In an earlier post I described remarketing like getting a second kick at the can. In fact it can be a much more creative exercise when you are using PPC. The principle is simple, remarketing allows you to show ads to users who have previously been on your site.

You now have a way to match the right message to the exact people you may have been targeting in the first place but did not complete the desired action.

To make this concept work you tag each page that had a particular service or product on it. So if you were selling golf drivers you would put a tag or a pixel on all the pages on your site that offered golf drivers. This tag would then “cookie” the visitor for a period of time. Then you would create an Adwords campaign to show highly targetted messages for drivers or other golf supplies of your choice to visitors as they browse sites through the Google Display Network.

You may test keyword variables of your choice in a remarketing campaign by defining the audiences you want the ad to display for. See the Google Video below.

The Content Network delivers the ad that is appropriate when the user’s web browser with the tag cookied in visits a site. The variations can also be driven by tagging various parts of your site or shopping cart pages. Different ad variations could be delivered to different users based on a specific set of criteria. You can also retarget buyers who did purchas from you with a complementary product within a fixed period such as 21 days after the initial purchase of “A” show an ad for ‘B”. This is much like adding a different autoresponder message to those who did opt-in but did not purchase, or giving those that visited your opt-in page a second chance.

Brad Geddes of bgTheory , has two excellent detailed guides I can recommend. One is on the bgTheory blog titled Google Adwords Remarketing Campaigns and another on Search Engine Land Everyone Deserves a Second Chance:Using Remarketing to Reach Abandoned Shoppers.