Google AdWords™ For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Chapter 17

Following Your Best Prospects around the Web

In This Chapter

• Introducing remarketing
• Setting up a simple remarketing campaign
• Mixing and matching audiences
• Taking advantage of remarketing
• Advanced remarketing strategies

In a 2005 Doctor Who episode, a conspiracy theory website about a mysterious man called “The Doctor” chronicles his uncanny appearance in photos and drawings related to pivotal moments in history. Thanks to his time machine, the TARDIS, we see The Doctor next to JFK's motorcade the day he was assassinated in 1963; next to a family who canceled their voyage on the Titanic the day it sailed in 1912; and on the island of Sumatra the day the Krakatoa volcano exploded in 1883.

You may not be a time-traveling humanoid alien, but you can get your AdWords ads to seem uncannily ubiquitous to your best prospects. This feature of AdWords is so powerful that it can backfire if you aren't careful. But done well, it can transform your business — even if you don't use AdWords for anything else.

Imagine Lila visits your site and for whatever reason isn't ready to buy or opt-in yet. She leaves your site after a few seconds (maybe the phone rings, the baby cries, she gets a Facebook chat notification, or she remembers that she promised to buy sauerkraut before the supermarket closed), and all your hard AdWords work has been wasted. Lila is gone forever, never to return, right? But now something strange happens.

Lila starts seeing your ad on her favorite blogs and on ...