{"id":47,"date":"2017-09-05T22:44:08","date_gmt":"2017-09-05T22:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dedicatedmanagers.com\/?p=47"},"modified":"2019-05-14T21:35:29","modified_gmt":"2019-05-14T21:35:29","slug":"optimize-your-remarketing-list-by-excluding-unlikely-potential-customers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dedicatedmanagers.com\/optimize-your-remarketing-list-by-excluding-unlikely-potential-customers\/","title":{"rendered":"Optimize Your Remarketing List By Excluding Unlikely Potential Customers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I am often asked to run Google Adwords campaigns<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0for a client. \u00a0In these Adwords campaigns, we drive traffic to a landing page for a specific product or service we are trying to sell. \u00a0In tandem, we also implement a remarketing list<\/span><\/strong> to then follow those visitors that don't purchase the service right away. \u00a0So our ads then follow these potential customers around the internet, reminding them of our service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Problem<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This seems great, but there is one issue with our simple remarketing list.   We are following anyone that clicked on our ad and landed on our landing page.  Some of those visitors are not potential customers.  They clicked on the ad, came to our site and quickly realized what we were offering wasn't what they needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So no matter how much we continue to advertise to this particular subset of our simple remarketing list, we have no chance of completing a sale.  They don't need what we are selling them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

There's two ways to handle this problem and both are needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first is to optimize your keywords and display ads so that the people that see and click on your ads are more likely to need the service you are selling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While that will help, you will still have some portion of non-potential customers that will still click on your ad.  Maybe they misunderstood what you were offering, or maybe they just clicked on accident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So how do you still remove these non-potential customers from your remarketing list?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One way is to filter whether or not to add a visitor to your remarketing list based on each visitor's interest level.  Since you can't directly ask these visitors, \"Hey... are you interested in my service?\", you'll need to use some sort of metric.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One metric you can use to tell a visitor's interest level is measure the amount of time (part of overall 'engagement') that user spends on your landing page.  Your landing page is full of information about your product or service and it can't all be absorbed in a very short amount of time.  A visitor that has potential interest in what you are offering is not going to land on your page and then leave after a few seconds. Potential customers, especially those in the 'research' phase, will at least spend a minute or two reading your presentation, if not much longer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most common unlikely customers are those that land on your page and leave in a very short period of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Great!  So lets keep users off our remarketing list that left our landing page in under a minute.  This will catch those that accidentally clicked and immediately left, as well as those that clicked, landed, and quickly realized they were in the wrong place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well... guess what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Google Adwords and Google Analytics don't have a metric that you can use to filter out visitors that were on your page for a short period of time.<\/span><\/strong> \u00a0This is because Google's tracking mechanisms only fire when a page on your website loads. \u00a0So, unless a user continues on to another page where that tracking code can fire when the page loads, Google doesn't know if the visitor was on your initial landing page for 1 minute or 10 minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You could determine interest based on whether a visitor visited a second page on your website, but if your landing pages are long form, your landing page is built to have all the information the visitor needs to make a decision right on that page.  Potential customers that aren't ready to buy aren't likely to click through to another page.  They instead spend a fair amount of time reading and understanding the information you are presenting to them on your single long-form landing page, but may leave thinking, \"I get it... I need to take some time to make a decision.\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are the potential customers to which you want to remarket because life is very busy and distracting, and while they may intend to come back, they may not end up doing so.  Even worse, they may like what you have to offer, but since they have been doing lots of research, your specific information may get melded in their mind with other companies.  They may not remember after a few days how to get back to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So how do you filter your remarketing list to only capture those that have spent a reasonable amount of time on your landing page.  Or at least get not capture those that landed on your page and left right away because they realized they didn't need what you are offering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The answer is to use a little Javascript and Google Analytics' \"Event\" tracking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Below is the script I use:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n See the Pen \n yWgeMR<\/a> by Dedicated Manager (@DedicatedManager<\/a>)\n on CodePen<\/a>.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n