How Re-targeting Works for deep dive in Display Network
Retargeting allows you to advertise to groups of visitors to your website based on the things they did when they visited. Here we’ll cover the basics:
- tracking what people do on your site
- using that information to identify people you want to target
- creating ads specifically for those people.
Hey there! One really powerful type of display advertising is called retargeting, and lets you use what people do on your website in order to target them with a specific advertising message, even after they’ve left.
In this Blog we’ll show you how it works, and help you decide if retargeting is right for your digital strategy.
Let’s use our example of a film review podcast once more. A potential customer comes across your website searching for something new to listen to on their morning commute. They are interested and start to subscribe, but halfway through filling out the subscription form are suddenly distracted by phone call. So they leave your site before hitting “Subscribe”.
While you’re probably glad they visited your website, you’d be happier if they had finished subscribing. They might forget about your podcast. Or find something else to subscribe to instead.
Here’s where retargeting comes in.
Your first step in re-targeting is to define your target audience.
There are lots of retargeting solutions out there to choose from, and many display networks offer this feature as well. But no matter which you use, you’ll first need to define who will be in your audience.
So, you could define your target audience as people who started to fill out a subscription form, but didn’t complete it.
Your retargeting service might need you to add a little code to your web pages, or integrate it in your web analytics tool, so it can start collecting a list of people from your website who match this criteria.
Again, this won’t be a list of individual people with any personal information, such as names or email addresses. Instead, it’s an anonymous list (often called a retargeting list) of users that match your criteria who can be retargeted with ads.
Here’s where retargeting comes in.
Your first step in re-targeting is to define your target audience.
There are lots of retargeting solutions out there to choose from, and many display networks offer this feature as well. But no matter which you use, you’ll first need to define who will be in your audience.
So, you could define your target audience as people who started to fill out a subscription form, but didn’t complete it.
Your retargeting service might need you to add a little code to your web pages, or integrate it in your web analytics tool, so it can start collecting a list of people from your website who match this criteria.
Again, this won’t be a list of individual people with any personal information, such as names or email addresses. Instead, it’s an anonymous list (often called a retargeting list) of users that match your criteria who can be retargeted with ads.
So, now that you’ve defined an audience, any visitor who started to subscribe but didn’t finish will be added to the list. Now it’s time to create ads specifically for them.
These ads can be pretty focused, because you know everyone seeing them has already started to subscribe on your website. So you might include things like special offers for extra content, a free gift for signing up, or some other incentive that’s aimed at getting them to come back and finish subscribing.
With a campaign set up to show ads to people on the retargeting list, you can now reach potential customers even after they’ve left your site.
So later on they might see one of your ads, click on it, and finish signing up.
Once they’ve subscribed, there’s no need to show them ads with subscription incentives anymore. So you might want to create a new retargeting list for current subscribers. Then, you can target them with a different ad campaign, perhaps convincing them to come back and explore all the other podcasts on offer!
So that’s how retargeting works. It tracks what people do on your website and then creates an audience based on their actions, letting advertisers design specific ads for people who have - or haven’t - done specific things.
Hopefully this sparks some ideas of how you might be able to use retargeting for your own business to re-engage visitors, turn them into customers, and bring them back again and again!
These ads can be pretty focused, because you know everyone seeing them has already started to subscribe on your website. So you might include things like special offers for extra content, a free gift for signing up, or some other incentive that’s aimed at getting them to come back and finish subscribing.
With a campaign set up to show ads to people on the retargeting list, you can now reach potential customers even after they’ve left your site.
So later on they might see one of your ads, click on it, and finish signing up.
Once they’ve subscribed, there’s no need to show them ads with subscription incentives anymore. So you might want to create a new retargeting list for current subscribers. Then, you can target them with a different ad campaign, perhaps convincing them to come back and explore all the other podcasts on offer!
So that’s how retargeting works. It tracks what people do on your website and then creates an audience based on their actions, letting advertisers design specific ads for people who have - or haven’t - done specific things.
Hopefully this sparks some ideas of how you might be able to use retargeting for your own business to re-engage visitors, turn them into customers, and bring them back again and again!
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