What has been around for the last 2 years, follows you around and has to do with milk and cookies without the milk? If you answered “retargeting” you get an A and can leave this lecture, but remember we are following you around. If you have just been introduced to the word “retargeting” you probably have already heard about it, just not by that name. According to Ben Polmion in his article Retargeting: 5 New Statistics That May Surprise You, November 2013, “Retargeting is hot right now.” How can that be when it is 2-years-old?
First, let me tell you what retargeting means for those of you late to the concept. Have you ever gone to a boot store online and looked over what they had to offer? Maybe you looked for a new fishing rod. Whatever. After that visit have you noticed that store and the exact make and model you were looking at following you around the internet? It was on your Google search and on the next Google Search. It was peeking at you on Facebook. That's right. You have a stalker.
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You have a stalker!
Yes, that stalker is compliments of a cookie dropped on to your very own computer when you visited that online store. If the store is on its toes (if such a thing is possible), that cookie was from the very item you were looking at.
And why, pray tell, are you being stalked? Retargeting is an online marketing form that allows a company’s brand (maybe yours) to stay in front of customers who visit a website and leave without converting. This cookie-based tech allows a business to attach a small unobtrusive code of JavaScript onto the visitor’s computer. The business can then target that visitor sharing relevant products or even discounts to lure (get the fishing tie) that person back to that business’s site. We have been looking at the way that a potential customer converts and here we have dropped a breadcrumb similar to what Hansel and Gretel did to help your potential person find the way back to your website. Pretty smart, right?
Is this expensive? No.
Kelly Liyakasa in her article Marketers Eye the Higher-Hanging Fruit in Retargeting, November 2013 said:
One of the beauties of retargeting is that it is a pay-per-click system. You will get many, many impressions with very few clicks. That means you get to keep your brand in front of people for almost no cost at all. And the clicks you DO get are going to be very valuable since they’re coming from interested people that are already familiar with your brand. This makes retargeting ads ripe ground to propose calls-to-action with landing pages optimized for conversion since your target audience is repeat visitors.
In a study The Chango-Digiday Retargeting Barometer Q4 2013 that was first run 2 years ago and was just repeated, retargeting spending is growing because of its usefulness. In the 2-year-old study nearly half those who responded said they were funding retargeting campaigns with a new budget. However in early 2013 the number had dropped to 17% and in this study the number was down to 8%. What makes this remarkable is that 20% of marketers have created a dedicated retargeting budget.
Say what? According to Polmion,
Marketers now have retargeting budgets, but does that mean it’s now a core part of their campaigns? To get to the bottom of this question, the survey asked respondents to rate the claim that “retargeting is a standard practice” in their businesses. The marketers rated the claim at 3.98 on a scale for which 5.0 meant “strongly agree.”
So what are you going to do?
It might be time to consider doing some retargeting of your own. You will have to get some software to help you with the cookie technology part, but there also are some things that you must do to get retargeting done right.
Vivek.r in an article called What is Retargeting? posted November 2013 made these suggestions:
Segregate your website visitors into “lists” based on the pages they visit.- Target each list with a focused ad.
- If possible, throw in a discount coupon. This is boost conversions big time!
- Set precise budgets per list and for the campaign.
- Google Display Network is the biggest retargeting provider, but you should consider options like AdRoll and other too.
- Set a TTL (time to live) for the cookie. Follow the visitor only for an acceptable amount of time, if he/she doesn’t convert in the given time then they aren’t going to in future either.
- Use different creatives for your standard display campaigns and re-targeting. This helps in reaching your audience with a better more targeted message (a lot of advertisers display actual products browsed by the visitors in their ads along with a discount)
Can you think of 5 reasons why your business should be using retargeting? What are 5 things you will need to know first?
Jaco Grobbelaar is the owner of BroadVision Marketing. BroadVision Marketing works with business owners to put in place inbound and outbound marketing strategies that consistently secure new clients. The BroadVision Marketing Training Center is located in Petaluma, CA and primarily serves companies in the San Francisco Bay area.
Jaco can be reached at jaco@broadvisionmarketing.com or 707.766.9778 or connect with Jaco on Facebook - www.facebook.com/broadvisionmarketing - and LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/JacoGrobbelaar. He can also be found at Jaco+.