Google makes targeting the right customers using Analytics data easier

Google has a new update out to its Remarketing Lists for Search Ads product that will make it easier for marketers to use Analytics to target the right potential customers and in the process get a higher return on their advertising dollar investment. And while these terms might sound like complete gibberish to you, from a high-level it’s actually not too complicated.

While the advertising world is constantly changing with the introduction of new social networks, apps, and even the consumer shift from desktop to mobile, Google is still huge amongst advertisers. That’s because Google’s search engine includes intent. When someone searches for, say, “golf clubs,” it’s safe to assume that user might be shopping around for a new golf club to buy – the perfect opportunity for a company in the business of selling golf clubs to get in front of them. That’s targeting – saying you want to sell to people who search for X or Y query. The concept of remarketing goes even further in its pursuit of accurate targeting.

Remarketing is like regular targeting on steroids. Through the use of cookies dropped in your browser when you visit a website, all kinds of (anonymized) data is collected – how long you’ve been on the site, what pages you visited, and more. This data is then used to build a profile about who you are – what products you’re interested in might be inferred by the product pages you visited, for example – which can then be used to, yes, show you the products you looked at again while you’re browsing Google search or some other website that uses Google Adwords ads. Maybe you weren’t sure whether or not you wanted to buy the item and left – remarketing gives advertisers the opportunity to remind you of the product you were considering.

What Remarketing Lists for Search Ads with Google Analytics (long winded name, I know) does is take advantage of all the visitor data Google Analytics provides to website owners for remarketing purposes. Previously remarketing for Google search ads required website owners pasting a special snippet of code in their website that would allow AdWords to choose data from Analytics to target against. Now this extra snippet of code isn’t required, and audiences to target (i.e. those visitors who don’t complete a transaction) can be built from within Analytics before being used in AdWords for the actual ad targeting.

Google says that in a case study conducted using the new tools with financial services provider TransUnion, the company saw an increased conversion rate of 65%, an average transaction value increase of 58%, a 50% drop in the cost per click on its ads, and an overall 50% drop in the cost to reach each successful transaction.

The company’s blog post on the product changes include everything advertisers need to get started.