Retargeting is the process of displaying advertising specifically to people who have already visited your website.
For example, 99designs.com (disclosure: the founders of 99designs’ are investors in Tweaky) is a heavy user of retargeting advertising. If you visit its website and then browse around other parts of the web you will start to see its advertising all over the place.
This means that your advertising is a lot more targeted than general display advertising.
Only people who have some interest in your products will see the ads and for that reason it’s incredibly powerful.
One local company leveraging the power of retargeting is recruitment industry disruptor RecruitLoop.com.
“As a start-up/small business, perception is critical,” says RecruitLoop.com founder Michael Overell.
“Remarketing helps you punch above your weight, in terms of online presence and visibility. The goal is to be everywhere, for the people who matter, on a shoestring budget. Remarketing has been a super effective way for us to do that.”
The ads are displayed via Google’s advertising network as well as premium inventory networks like AdRoll.com.
The technology has been around for a while, but it has largely been seen as a niche marketing method instead of the highly effective conversion optimisation tool that it is.
Retargeting is incredible for one simple reason: It helps you to bring customers who have already shown an interest in your product or service back to your website, significantly increasing the chance that you will make a sale.
When a customer visits your website a simple web cookie is placed on their browser.
Now when they’re viewing a website that displays advertising from Google or AdRoll.com they will see ads you send to them.
You can segment who gets the advertising in a whole heap of ways including:
To get retargeting to work you’ll need to insert code onto your site. This can be a hurdle if you’re not technical but, thankfully, Google have launched Tag Manager, which makes this simple.
Google Tag Manager allows website owners without technical expertise to insert snippets of code for services like retargeting quickly.
You only need technical help once to install Google Tag Manager. From then on future tags for other services can be done via Google’s interface without tech support.
Start your account tag manager account here.
Once Google Tag Manager is installed it’s time to create your retargeting account. There are many retargeting services but we recommend AdRoll.
Google also have their own retargeting product but AdRoll has various added benefits.
First go to AdRoll and create a free trial account. Once complete, the first screen you’ll see is a “create your campaign” page. Click on the AdRoll logo up the top left to skip this and go to the main dashboard.
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