Have you ever been surfing a website and you see a banner ad on the top or the side of the page that features a car that you recently looked at online? Sure, we all have. Have you ever wondered how that website knew that you had recently looked at that car? This is a process called “Remarketing.”  It has been around for a long time, and it is often overlooked as a way of marketing products because companies get spooked by Google AdWords myths of dropping huge wads of cash on Ad Words campaigns that provided next to no results.

We are all familiar with the advertising concept of “tell ‘em what you told ‘em, and then tell ‘em again.”  Repetition is one of the oldest, but most effective ways, of subliminally advertising a brand to a potential customer. 

The Adobe owned website CMO states that “Remarketing can boost ad responses by up to 400%!” Now as someone in the field when I hear a number this high, I am totally interested in learning more. The website also states that “46% of Search Engine Marketing professionals believe that remarketing is a hugely underused online marketing technology”. I would tend to agree with that statement as all marketers are worried about being labeled as “spammers,” and will often overlook “tried and true methods,” because of new digital concerns.

Now the concept of remarketing can give some people a negative impression as it does lend a small hint that someone, or something, is watching you.  The science behind remarketing comes from the use of cookies.  Now internet cookies that most of us have heard of, but do not really understand. 

According to Wikipedia: An HTTP cookie (also called web cookie, Internet cookie, browser cookie, or simply cookie) is a small piece of data sent from a website and stored on the user's computer by the user's web browser while the user is browsing. Cookies were designed to be a reliable mechanism for websites to remember stateful information (such as items added in the shopping cart in an online store) or to record the user's browsing activity (including clicking particular buttons, logging in, or recording which pages were visited in the past).

The consumer is never identified in this process; they are just a person who visited the site which is now being targeted with a remarketing strategy. I collect GI Joe figures and playsets from the 1980’s which I resell online to other collectors.  Having visited websites that sell GI Joe memorabilia, I often get paid ads appearing on websites that subscribe to hosting those services.  A very popular service that offers remarketing services is called AdRoll. 

[an error occurred while processing this directive]AdRoll provides advertisers with the ability to subscribe and pay a monthly amount to select customer demographics for their vertical and horizontal ads.  When you visit a site that is subscribed to such a service, your browser will be offered an internet cookie.  This cookie will record what sites you have visited that have subscribed to the AdRoll service. The next time that you visit a website that subscribes to the AdRoll service you will see ads for the car site that you visited. Again “Tell ‘em what you told ‘em, and then tell ‘em again.”

According to Digiday, not only do they believe remarketing is the hottest trend in ad tech today, but they say that average click-through rate for display ads is 0.07%. The average click-through rate for remarketed ads, however, is about 0.7%.

Power Digital Marketing says that remarketing also makes digital marketing cheaper. The ads are only shown to the people that want to actually see them, which means the likelihood of them clicking on the ad is much greater. The advertising customer, in turn, has spent less money because these ads are so targeted they almost can’t fail. They also state that very few purchases are made on the first visit to the site. Like we mentioned earlier, reminding someone of that item through remarketing and its amazing sale price makes you more likely to click and purchase. This is an easy way to reintroduce a product or service.

Remarketing is another tool in the marketing toolbox that reminds the consumer of someone they may have forgotten about, or ‘re-showing’ something they were already interested in and persuading them to the point of purchasing said product or service. Remarketing is a tool that every online business should have a budget for because it’s clever, easy and forward thinking.

When you are considering what new activities to add to your marketing arsenal, you might want to consider Remarketing.  The results may amaze you.

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