Retargeting - What is it and how does it work?

Have you ever surfed the internet and wondered how certain marketers seem to have their advertising everywhere?

Their fancy product or service appears to be on every website you visit. They are all over the internet all of the time. It’s almost like they are spying on you and following each and every click or step you are taking when on the internet.

What is Retargeting Marketing?

An example of this would be if you are on a particular website for a few minutes reviewing the content or evaluating a marketing product and then decide you are done and would like to go to another website. You click to another website and all of a sudden, appearing in the sidebar or advertising section is the same content from the previous website you spent a few minutes on earlier. You look at the top of a website and the same information appears in the banner area as well and you start to think that something “weird” is going on.

You think nothing of it and then decide you want to go to Facebook for a few minutes to chat with some friends. While there, this same website content you were reviewing earlier loads in the Facebook advertising sidebar on your page and you begin to realize there is something to this mysterious phenomena.

How does Retargeting marketing work?

Another term for retargeting is remarketing and it basically is a way of advertising on the internet whereby you keep your brand (e.g. product, service, business) in front of people after they leave your website. It is a tool that is becoming more and more popular as the internet’s users grow and marketer’s focus on driving internet traffic to their websites.

For you technical folks, retargeting advertising is technology that is cookie based and uses computer code (i.e. called a pixel) to follow people around the internet. In following these people around the internet, this code allows the marketer to create an audience with which to market their products through advertising. This audience is tracked over the internet and displayed advertising relevant to the marketer’s product or services.

Marketer’s are seeing incredible results with this approach because as they say in sales, it usually takes 4 to 7 exposures for someone to be comfortable enough to buy whatever it is you are selling.

Years ago, remarketing was only available to big time spenders in the advertising space online. Technological advances have made retargeting advertising available to everyone.

Without a doubt this definitely needs to be an essential component in your advertising tool kit.