by Adam Witty, Founder and CEO of Advantage | ForbesBooks
So, how can you use remarketing in your business? The process depends on a little thing called “cookies.” Not of the chocolate chip variety! First, let’s explain what a cookie is.
An internet cookie is a simple text file that is stored in the web visitor’s device when they enter your website. To use cookies for remarketing purposes, you will add a small piece of JavaScript to your website’s code, which will drop a cookie every time you get a new web visitor. (It won’t affect their web experience in any way).
Next question. So what? What can marketers do with those cookies?
Cookies tell marketers:
- what pages the consumer has visited
- what products and services they’ve looked at
- how many pages the consumer has looked at
- how long they stayed on the site
Once your web visitor has been “cookied” and proceeds to visit other websites, your remarketing ad service provider will display an ad for your site – which might be personalized to that consumer based on their behavior while on your site. It’s easier to explain by example.
Remarketing in Action.
Let’s see remarketing in action:
Lola visits Target.com. She puts a lamp, a bedspread, and a blouse she loves in her shopping cart. She doesn’t purchase any of them, closes the tab, and forgets about it. Lola is prime for a remarketing campaign, if Target has such a campaign in place.
Lola is reading a gossip news site a couple nights later – in the margins, she sees the same lamp, bedspread, and blouse she’d selected in a banner ad for Target. All Target has done is re-present Lola with the same items she already liked, putting them back in her line of sight.
Why Remarketing Works.
It’s a simple truth: consumers usually won’t make a purchase or dial a number their first time visiting a website. However, as a marketer, you can target them for advertising because they viewed your website – you already know they’re interested. That’s more than you can say for Joe Schmoe, who has never visited your website, is not your ideal customer, has no use for your product, and should in no way account for any of your ad spend.
This powerful format has proved indispensable in the marketing game. It allows for increased user touch points, drives repeat traffic to your site, and increases brand recognition and awareness.
To an extent – we’ll be frank – it can feel a little weird to consumers. When you are wearing the hat of consumer, you’ve probably found it a little odd too. Dare we say remarketing appears big-brother-ish upon first glance. But once you put on the hat of business owner and marketer, you begin to understand why companies employ this strategy.
Adam Witty is the Founder and CEO of Advantage | ForbesBooks, the authority marketing specialists. Working with business entrepreneurs and professionals to elevate their brands and grow their businesses through publishing, he has built the company into one of the largest business book publishers in America, serving over 1,000 members in 40 U.S. states and 13 countries. Adam is also a sought-after speaker, teacher, and consultant on marketing and business growth techniques for entrepreneurs and authors.
