I have friends who own businesses as well as clients who’ve asked me candidly, “What is the best bang for my advertising buck, truly? The straight scoop, please.” While there are many media placement options to get a great bang for your buck, the first and foremost of importance in my opinion is Remarketing, also known as Retargeting. Remarketing is serving digital ads to users who visit your website after they visit your site. Nordstrom and Amazon do this well. Some people think it’s creepy. And admittedly it does have a Big Brother feel; but the truth is all advertisers who are doing advertising right, use Remarketing as a critical piece of their ad buys.
Consider the last time a user who shops at Nordstrom.com for a pair of boots. They didn’t purchase them for whatever reason. But for the next few days, an ad from Nordstrom showing those exact boots follows them online. Taunting them, “Remember me? You were interested in me (boots)! Sure you don’t want to peek again?”
Serving an ad to a user who has visited your website is imperative. You likely won’t find a more qualified lead than a user who is already expressing interest in your product or service by spending time on your website. And this may be the cheapest advertising you do. Most effective and likely the least expensive. Whoa. Can’t really beat that…
So typically, Remarketing is sold on a Cost Per Thousand (CPM) or Cost Per Click (CPC) model. Many times the CPM is in the $3 range. So for round numbers say it’s $3.50 to serve 1,000 ads to users who have come to your site. For example purposes, say you have 10,000 unique users who visit your website and you want to serve them 10 ads each. That would mean you’d need 100,000 impressions per month. Take that $3.50 CPM multiplied by 100 and you’d got a $350/month ad budget that is serving extremely targeted ads to users who are extraordinarily qualified. That scale can be scaled up for larger businesses, which are typically the type of businesses Thrive serves. Say you need 100,000 users served ten times each at $3.50, you’re looking at $3,500/month for 1,000,000 impressions targeting users who have expressed interest in your product or service! What an opportunity!
Furthermore, if you max out your Retargeting budget, and have leftover, most do, then you can add in a Prospecting component that will use the data collected by the Pixel placed on your website to serve ads to users who “look-alike” and “act-alike” users who are already visiting your website. So for instance, back to the Nordstrom boots example, say I shopped at Nordstrom.com for a pair of boots. I’m a working mom, living in Washington. The Pixel data that is gathered from me shopping gives the technology the ability to find another woman who behaves similarly to me online. So the ads will be served to another professional woman who may also be a mom who lives in Washington. Make sense?
It’s simple but incredibly effective. Possibly creepy, admittedly. But who doesn’t want to capitalize on an incredibly valuable and relatively affordable way to boost sales through highly targeted, effective advertising?
-Robin