Retargeter

David vs. Goliath: The Battle For Hearts And Clicks (Part 3)

This is the third post in a five-part series on how to use online marketing to look as big as your biggest competitor.

Don’t just get noticed–Be Remembered

In our last post, we discussed how backlink research enables you to get your brand noticed alongside the brands of your biggest competitors, even with a shoestring budget. Today’s post will introduce a powerful new ally in the battle for hearts and clicks—retargeting.

As Internet content and advertising have proliferated, it has become more and more difficult for brands to have their products and messages stand out against all of the noise. Consider these statistics:

• The average American is exposed to over 3,000 distinct advertising messages every day
• Ad recall has fallen from 34% in 1965 to just 8% in 2007
• The average person can only name 2.21 ads they have ever seen

While traditional advertising has focused on getting people’s attention, ad impressions are no longer sufficient to secure visitors and drive sales. Retargeting offers a powerful solution to this problem by specifically targeting your ads to people who have already interacted with your brand in some way, either by opening your e-mail, visiting your website, or engaging with your Facebook page or Twitter feed. By using cookie technology and leveraging multiple ad networks, the retargeting service will serve your visitors ads as they browse the rest of the web, even on high-profile sites such as the New York Times and Fox News. Since users will be exposed to your ads multiple times, they are more likely to remember your company and return to your website; retargeting helps keep your brand “top of mind” with your visitors, even after the initial interaction.

In addition to driving repeat traffic and helping people remember your brand, retargeting offers businesses the ability to dramatically expand their online visibility. Buying banners on all of the major ad networks would be prohibitively expensive for the majority of businesses. With retargeting, a company can create the impression of online ubiquity because only people who have expressed prior interest will be served your ads, which provides massive savings over a direct ad buy. The end result is the same however—visitors will believe that your company has incredible reach and resources, despite the fact that your ad spend may be only a small fraction of that of your biggest competitors.

Remember to check back next week for Part 4—It’s All About the People.