Let’s say somebody visits your website. Maybe he got a referral from a friend, or maybe he clicked on an ad, or found you through Google.
There is a very high likelihood that that visitor will leave your website and never come back.
Maybe the visitor’s friend will call and he’ll leave the computer. Maybe he’ll see a chat in another application. Maybe he’ll just get bored and move on.
Maybe he’ll just be too busy right now to actually do something with what he learns on your website.
So now this visitor leaves you and forgets about you, and you have no further opportunities to get his business.
With retargeting, that all changes. When the visitor leaves your site, he leaves with a ‘cookie’ on his browser. Cookies are little pieces of tracking code used all over the Internet, by companies like Google or Facebook or Linkedin, Amazon and the New York Times. Cookies are ubiquitous.
Now that he has that cookie, whenever he goes to a website that is part of your retargeting network (including any site using Google Ads, and Facebook itself, and many tens of thousands of other websites), your ads can be displayed to him at a very low cost… generally $0.40-1.50 for 1000 ad placements.
Now you have many chances to bring that visitor back to your site and get his business. The more he visits other websites, the more likely he is to see your ads- a 180 degree turn around!
Retargeting boosts your results for any part of your marketing apparatus that results in prospects going to your website. Whether they take your business card and visit your site, see a print ad and visit your site, or find you online, you get more chances to make a sale.
