Transcript
Joe Troyer: James asks, “What is the best way, or how is the best way, to deploy retargeting on our websites and then track it and optimize it?” All right, so if I were you guys, you do any type of retargeting, you drop any type of tracking code on a website, which there’s tracking scripts for everything, Google Analytics, any type of traffic platform, any type of platform out there like that. You’ve got to add code to your website, tracking code.
Joe Troyer: I would recommend you use Google Tag Manager for everything. So you put this one snippet of code on your website from Google Tag Manager, you never have to keep adding snippets on the website. You can keep adding them all right from within Google Tag Manager.
Joe Troyer: So if you’ve got a customer, and you keep sending them code over and over to put on their website, “Put this. Put that. Put this. Put that,” trust me when I say it just gets annoying. When we run traffic for a customer that’s not pay per call, when we’re running traffic on all the major platforms for them, we have them install Google Tag Manager. We have them install that once. They have one snippet of code to install. I can go out to every traffic platform, and I can get their tracking code, and I can then, myself or my team themselves, can just log into the Google Tag Manager account and they can add all of that code, and we never have to ask the client to do it again.
Joe Troyer: So for clients it’s great, but also for yourself. I can’t tell you guys how many times one of our sites, one of our projects, whatever, how many times I’ve hit up a developer, “Hey, could you please add this to the site?” Because I don’t even know the logins. I don’t do FTP. I don’t build software. I don’t do that stuff. I don’t even have the access to the accounts.
Joe Troyer: So first and foremost, use Google Tag Manager. Why? Because it’s one place, once it’s installed, where you or anybody on your team can manage all the tracking codes in one interface.
Joe Troyer: Next up, install conversion tracking for each platform. So if you’re going to run retargeting, are you running Google? Are you running Google Display Network? Do you run in Gmail? Do you run in Facebook? Do you run in Instagram? You run in some RTB and some third party or second tier networks. Figure out all the ones that you want to run with, and get them all installed. Do this in one fell swoop. Don’t go do it a la carte. This is like the foundation of any marketing campaign, the foundation of your house is to get all of this tracking set up and ready to go. Because you can’t start adding rooms, and walls, and roofs without that foundation.
Joe Troyer: “I didn’t know that’s what Tag Manager did. I will start using that.” Awesome.
Joe Troyer: So then when you actually start running the campaigns, start at just a few dollars a day. Don’t go crazy. Don’t try to conquer them all day one. Put a dollar a day, or two dollars a day, or five dollars a day, whatever it is that you can afford. And just keep it low for your budget, and just see what happens. See what your costs are going to be. See what your interaction’s like. See what your results are like.
Joe Troyer: The other thing, then, once you start to iterate and come up with more ideas, I would test three to four hypotheses at a time, ideas that you have on what would work best. What ads are going to work best? What call to action is going to work best?
Joe Troyer: So for a local business, is it just us staying in front of them is the key? Is it us testing, and again, these are all just hypotheses that we would want to test. I can’t even say the plural version of that word. But what offer is going to work? Is it us coming in and doing a free analysis for them? Is that the best thing? Is it us showing a 10% off coupon? Is it … It could be a million different things. You want to just come up with three to four ideas that you think could work, and then test them.
Joe Troyer: So start just one easy design, get it done, get it up for a few bucks a day. While that’s going and getting traffic, and you’re starting to get some traction with it, come up with three to four hypotheses; I can’t say, again, the plural version of that word; or ideas that would work best. So once you have some data, now you can go and start testing each of these individual ideas. That’s how I would deploy a retargeting campaign.
Joe Troyer: “So we install tracking for each platform,” James says, “with Google Tag Manager? It tracks each platform?” No, that’s not what I said. You’re going to have to listen to the replay, homie.
