing is a strategy used to target visitors to your site with ads encouraging them to take another, or different action. When visitors go to your site after clicking through from one of your adverts, they are tagged. They’re then served other ads on the Google Display Network (Google’s network of publisher sites) that relate to your strategy. For example, you might have offered a special to someone that converted on your site before. This individual would have been tagged when they converted and they can now be remarketed to with a new ad detailing the promotion.

Note that a remarketing list is the list of people you have tagged. These lists can be edited at any time and it’s a good idea to refine these as the campaign runs to ensure you are reaching the right audience with the right message.

Getting back to the new remarketing development, there’s even more to this gold-encrusted data nugget – you can now remarket through Google Analytics as well. With just a slight change to your Analytics code, a whole new world of data targeting opens up.

How to: set remarketing up in Google Analytics

• Click on the "Admin" tab in the upper corner of Google Analytics (you must be an account administrator).
• Then click on the tab for "Remarketing Lists."
• Make sure you have goals set up, visitor segments, etc – the objects you want to track.
• You’ll also need to update your privacy policy if you are going to be using this.

What this means for us:

• It’s a major time saver, leaving more time for being creatively strategic with our remarketing ideas.
• You can create some very detailed remarketing lists from Analytics data.
• Remarketing has just become a whole lot more powerful due to point number 2!

Essentially, you can now target more than the users who have visited certain pages of your site. You can target MAC and PC users; people who came to your site a month ago, completed two different page visits, stayed on the site for a certain amount of time and then converted, and more. And you can set this up as a goal in Analytics.
The possibilities are almost endless. You can have big audiences, small audiences, complicated audiences or simple audiences.  You have the opportunity to narrow down what REALLY works for you… well, to be accurate, you will soon. It hasn’t rolled out everywhere yet but is set to do so over the next few months.

I must admit, a warning bell or two did go off in my head about this new development, with regards to “spamming” users who didn’t want to see my ads – as is always the case with remarketing. But, Google has, of course, soothed my worries by ensuring users have access to tools to avoid seeing these ads, and allows them to opt out of Analytics. And, if you are doing it correctly, you should only be targeting users who have shown interest; users who will be less likely to become frustrated by seeing your ads.

How do you feel about remarketing and its possibilities?