How to get Google ads working in your favour this Christmas

Yesterday, we explained how you can retarget your online marketing so that people see your ads on Google’s network after they’ve finished browsing your website.

But how can you make this work practically for you, now that the silly season is upon us?

If you’re in online retail this is likely to be one of the busiest times of the year, and you need to make the most of it. For many retailers the Christmas holiday period represents as much as 20% of their annual revenue.

Christmas retargeting

Here are four creative ways you can implement a retargeting campaign to make the most of the spending period:

1. Product-specific Boxing Day promotion

Retargeting can be used to show advertising to customers based on the products that they’ve checked out on your website, but haven’t purchased yet.

If you’re running a Boxing Day promotion, or discounting the item, you can target an ad with details on the discount specifically to people who have already shown an interest in the product.

If they didn’t buy the product the first time this will give you a second chance to get them over the line.

2. Facebook retargeting

AdRoll.com is a launch partner with Facebook for a new retargeting product that lets you display Facebook Like ads to customers who have visited your website.

This is a great way to drive engagement on your Facebook page with your new customers.

3. Apologise for out of stock items

With the sales volumes you are processing you are more than likely to run out of stock on some products.

Make it up to your customers with a cute retargeting campaign apologising for the fact that you were out of stock on their favourite product.

You can then retarget to the same customers when it is back in stock, potentially with a discount to lure the customer back to finalise their purchase.

4. Play the long game for Valentine’s Day

You can place retargeting cookies on a customer’s browser that last for over a year. This means you can show them ads around different holidays throughout the year.

Considering the next major retail occasion is Valentine’s Day, why not start to segment your customers by gender and then send them gender appropriate Valentine’s Day gift suggestions closer to the time.

As a terrible gift-shopper myself, this is a retargeting campaign I can get behind.

Three general tips for building an effective remarketing campaign

1. Target specific users as much as possible

The more targeted the better. For instance if you sell clothing and I’m viewing men’s clothing, send me ads featuring other men’s clothing.

2. Invest in great creative

While many ad networks have simple advertising banner creators, you can get a graphic designer or a service like RightBanners.com to build you a great ad for less than $50. Quality matters.

3. Set frequency capping

There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Retargeting lets you show your advertising everywhere your user goes.

If they visit a lot of websites with advertising on them, then they’re likely to start seeing your ad too much. You can set the number of times your customers see your ad in a day and I generally recommend you keep it to less than five times a day, but it’s different for every business.

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