If You’re Still Interested…

Katherine Bennett - May 18, 2010

Have you ever gone to a store and forgotten to buy something? Have you ever been at a store pressed for time and told yourself I’ll have to come back later, but you never made time to go back? What if on your way home you see a reminder sign right above a street sign? The sign would say “Don’t forget to visit the store.” It makes you look twice, but you kept driving. About 5 minutes away from your house you stop at a light and notice a sign that says, “Remember, you need to get something from the store.” In your mind you say, “Oh yeah, I did want to go to the store.” Then you drive over to the store and buy what you need. It may sound like a fairy tale, but this does happen online and it’s called remarketing.

According to Google, remarketing “allows you to show ads to users who’ve previously visited your website as they browse the Web.” It’s quite a phenomenon, especially if you’re using banner ads. The beauty of remarketing is that you’re only advertising to people who have shown an interest in your site and apparently people must not mind, because many visitors are returning to sites to complete orders or fill out a lead generation form.

Even better is that remarketing can be set very broad or it can be set to an incredibly granular level.   A company can set up a remarketing campaign, so that anyone who visits their site is later targeted by an ad whether they completed a desired action or not. On the other hand, a company could just target people who visited their product “Y” page, went to the shopping cart, but didn’t complete the order. This could also be used for a lead generation website. For example, a company could set up remarketing to target people who went to a lead generation form page, but left before completing the form. There’s multiple ways to set up remarketing campaigns to reach visitors, but it is definitely recommended to use banner ads.

Remarketing is catching on quickly with many companies and those who are jumping on board haven’t been disappointed. Remarketing allows companies to narrow down the playing field; in fact it’s like a sales person pursuing a hot lead. The visitor comes to your site, and they go far enough in the process to show that they aren’t there by accident. Now, your banner ad is appearing to them on certain sites on the web, just like a sales person who calls to follow up on a lead, and in many cases remarketing is closing the deal. It’s definitely worth it to get involved with remarketing. After all, shouldn’t you be asking visitors who left your site if they are interested?