Retargeting Revealed – What is it?
Ever had the feeling that you’re being followed around the web?
You’ve visited a website, had a look round, browsing various pages, lingering on some, ignoring some completely, spending a lot of time on one page, and then left the site.
Afterwards, as if by magic, you notice ads for the very stuff you were looking at popping up all around you every time you’re online.
It doesn’t matter where you go on the web, the website has found you — which means that they can re-engage you with ads inviting you back to their site.
By tracking your digital body language with a simple cookie, the website can identify you wherever and whenever you’re back browsing.
That’s retargeting.
Retargeting or Remarketing?
Technically retargeting is about the process described above, while remarketing is usually about email campaigns, for example emailing a customer after they’ve abandoned their shopping cart or added an item to their wish list.
How Does it Work?
A tiny piece of code is placed on every page of your website called a “tracking tag”.
This tracking tag places an anonymous cookie in the browser of every person who visits your site.
Now that each of your website visitors have been tagged with a unique “cookie,” platform searches for them across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, and billions of webpages in the network and puts your ads in front of them.
What’s the ROI (Return On Investment)?
No matter how memorable or interesting your business is, most people who visit your site are going to leave without signing up, buying, or contacting you.
Retargeting keeps your brand in front of them after they leave, giving you a second, a third, or even a fourth chance to bring them back to convert.
Traditional online banner ads have a click through rate (CTR) of about 0.1%.
This means that one out of every thousand times that ad is shown, one person clicks on it.
With retargeting campaigns, the ads get clicked on 200-400% more often because they are reaching people who have already shown a prior interest in your offering or product.
Coronavirus Covid-19 Considerations – When to Start?
“In the coming months, businesses are going to become more reliant than ever on their digital strategy.
Without wanting to sound too alarmist, in many cases, it will be the deciding factor in whether they make it through the tough times ahead.” My emphasis.
This from a Forbes article in March by business guru Bernard Marr.
And in a blistering interview with adland’s Campaign, Sir Martin Sorrell described how Covid-19 will accelerate the shift to online:
‘It will be an acceleration of what was already there. Consumers were moving online; now they’re going to move faster.’
He predicts a “Darwinian cull” of those businesses not embracing marketing digitalisation.
How to Start
The DIY option is possible, but time-consuming, complex, and difficult to integrate across the whole marketing process, let alone the customer life-cycle.
And one of the main benefits of buying in a retargeting system is that it is proven, programmable, and will do most of the hard work automatically, once set up.
You can always adapt it to the changing marketing environment.
What are the best retargeting companies?
Well, that depends what you want.
There are several ad retargeting companies in the marketplace.
Some concentrate on just a Facebook ad retargeting campaign or YouTube retargeting. Or ecommerce retargeting.
If you want one which covers the whole of customer retargeting then the one I’m about to recommend makes it easy to start right now.
Perfect Audience is a powerful retargeting platform that finds visitors who recently visited your site without converting and serves your ads to them, wherever they are online – including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, and billions of webpages across the web.
Part of the SharpSpring, Inc family, the global, expert market automation enterprise, Perfect Audience is the perfect partner for your business.
The remarkable performance of retargeting campaigns is why everyone doing business on the web should be using it.
Don’t be left behind in the Covid-19 accelerated dash to digital.
