The term retargeting has been around marketing for some time as a reference to the practice of coming at customers and prospect from new angles. The Internet version of retargeting takes a slightly more modern approach.
Retargeting on the Internet is the practice of delivering customized ad content based on the sites a person visits. This form of site based behavioral retargeting is gaining in popularity with small businesses.
There are number of services that businesses can employ to run retargeting campaigns. They work by tracking (placing a cookie) when someone visits your website and then delivering ads for your products and services to that same person on the sites they may visit after they leave your site. Your ads are part of an ad network’s presence on these sites, but the firm’s tracking code, installed on your site, is what helps determine that your ad is shown to your site visitors.
The ability to deliver repeated messages to this very highly targeted visitor is getting very strong results for users. Many people visit a website one time because the saw something that interested them, but they never come back. With retargeting you can create ads that essentially follow the visitor around and gently remind them about why they came to your site in the first place.
Google actually employs this technology routinely to deliver more relevant ads to sites you visit and even ads based on the content of your Gmail emails.
Retargeting is very cost effective tool for small businesses as well because the spend can be so narrowly focused. Creative marketers will also find retargeting as an effective way to segment customers and actions.
For example you can retarget someone
- who has clicked on a link on a link in an email
- who visits a landing page from an ad
- who buys one product and now is ready to hear about the upgrade
Because ads are shown individually to your site visitors, but on many large sites, advertisers gain the added benefit of appearing to be very active and this can add to the impression that a very small business is much larger.
The following services offer retargeting for small business marketers:
The one negative seems to be concerns that the technology used (installing a cookie) is an invasion of privacy and that retargeting is overly aggressive unless you inform visitors that you are installing the tracking cookie. Services are moving to make the practice more transparent, but you should visit your privacy policy if you intend to take this route.
Anyone have any experience with this tactic they would like to share?
Image credit: timlewisnm
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