By D. Roger Maves
Retargeting, also called remarketing (Google’s term), is one of the most effective conversion strategies used today by online marketers. You may not be familiar with the name but you have probably experienced the results of a retargeting campaign aimed at you.
Here’s an example of how you might experience this. Let’s say you are browsing the Internet and visit a website on home improvement, maybe Home Depot. Next you decide to visit a news website like CNN and as you are browsing the site you see an advertisement for Home Depot. You wonder is this just a coincidence? The next day you visit a blog on fly fishing and there in the sidebar is an ad for Home Depot. Now you begin to think this isn’t a coincidence and you’d be correct.
Retargeting is a way for businesses to get back in front of people that have visited their website and hopefully convert them into a sale. We all know how distracting the Internet is and how we can have a goal in mind to get something done but get distracted by an ad, a photo, a video, an article and who knows what else that catches our eye. We might have intended to make a purchase but just didn’t get it completed.
You spend a lot of money and time getting visitors to your website so you want to make sure that even if they do get distracted that you’ll be able to bring them back. Using retargeting you can remind them that they were looking at your website and that they just might want to return and take another look at what you have to offer.
Here’s how it works. You create a set up ads in different sizes so that the ad networks can place your ads wherever they have space. Next you set up an account with a company to host your ads and distribute them to the ad networks. The most popular are Google, Facebook, Perfect Audience and AdRoll. After you upload your ads to the company’s platform they will provide you with a piece of code that you will need to install on your website. Once that is done you’re all set to start retargeting your visitors.
Now when a visitor comes to your website a cookie is written to their computer. This cookie contains the tracking code for your retargeting campaign. As your visitor travels the Internet your ad will be displayed to them on any website that is working with the ad networks – there are thousands of them. When the visitor clicks on your ad they are sent back to your website.
This type of advertising is very inexpensive because the ads are only shown to people that have visited your website. Retargeting provides a great way to convert those visitors into customers so what are you waiting for? Get started today!
Roger Maves is the president and CEO of The Knowledge Group, Inc., a digital marketing agency that helps small businesses increase their revenues and grow their business using digital marketing solutions. He’s also the host and producer of Ask About Fly Fishing Internet Radio.
