When you try a new recipe and it turns out to be something amazing, let's say a mouth-watering homemade lasagna, you don't make it once and call it a day. It becomes part of your dinner rotation because you know every time it pops up on the menu, a satisfying meal awaits.

Think of your creative marketing assets in the same light. When you create an ad that gets people talking, thinking, engaging, and clicking, it's best to serve it up again to get the most bang for your creative buck.

Regardless of whether you've made local mobile search a priority in the past, one thing is clear: Your customers have become big fans of local search results, and they are forcing businesses to follow suit.

If you've ever been to a website and then noticed ads for that brand everywhere you go online, you've experienced remarketing. Honestly, who hasn't seen a remarketing ad by now? They are everywhere, and for good reason. Those ads, following you on purpose, are serving an important marketing strategy known as remarketing or sometimes referred to as retargeting.

Digital marketers understand the value of a retargeting strategy, encouraging those who are already on the brand discovery journey to read more content and convert into a customer.

Research cited in Business 2 Community shows that retargeting ads have a 76 percent higher click-through rate, and it makes sense that you would want to reach people who have already expressed initial interest, or at least curiosity, about your brand.

But Google's Mute This Ad function, which lets users hide ads, is being rolled out more aggressively to remarketing ads, which Google refers to as reminder ads. Plus, it will let users know that they've been retargeted.

Your client sells pizza, but it's not just any old pie. They've created a buffet of gourmet toppings, imported cheeses and homemade sauces that allows customers to build the most unique flavor combinations known to carb lovers anywhere. You know there are plenty of hungry customers out there, so you decide to use retargeting to corner the market on all those "pizza near me" local searches.

So what is retargeting, exactly — and how does it improve your SEO and SEM strategy?

Retargeting is a broad marketing term that refers to advertising that targets users who have already interacted with your brand in specifically-defined ways. This includes a visit to your website, browsing social media pages or clicking a product.

Know How It Works

When guests take one of these actions, a cookie is set in their browser and they're served ads based on their previous behavior. For instance, if you own a local coffee shop and a user within a specific ZIP code is browsing your delivery menu, a retargeting strategy could deliver ads to this customer featuring the menu items they were looking at.

Eight months after its first announcement that it would enable cross-device remarketing through the use of signed-in user data, Google added another critical layer of functionality: As of May 15, the data is available to Google Analytics and advertisers creating audience lists.

The announcement was made quietly through the Google Analytics dashboard, but it has important implications for advertisers using Google Analytics — especially those who have been frustrated by some of its limitations. As Marketing Land noted, cross-device retargeting has long been available from other major ad platforms, including Facebook, but Google's retargeting capabilities were much more limited because they haven't allowed tracking via user sign-ins.

Any e-commerce company depends on website conversions to drive their business. When those performance figures suffer, it's likely because of problems you'll find in your website experience, maybe even on your home page.

This can torpedo your online revenues, but there's good news: Many of the barriers to better conversions are easily resolved through some simple fixes. Here are five ways to increase conversions:

So many online journeys, consumer and otherwise, begin with a search engine. So, naturally, the data stemming from those searches offers incredible value to marketers. This single data stream may be the most comprehensive and illuminating source of information you'll find anywhere online — digital marketers can't afford to ignore the opportunity it represents.

The value of search data isn't restricted to applications within those search engines themselves. Marketers can pull that data and use it to retarget consumers on other channels as well. Search retargeting uses past search activity to display ads on other platforms, including Facebook and other display ad networks. Search Engine Journal explains it is an important component of your marketing strategy.

Retargeting is an effective strategy for brands looking to recapture interested consumers and pursue transactions that were abandoned before they could be completed. When properly deployed, it offers incredible value.

With over one billion global Gmail users as of February, according to Digital Trends, chances are good that either you or the person sitting next to you is one of those users. And though this free email service is only a decade old, Google has provided an interesting way for advertisers to reach consumers in a place where (according to The Huffington Post) they spend over six hours a day: their inboxes!

What are Gmail ads?

Gmail ads are a specific type of native advertising that uses Google's AdWords platform to target users based on the content of messages in their Gmail accounts. If you've ever used the browser version of Gmail, you may have noticed a "Promotions" tab near the top of the page. This is where they can be found most easily. These ads are formatted like short emails with 25-character headlines and 100-character mini-bodies. Consumers can click anywhere on these lines to view expanded ads that look like emails and typically contain graphics, links, and additional text.