» The Hidden Secret – Retargeted Advertising

Retargeted Advertising is probably the most effective form of online advertising and only a handful know about it.  It’s mainly been used by the big guys; Fortune 500 companies were the only ones who could afford it up until now.

My first experience with retargeted advertising was through a media spend I placed for one of my clients through Advertising.com.  I was skeptical at first because the minimum buy-in was roughly 30k a month but the results were so impressive they yielded a $10 ROI.  Ok, so how does it work and what is it.

For those of you who don’t know that much about online advertising, let me give you a quick breakdown:

• Most retailers have a 70% abandonment rate, that means when they have a product in a shopping cart, consumers change their mind about actually following through with their purchase.  This can also apply to hotel bookings which we generally reference as a look-to-book.
• Industry standard for converting visitors to sales is approximately 1 – 2%.  Side note, RushMyPassport.com converts at close to 3%!

So basically, you have just let 98% of your customers leave your website and you’ll never communicate with them again.  What if I told you that some of those customers just got distracted at work but they really wanted to purchase your product.  What if their boss just made a suprise visit and they had to quickly close their browser.  The 98% that we’re talking about has already established a relationship with your brand.

This is how it works -

When a visitor comes to your website, a cookie is placed on their computer which identifies them.  Then when that customer goes to any other website, banners can be served specifically to them with products or services you are offering.  This works extremely well when you offer them a discount off your product as well.  Let’s say your offering a weekend getaway to a resort in the Caribbean.  You could target anybody who actually began the booking process but never completed it.  Now all of sudden, your lost customer is browsing the web and they see a banner that shows a 15% discount off the reservation they were just about to book and bang, it doesn’t get better than that.

There are two companies out their that allow you to create these campaigns without spending too much.  The first works on a CPM model, Fetchback.com, and the second on a CPC model, Leadback.com.  I recommend Fetchback.com- super easy to setup and really great to work with!

There is also one other notable thing I’d like to mention about retargeted advertising.  It makes you look like you have the largest advertising budget ever.  Friends of mine who have visited RushMyPassport.com, have left the site and gone to their social network websites and other websites like CNN.com, etc and have commented on the fact we appear everywhere.  They all think we have this enormous advertising budget – not quite, maybe someday.