Google’s dynamic remarketing being available only to ecommerce businesses will soon be a thing of the past.  Over the next few weeks, Google is rolling out dynamic remarketing to all verticals.  For those of you not familiar with dynamic remarketing, it is like regular remarketing with a sophisticated brain. It allows advertisers to show more tailored ads to previous website visitors.  The ads contain the specific products or services that were viewed by a visitor while on your website. For example, a dentist has many services, including dental checkups, implants, teeth whitening, invisalign, etc…  Dynamic remarketing ads are generated based on the specific service(s) that each individual site visitor engaged with. A visitor looking at a teeth whitening landing page would we served a teeth whitening ad, a visitor that viewed information on dental implants would be seeing implant ads, and so on.

This allows business owners to use remarketing far more intelligently than was previously possible.

IN ORDER TO USE DYNAMIC REMARKETING YOU WILL NEED:

• Separate pages for each of your services.
• Additional budget to put toward dynamic remarketing (5% of your existing budget should be sufficient).
• A feed of your services.  The templates for the feed can be downloaded here (we can do this for you). There are templates specific to many types of business.  If your business type is not listed you must use the custom template (again, do’t worry we can take care of this for you).
• Implementation of a new remarketing pixel (yep, we will do this as well).

NOTE:

Dynamic remarketing is not currently available in all accounts. It is being rolled out by Google over the next few weeks with no known completion date. Upon this option being more widely available, we will provide more detailed information around website eligibility factors, and hat you need to do in order to participate.

All ads are not created equal.  Google continues to add and evolve their paid search ads.  When viewing  ads on Google, there are basically three categories.  First is a basic ad, which contains all required information to run paid search.  Then, there is the paid search ad on steroids, which includes all the bells and whistles available in AdWords.  Finally, there’s the paid search ad that lights up like an airport landing strip, utilizing all the AdWords extensions available and also qualifies for extensions that are not controlled within AdWords at all.

FIVE BASIC COMPONENTS

Every ad has five basic components that are all required to run a paid search ad. These items are highlighted above and listed below.

• Headline
• Description Line 1
• Description Line 2
• Display Url
• Destination Url

The headline and two description lines are used to advertise your business. The display URL lets searchers know to which domain your ad is going to take them. The destination URL is not visible, but it is the actual landing page a person who clicks your ad will be directed to.  Our goal is to entice a relevant searcher to click on your ad.  Google does not always use the same format in their ads.  We cannot choose the format that Google selects when your ads go to auction.  We can use punctuation and different formatting to try to accomplish the format we prefer, however in the end, Google is always in control.

ADWORDS AD EXTENSIONS:

You can take your ads to the next level with Google provided (but not required) extensions.  Ad Extensions are basically free add-ons that can be implemented within Google AdWords. They allow you to provide additional important information about your business, at no additional cost. Enabling ad extensions, does guarantee your extensions will show. Google will determine when it is right for ad extensions to show based on a user’s query.

There are currently six ad extensions implemented through AdWords.

• Sitelinks — Add links to help people find what they’re looking for
• Location — Help people nearby find your nearest storefront or give you a call
• Call — Let people click a button to give you a phone call
• App — Send people to the app store or begins downloading your app
• Review — Showcase positive, third-party reviews from reputable sources, not customer reviews
• Callout — Help people learn more about what you have to offer

AD EXTENSIONS NOT CONTROLLED IN ADWORDS:

Google also has three additional ad extensions that AdWords advertisers do not have direct control over.  Two of these extensions are very flash and really direct attention to an advertiser’s ad. There are a variety of qualifying factors that determine if your business is eligible for these extensions.  You may visit the links provided below to review the specific details of each extension.

• Consumer Ratings — Show off what customers appreciate with high-quality survey data
• Seller Rating Annotations — Show your online business ratings with your ad
• Social Annotations — Show how many Google+ followers you have

Advertisers use paid search to drive relevant traffic to their website. Much care is taken in generating the perfect keyword list and the most engaging ads. But advertisers can’t stop there! Even if you have the most seamless paid search campaigns, there are still many things an advertiser must do to be successful. If you follow the six bullet points below, and have a A+ team managing your paid search campaigns, you’ll be sure to win in the online space.

• Be competitive — if your competition is offering better services, products or pricing than you, you will have difficulty being successful.
• Have promotions — offer a discount to those that visit your site, it will make searchers click your ad more often if they are getting deal.
• Be different — have a good value proposition. Great service doesn’t cut it. If you were shopping for your service or product, what would make you click?
• Stay consistent — if your customers click on your ad, and your website does not reflect the same promotions or value proposition, you will lose them.
• Create an great landing page experience — an attractive well put together landing page will decrease your bounce rate, increase time on site and decrease the likelihood of the searcher moving on to the next search result.
• Clear call to action — make it clear to the visitor what you want them to do. Should they call you, submit a form, or something else? Make it clear and make it easy to contact you.

And don’t forget, paid search is not something you turn on, try for a week and turn off if the result isn’t what you hoped for. Test, tweak, test, tweak and test again. Paid search can be a battle of attrition, but with the right elements in place, you will win.