We had an interesting question posed by a commenter named Scott recently regarding how to target a very specific offer to a remarketing audience:

Thanks for your insights. I have a question about how to really implement a remarketing strategy on the website. Take this scenario into consideration: a user views a page on the site, leaves, is later targeted with a remarketing ad that says something like 'Come back for 25% off' and includes a coupon code on the ad, so they click on it, return to the site, proceed to checkout...and can't remember the coupon code... 

What to do then? I'm trying to brainstorm ideas for how to remind remarketing customers about the coupon code without telling everyone about it who visits the site.

For this it seems like the best way to direct these visitors to a specific offer would be to set up a dedicated landing page for the remarketing audience, and then to either just show them the discounted price or coupon code, or populate the coupon code on that page and only show it to traffic from the remarketing campaign.

If you have a large volume of site traffic, you can actually apply this same approach to different remarketing audiences, such as:

• Targeting an ad and landing page for a new product to visitors who had seen a thank-you page for (i.e. had purchased) another product.
• Targeting an ad and a landing page that’s further along the funnel than the last action they’d taken (such as targeting a trial offer to visitors who have downloaded a white paper).
• Showing visitors who viewed a key page but left your site a specific offer and landing page (for example visitors who saw your pricing page and left could be shown an ad for a discount and a landing page for a discounted offer).

Just like segmentations around keywords or placements, by thinking strategically about the audiences you create you’ll be able to better message to them and create better optimized landing page experiences for them, which will improve your conversion rates.

(Read more: How to Create the Best Landing Pages for Your Google AdWords Account)

Remarketing Is Worth a Shot

By the way, if you're not using AdWords remarketing yet, you should give it a try. We've wondered in the past if remarketing is "creepy," but a recent study found that most consumers feel neutral about retargeted ads, and a full 25% say they like them. People who clicked on a retargeted ad said they did so because they liked the featured product and it's a convenient way to get back to a site they already visited.

About the Author

Tom Demers is co-founder and managing partner at Measured SEM search engine marketing consulting, a boutique search marketing agency offering search engine marketing services ranging from pay-per-click account management to search engine optimization and link building services such as guest posting services and content marketing.

You can learn more about how Measured SEM can help or get in touch with Tom directly via email at tom at measuredsem.com or by following him on Twitter.