It seems that retargeting is as hot as ever, but there still seems to be a lot of confusion around what exactly it is and how it can be leveraged effectively. In this week’s blog, we thought we would attempt to de-mystify re-targeting and give you some practical advice on how you can use it to your advantage.
Retargeting is a form of advertising where you target people who have previously visited your website with ads that appear across display networks on the web.
Well, sort of. Remarketing is Google’s terminology for retargeting and is specific to the Google Adwords display network. So essentially, retargeting is just the marketing approach behind remarketing.
Basically, you place a targeting pixel on one or more pages of your website, and as people visit your page, they are added to a targeting list. The audience is then tracked and when they visit other participating sites they are shown your ads. You also have quite a bit of control of which websites your ads will appear on, so if a certain site is not performing to your liking you can ditch them.
Once a person clicks on your ad and converts (ie. takes a desired action such as purchasing a product, signing up for your newsletter, etc.) a burn pixel will fire and they are removed from your targeting list, and they won’t see your ads anymore.
In it’s simplest form, the advantage of re-targeting is getting people back to your website, or at the very least staying top of mind. Remember, the people you are targeting have shown some interest in your product or service so you’re spending your advertising budget wisely on qualified leads. But if you don’t use it right, you can totally nosedive.
Here are a couple tips to consider:
As with most digital marketing efforts it takes time. First off, you need to grow your target audience who will be seeing your ads, so get that pixel up there now and start growing your list. Secondly, industry experts all agree seeing ads for a few months increases effectiveness. So for all of you eager and excited advertisers, remember it takes a few months to start seeing results. Just hang in there, it will be worth it.
If you have any questions that we didn’t cover, or need some help getting retargeting going for your business, don’t hesitate to reach out. Also, for all our REALTOR clients, we recently launched a “just listed” retargeting package, so you can increase exposure to your latest listings. Also show off which properties have sold or even “sold over asking”, building your reputation and credibility one sale at a time. Reach out to us for more details.
Stephanie Miles, Director of Digital Marketing