96% of visitors to a website don’t become customers or engage during their first visit. How do you bring them back?

The old advertising adage used to be that a potential customer needed to hear, read, and/or see your message three times before they engage in your product or service. The latest statistic is that it can take up to seven digital interactions with people before they become a customer. How can you speed up this process? By retargeting, also called retracking or remarketing (by Google).

Retargeting is an online marketing technique that focuses on people who visit a website. When a user visits a website, a cookie tags a code from the site and is placed on the visitor’s browser to allow an advertiser to target that consumer as they interact online. For example, if someone visits Overstock.com and places something in a cart but leaves the site without purchasing it, a cookie is placed on the visitor’s browser. That user may find that while visiting another site, an ad for Overstock appears featuring the very item they placed in the cart. The next time they see an Overstock ad on another site it may even offer that same item at a discounted price.

Retargeting tagging can be implemented three different ways:

1. By a user’s exposures to the brand ad on a targeted website (a website that has been identified as having visitors that would be ideal customers for the marketers business)
2. Search engine use
3. Visits to the marketer’s own website

There are several methods of approach to retargeting. To decide what is best for you and your business, you may want to consult with a marketing firm that has expertise in successful web advertising, or connect with an advertising network that contracts with dozens of websites and can help formulate a strategy through their contacts.

Here are four steps for successful retargeting, as adapted from Fetchback.com:

1. Identify your visitor’s interest in your products or services. This can be done by placing a retargeting tag on particular pages of your website.
2. Develop unique and engaging creative, web ads, and landing pages. The goal is to increase activity on your website.
3. Deliver your retargeted message to visitors by reaching a variety of websites they will likely visit.  This can be done by placing ads through a Web Publisher Network or Ad Network with a robust website list.
4. Actively and aggressively send diverse visitor traffic to your site by purchasing ads on other websites.

For business owners, it’s important to keep in mind that bombarding potential customers with your message can come across the wrong way. Businesses must be strategic; the key is to spread your resources around in order to control contact with prior visitors and thus increase the number of times they see the same advertisement during a specified time period.

If an online advertiser is serious about drawing targeted, engaged potential customers, “retargeting” is the most efficient and effective way to do it.

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