Retargeting: Personalized marketing you need to know about

Recently, I searched for a round-trip flight to New York. I checked a common travel site just to compare prices before I finalized my plans. Upon leaving the travel site, I kept seeing ads for the very same Manhattan hotels I had viewed in my research. These were popping up seemingly at random on other sites entirely.

The ads knew where I had been and knew where I wanted to go! It was spooky.

These “spooky ads” that “follow you around” online are prime examples of modern personalized marketing – and you’ve probably had a similar experience.

Whether it’s a shoe brand you were interested in that was uncannily coincident on Facebook or a vacation package reminder when you were on the New York Times site, you have to wonder: How do they do this?

This method of advertising is called “retargeting” or “remarketing,” and it can be a very useful tactic in your online strategy. Here are the basics of retargeting and how you can use it in a savvy, intelligent way, to generate conversions (sales or other desired actions from customers) for your business.

What is retargeting?

Retargeting is a method of marketing that targets Internet users who already have visited your site, using a network of banner ad spaces across the web. Unlike other forms of online advertising, with retargeting you only spend advertising dollars on displaying ads to those who already have visited your site.

You can choose how far into the site a user had to have gotten before he or she is retargeted. It could be a landing page, or a final conversion form that a user left at the last moment. Or, you can offer different ads to different users depending on what they are (or were) interested in. More on this later.

How does retargeting work?

You add a small piece of code (called a pixel) to your site. Don’t worry, it doesn’t interfere with how your site displays or functions. You can choose to add this pixel to the entire site or select pages.

As a user lands on the page that carries the pixel, he or she gets “cookied” and becomes part of your “audience.” The cookies stay with users, so you potentially can have a lot of information about how each audience member has interacted with your site – which products they show interest in and whether they’ve proceeded all the way to a conversion page.

If the user then converts, a different pixel – a “burn pixel” – fires and takes the user out of your future “retargeting” audience. Or you might specify that a converted audience member be shown a different ad. Regardless, as your audience surfs the web, banner ads appear across your ad display platform to these cookied users specifically.

The potential of a well-constructed retargeting campaign is huge. It enables you to really control who sees what ads and at what time. You can tailor specific ads to specific users, based on which products the user has been interested in, and how close to conversion he or she has gotten.

How to use retargeting

Retargeting users who have already visited your site and demonstrated interest in your product or service has unique potential. Any visitor who returns to your site is much more likely to convert – even if you had to prod him or her to return!

The power and precision of a retargeting campaign requires a bit of know-how.

Let’s adopt the marketing acronym “AIDA” to describe the path from that first click to a final conversion: “A” means awareness, “I” is interest, “D” is desire and “A” is action.

Each of these steps on the buying path comes with its own required actions for success.

Awareness: For those visitors who have landed on your page but not explored, you might just offer some simple ads in the network with your name and logo prominent.

Interest: When a visitor has navigated into your site a bit and obviously is interested, you might offer a retargeting ad with the specific product this visitor initially had searched out.

Desire: Now you have to persuade the visitor who has, alas, come and gone. You might show discounts or specials, promote your satisfaction guarantee or show testimonials from satisfied clients.

Action: Once a visitor has taken action – that is, abandoned the shopping cart on your site and then returned and actually purchased – you might show him or her an ad for a similar product or service.

Cautionary Advice

Although the potential for a great return on investment is there, it’s worthwhile to discuss the potential pitfalls of a poorly constructed retargeting campaign.

Don’t overdo it! If you are hounding your audience all over the web and reminding them everywhere that they once clicked on your site, they might develop some resentment. Experts agree that seeing an ad for your company multiple times in a month is ideal, but it should not always be the same ad, and not always on the same platform.

Not a quick fix: Just like all marketing campaigns, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to set up a retargeting campaign that runs itself. Retargeting offers a lot of options, and you’ll need to continually tweak the way you do things. You can’t just use ads that have worked in the past, and you’ll have to get creative in order to get clicks. This is an egg you must sit on to watch it hatch.

Part of a whole: Of course, you will also have to continue with other marketing efforts in addition to retargeting. In order to build your audience, you’ll have to go through the other channels of online and offline marketing to get people to your site in the first place. Social media, PPC campaigns, search-engine optimization, mail-outs, and offline advertising still will be important to build your audience and generate interest.

Retargeting is a new and compelling marketing tactic, and it could well pay off with a nice return to boot!

Laurie Macomber, owner of Fort Collins-based Blue Skies Marketing, can be reached at [email protected] or 970-689-3000.