Remarketing Preparations
The concept of remarketing on the internet has been with us for a while now. Any serious pay-per-click style advertising platform offers remarking in one form or another and you are probably already using one of them. But are you truly prepared?
Reminder: remarketing is a digital marketing strategy where we place a cookie on the devices used by visitors to your website. This allows us to show ads to these users (on other websites or social media websites) knowing that they have already shown an interest in what you are offering.
Getting ready to use remarketing
The following is general advice only (I’m not a lawyer). Please consult your legal professionals to ensure that your website is meeting it’s legal requirements.
OH, and don’t bother checking out my privacy policy. I don’t market this website so my policy doesn’t cover this sort of thing.
Legal considerations for remarketing
Many digital marketing consultants are happy to build your interest in using remarketing. However few are properly advising clients on implementing this strategy legally.
The majority of the problems I see stem from the failure to update key legal documents on your website such as your privacy policy, terms and conditions and disclaimers.
You are probably already aware of just how important a privacy policy is for a website. In most countries it is a legal requirement. Because remarketing uses cookies to keep track of user’s computers, this use of cookies should be outlined, usually in your privacy policy.
Many website owners feel the need to hide or bury their cookie tracking policy deep in legalese, usually in a small font. I think this is a mistake. Why not take the opportunity to tell readers that while you are using cookies, you aren’t collecting personally identifiable information to do so?
Just be open and honest!
Additionally, make sure you have met any requirement to declare the use of remarketing technology as per the platform provider’s guidelines (usually found in their help documents).
Important If you fail to describe the use of remarketing on your website you may be breaking the law. Check with legal counsel if you are in any doubt.
Preparing remarketing tags
For remarketing to work you must have a way of tagging users computers with cookies. Fortunately, the code that does this is provided to you by the platform providers (Google, Facebook, Twitter etc.).
The code you are given is usually a small JavaScript snippet that anyone familiar with basic HTML can install. If in doubt, get your web developer to help you. You may even have a tag management system in place for just this sort of thing.
Each platform provides it’s own of course – Google, Facebook and Twitter will give you once piece of code each.
With the code in place you can create all sorts of highly targeted remarketing lists. If the code isn’t installed properly or if your settings are incorrect, your lists will remain empty and unusable.
Getting your code snippet installed and list settings organised correctly is therefore crucial. Make sure you get it right!
Ensure conversion tracking is enabled
Remarketing becomes significantly more powerful if you are tracking conversions.
You will certainly want to know if or when part of your digital marketing strategy has succeeded – or failed. Remarketing is no different. Should you pour more time and money into it , or pull back? Your conversion data will tell you.
If you don’t already have conversion funnels set up, now is the time to do so. A conversion can be as simple as tracking the submission of a contact form on your website, or something more complicated such as an online purchase via a multi-stage checkout process.
Need remarketing help?
I provide remarketing consultant services quite frequently. Demand for this service increased dramatically after it became an extension to pay-per-click (PPC) and social media marketing.
If you would like to look at using this tool as part of your digital marketing strategy, contact me. Let’s see how we may go about making it work for you!