HeroConf in on in Portland Oregon, bringing together a crowd of pay per click artists who live for PPC.  On Monday, two of the industry’s most engaging speakers discussed the super hot topic at HeroConf, Remarketing Lists for Search (RLSA).

Larry Kim, Founder of WordStream was first up and he described how by using RLSA we can now we can target based on the browsing history.

We can tag people who go to the site, then customize the keywords, ads and bids for searches later. Larry shared these results:

He shared more optimizations tips that can be used to make the most of targeting.

1. Go with the widest possible segment
2. Try excluding segments

Kim then talked about how RLSA can be problematic because the conversions realized from RLSA may not be incremental growth.

1.  Conversions are being pushed around rather than bring in new and may be cannibalizing other campaigns. Structure in a way to not shuffle conversions around.

2. RLSA is not as good for small businesses, as the remarketing list may be too small.

3. If it’s using branding keywords and not getting new customers, be aware it may be too much branding being forced upon the customer

4. Worst ever was the acronym RLSA

Sometimes RLSA doesn’t really move the needle when you look at the broader picture.

PPC is getting harder the CPCs are increasing to an all time high. Apps are stealing searches from desktop because people are spending more time in apps than searching on desktop.

A great tip about using Bing demographics and bid modifiers is a way to carry the concept of RLSA to Bing.

Here is a copy of his full presentation:

Manny Rivas, Online Advertising Director, aimClear focused on threading psychographic targeting into search and the importance of customer centricity in retargeting.

Discusses RLSA, then layering RLSA using demographics. He discussed identifying different social channels to drive to traffic to  create a site visit. Then, later conducting a broad search, these people can be retargeted.

We should take care to not alienate customers and devalue a brand by being “obnoxious” in our remarketing. It’s important to be careful where the traffic is coming from and try to get in the best quality traffic.

He summarized, that our as marketers should be to demystify, serve and remove barriers for our audiences.

Here is his full presentation: