Media Buying: Retargeting and Pay Per Click Checklist

by Brian Toomey, JB Analytics CEO

Retargeting 

Retargeting (also known as remarketing) ads are shown to users who have visited the site before. In B2B, where provider choices are often high risk and business-critical, it’s rare for a visitor to convert on the first visit. Therefore, getting people to return to the site and take a second look should be considered a very high priority. 

JB analytics combines a passion for data and disciplined research with a hard-nosed obsession with driving real business results. We use them for testing, analytics, and search acquisition digital strategy, and recommend them strongly.

Pay Per Click Checklist

We’re not trying to buy every click, we’re trying to buy the best clicks, within the constraints of our budget.

  • Do my ads speak directly to customer pain points and goals, and my company’s unique value in addressing them?
    • Don’t sell your product or service,, talk to them about the benefit it will bring to their life and business. 
  • Do my ads all land on well designed landing pages which speak to user concerns?
    • See the section on conversion optimization above. Other things equal, you can afford twice as many clicks (or see way better margins) at twice the conversion rate. 
  • Have I segmented my ads and landing pages to speak directly to my different user segments / personas?
    • Rather then dumping everyone on the homepage, we often see huge wins by segmenting out into 5-20 distinct demographics and landing people directly on pages speaking to their very specific concerns. 
  • Have I adjusted bid across different device types?
    • In particular, we often see that even at a lower absolute cost mobile clicks are still relatively more expensive than desktop clicks when viewed from an ROI perspective, especially in the B2B space. 
  • Have I adjusted bids across geographical, seasonal and time of day difference?
    • Huge efficiencies can be found by analyzing your sales records and looking to bid more aggressively where your sales cluster. Fish where there are fish.  
  • Have I aggressively added negatives to prune out unnecessary clicks?
    • For example, if you are an apparel company that sells ski jackets but not poles, you would want to add “-poles.” More than this though, you might want to add a negative “-down” even if you sell down jackets but they are converting poorly. It’s about getting the best ROI clicks, not all of them. 
  • Have I utilized expanded ad formats, sitelinks etc. to the fullest extent possible?
    • Where Google Ads (and to a lesser degree those on other platforms) appear in top positions, there are a number of additional elements that can display alongside the headlines and descriptions.
2 Google Ads, the one on the bottom has 5 orange stars

In the example, the top ad is probably bidding higher to get the top position but the second ad is making use of review, call, and sitelink extensions. It is likely that despite the lower position, it will see a greater click through rate than the top ad.

 

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