How to Make Them Say: “I See Your Ads Everywhere!”

For the past 8 weeks, there’s been one exchange on every phone conversation I’ve had for business.

“What are you guys doing?  I see your ads everywhere.  Sports sites, news sites, blogs.  You must be spending a bunch of money.”

Verbatim.  Every time.
And what’s the answer?  Say it with me: Retargeting.

What’s Retargeting?

While I’m sure many of you who do paid advertising online know the concept, let me take a second to review.

Retargeting boils down to display advertising that targets visitors using a cookie.  The user visits your site, they pickup the cookie.

They go off to the netherworld of the ‘net, and when they end up on sites within the network you’re using to advertise, they get fed your display ads.

Easy enough.  For the visual learners out there, here’s a quick 1-2-3, using our mortgage firm and a housing blog as the example.

The Potential

If you can’t yet see the potential of retargeting for your biz (and of course it’s not for everyone), here’s a few reasons why retargeting gets our group excited right now.

1. Not many people are doing it.  While that leads to some inefficiencies, I’ve never met an inefficiency online I didn’t like or want to hop on right away.  The inventory is out there for you to jump on.  Beat the crowd!

2. It’s hard to brand online.  If a user finds you through a basic web search, comes to your site for 45 seconds and then leaves – I’m guessing a lot of them won’t even remember your URL let alone what you’re selling.  Retargeting let’s you utilize display ads to drive home your logo, brand, or service.

3. You don’t pay unless someone clicks.  That means this is free display advertising.  Free.

Where to Setup a Retargeting Campaign

There are some primo options for starting your first retargeting campaign.  If you’re an Adsense or Adwords user, Google and their Doubleclick network offer it.  There’s also places like Fetchback and Retargeter.

We’ve had success with Google and Fetchback and I can vouch for the quality of traffic their networks will drive.

While I’ll spare most of you the “how to” guide on setting up ads that draw attention and clicks for now, it’s worth noting you can do dynamic ads with Flash and test out different sizes pretty easily.

Get on it Now

Now’s the time to be testing retargeting out for your site or business.  I’ve seen a lot of advertising mediums deliver the highest ROI early in their lifespan.  Get there before the party gets too crowded.
If nothing else, I promise you’ll have your business contacts dropping you a line that goes something like this: “Why are your ads on EVERY SITE I go to?”