Display Retargeting 101

This is article #2 of our 4-part Retargeting Advertising series. In case you missed it, the first article was a beginner’s guide to retargeting, which explained how retargeting works and why I recommend you use it to market your business.

In part 2, we’re going to dive a little deeper into one of the three forms of retargeting advertising, Display Retargeting. In parts 3 and 4 we’ll cover Search Retargeting and Social Media Retargeting, respectively.

Have you ever felt like a banner ad was following you around as you surf online? No matter where you go, you see the same or similar banners advertising the same product or service. If you know what I’m talking about, then you have experienced display retargeting first hand.

Display retargeting is a form of behavioral targeting where your ads are displayed to prospects who have previously visited your website.

Unlike traditional display advertising where you target your ads based on visitor demographics and the context of the webpages, retargeting allows you to target based on browsing behavior. That means you can display ads on nearly any website, like CNN.com for example, and it doesn’t matter what the typical demograhic is for that website because your ads will only show to prospects who have already visited your website.

Think about that for a minute. People who have already visited your website and read about your products or services are much more likely to respond to your ad. That means retargeting advertising is one of the least risky forms of online advertising.

And that brings us to one of the key benefits of display retargeting…

Test & Expand Your Reach With Minimal Risk

If you’re not yet advertising online then display retargeting is a low risk, cost effective way to dip your feet in the water. Once your ads are up and running, then over time you’ll start to see exactly which websites your prospects visit and which of those websites are more likely to drive sales. You can use this data to later launch a traditional display ad campaign with more confidence.

If you’re already advertising, then you can use display retargeting as a way to expand into new territory. For example, have you considered advertising on a large, high trafficked website like YouTube? That may sound a bit risky, especially if you have a tight budget, but with retargeting you can more safely expand your advertising reach to larger websites like this.

Now that you know why display retargeting is such a great tool, let’s take a look at the 3 types of ad variations available.

#1: Text Ads

The fastest and easiest retargeting ad to create is the text ad in Google AdWords. This is generally where I recommend every business get started because it doesn’t require any investment in designing professional ads.

Text ads are also perfect for testing different ad copy. It’s not too difficult to create multiple text ad variations to split test and determine which one performs best. Then you can use the winning ad text to create your more professional banner ads (see #2 below).

#2: Banner Ads

Banner ads are the most common retargeting ads and they are no different than traditional banner ads that you see all over the internet.

As mentioned above, I typically recommend first testing your ad copy using text ads because it’s faster and easier to test different variations. Then once you know what works best, you can invest in professionally designed banner ads.

#3: Video Ads

The third type of retargeting ad is the video ad. I’m sure you’ve seen the pre-roll video ads on YouTube that play right before the video you want to watch. But did you know you can use video ad retargeting so that the pre-roll “commercials” only play for prospects who already visited your website?

That’s right, you can test YouTube pre-roll video ads with minimal risk using retargeting. In my experience this can work very well to promote both products and services.

How Do You Get Started?

In case you’re wondering which advertising network to use, I recommend Google AdWords. AdWords has no minimum investment, it’s pay as you go, and it has all 3 ad types listed above.

If you need more help getting started, then register for our upcoming live training called, “How to Profit with Retargeting!” on Friday, April 24th at 12pm – 1:30pm Eastern time.

When you attend this 90-minute online training, I’ll show you step-by-step how you can generate more leads and customers using this retargeting advertising.

Click here to learn more and register