Anyone who has run AdWords has most likely taken a peek at their dashboard after the first few months and said, “What the heck is the display network and why did I spend 30% of my budget on it!?” Then proceeded to stop their display ads that they didn’t know were running, and forever gave up on the display network.
Being a part of a Portland search engine marketing agency has led me to review hundreds of AdWords campaigns in the last few years with similar stories. Sometimes I even have to be the one that tells them the bad news. “Well, after careful review, I have found that one of the reasons you’re not seeing a return on AdWords is because your budget is being exhausted by the display network. Because you didn’t opt-out of the display network, your text ads have been showing across millions of websites without any restriction and have led to zero conversions.”
As disheartening as a discovery like this may be, don’t give up on the display network! Especially don’t give up on what is arguably the most important part of the display network – remarketing. Our clients that use remarketing see massive decreases in CPA’s (cost per conversions) while increasing the number of overall conversions.
Here is how remarketing works:
- Jessica goes to a website to look at shoes.
- The website drops a cookie onto her browser.
- Jessica leaves the site and continues browsing the internet.
- She lands on another website and all of a sudden sees a banner ad that says “come back and buy those shoes!”.
- Jessica clicks on the ad (which tends to cost less than search ads) and buys the shoes she was looking at earlier.
One of my clients managed his own AdWords campaigns for quite some time before seeking AdWords consulting. We noticed that 50% of his ad spend was wasted money and we turned it around through better structure and… remarketing! By the end of the first month they were receiving twice as many conversions at half the cost. His conversions through the remarketing campaign cost 59% less than conversions that came from search.
If your AdWords campaigns are struggling and you’re not taking advantage of remarketing I highly recommend giving it a try. AdWords only works if it’s done correctly, so if you need any help feel free to reach out to us!
