How Does Retargeting Work

Retargeting marketing works by following your website visitors, or your audience, as they travel throughout the web. When a person visits your site, a browser cookie is dropped. (A browser cookie is a small piece of data that embeds itself in a user’s browser, making it possible to see what websites the user is visiting). After the cookie is dropped, the cookie will follow the user as they travel to other sites on the web. Then, the cookie will implement the retargeting strategy by putting out an ad for your business, encouraging the user to return to your site. The ads are only dropped, or targeted, for users who have already shown interest in your site but haven’t yet made a purchase.

Here’s a basic, more succinct version of how it works: 1) a potential customer visits your website → 2) the customer leaves your site without making a purchase → 3) they continue surfing the web → 4) your ad is displayed on a different webpage → 5) the ad draws the potential customer back to your site, where they then make a purchase.

Retargeting Or Remarketing

What is the exact definition and how does retargeting marketing work?

While your website might be great at attracting visitors to your website, only two percent of web traffic converts to a sale on a first-time visit. This means that even if you’re getting a lot of web traffic, you may not be getting a lot of sales. As such, the purpose and definition of retargeting is finding a way to reach out to the other 98 percent of people who don’t make a purchase on their first visit to your site. While retargeting and remarketing are often used synonymously, there are also a few differences that are important to point out.

The Difference Between Retargeting and Remarketing

We just explained what retargeting is, but you may be curious about what remarketing is, and the differences between the two. The biggest difference between retargeting and remarketing is the strategy that’s used to reach potential customers who have left your website without making a purchase. While retargeting typically relies on cookies dropping ads, as described in the explanation above, remarketing usually uses email. So, remarketing collects a user’s information, and then uses it later to send them an email (or, in the days of old, direct mail).

Both retargeting and remarketing can be effective, and a combination of both might be an effective strategy for improving your overall profits.

How effective is retargeting, anyway?

As nearly all website traffic that visits a website for the first time leaves without making a purchase, retargeting can be very effective in recalling those visitors and getting them back to your website with buying in mind. However, if you’re still not convinced about the power of retargeting, here are some statistics that might convince you otherwise:

According to CMO, retargeting marketing represented 1,046 percent of lift in trademark search behavior in a study that analyzed various strategies for lifting search activity.

Only 11 percent of consumers feel negative about retargeted ads. On the other hand, 89 percent feel either positive or neutral about them, according to e-marketer.

Retargeting can boost ad response by a whopping 400 percent.

Jeff Jarret, the VP of Digital Marketing at Kimberly-Clark, the corporation known for its personal and healthcare products, has stated that it sees a 50 to 60 percent higher conversion rate amongst customers who have been retargeted versus those who haven’t been.

Tools and Resources to Help You Retarget

While retargeting is clearly one of the best strategies for reaching out to customers who haven’t yet made a purchase, retargeting shouldn’t be approached without a strategy. Instead of retargeting without a plan, retargeting is most successful when paired with a great ad campaign, wonderful content marketing, and other strategies for driving customers to your site (they can’t be retargeted if they never made it there in the first place). As such, you need to think about retargeting as one part of your overall marketing strategy, not something that should be pursued independently.

To help you along the way with your retargeting marketing efforts, you should consider enlisting the help of a professional service. Retargeter, Perfect Audience, and Google Remarketing are all a few examples of retargeting services that can help jumpstart your retargeting campaign. Not only can each service help get you set up with great ads, but can also teach you all about cookies, help you to track customers, and then provide you with customized data about what’s working for who, and how effective the ad campaign is.

Who should use retargeting?

The answer to this question is simple: everyone. Whether you’re a small business or a large corporation, if you’re trying to sell a product or service, you need to be using retargeting. The research couldn’t be more straightforward – retargeting will help you to turn potential customers into happy customers.

Demographic And Keyword Targeting

Google AdWords and other services allow for demographic and keyword targeting. But with Facebook, you can target keywords and demographic locations with far more precision.

How? User profiles include their location. When you use geo-targeting, your ads only appear to people whose profiles contain your targeted location and/or location.

Google AdWords doesn’t know as much about your users’ locations or what keywords they are most interested in. They only know what the user is searching for right now. As a result, the probability of your ads reaching the right audience is much lower.

That said, Facebook advertising often has higher clickthrough rates and conversions than Google Adwords.

Which one works best?

It’s important to keep in mind that Facebook is changing. With new algorithm updates, it’s harder to get the same reach that was available in the past. But if you’re willing to invest by buying ads and/or promoting posts, you may still be able to get noticed by your best customers.

Don’t overpay for Facebook ads

Designing your Facebook ad isn’t easy if you want it to be effective. Determining your ad budget and CPM or CPC is as important as the design of your ad. But if you do it right, you can achieve good results with a small budget.

When creating Facebook ads, here are your bidding options:

Cost Per Click (CPC): The maximum you’ll pay per click on your ads. Since distribution is based on an auction format, the amount you ultimately pay for each click will depend on the competition.

Cost Per 1,000 Impressions (CPM): The maximum you’ll pay per 1,000 impressions of your ads. Once again, the amount you pay will depend on competition for the same audience and placement.

Optimized Cost Per 1,000 Impressions (OCPM): Facebook optimizes your ad by showing it to the people most likely to perform your desired action (within your target). Additionally, bidding is automated. Your bid will change dynamically based on competition, assuring that you’ll reach your desired audience.

Facebook Ads Vs Google Adwords – The Facebook Targeting Advantage

Facebook and Google are the two biggest internet giants, and each has its own advertising model. Which is best? The answer may surprise you.

Many companies wonder whether they should use Google Adwords or Facebook Ads. As you will read in this article, we believe Facebook targeting holds certain advantages.

PPC advertising can be cheap if you know the tips and techniques for using it. With Google Adwords you can have highly-targeted, low cost, high conversion campaigns.

You have the same opportunity with Facebook ads. For example, you can get 1,000 Facebook fans for your page only for , or you can build your list driving traffic from Facebook ads and increase revenue.

Two different targeting systems

On Facebook, you can choose the audience for your ads by using filters, which allow you to target your audience in three ways: by interests, demography and geography. So your ads reach the right audience and will be seen only by users you have profiled.

Google Adwords, on the other hand, may trigger ads based on user preferences, but Google doesn’t know people like Facebook does. It can’t see what users “Like” or follow, nor can it see data from their personal profile. Relevant ads are triggered primarily by search terms. So when a term like “business courses” is typed into Google, you see ads ads related to… business courses.

On the Display Network, ads are shown on pages with related content. Google understands what the page is about and matches ads accordingly. As with Adwords, you have to bid on keywords, and you have no control over who is going to see your ad. Furthermore, as you can see in this example, the ad might not be an exact match to the website.

Facebook Ads vs. AdWords Ads

The Facebook ads creation process is different from AdWords. You target people’s interests rather than their search phrases. You’re targeting people based more on who they are than the information they’re looking for right now.

As you can see from this graph, Facebook tends to show ads based on a user’s likes, while Adwords focuses on keywords. The demographic data on users may also be more complete, so targetting can be easier on Facebook.

But the thing that stands out most is the average cost: Facebook ads, on average, are a third of the cost of Google Adwords.

Brand Building

While both advertising platforms offer the ability for companies to build brand equity, they do it in completely different ways.

With AdWords, a click takes you to a company’s landing page, where branding, design and sales copy send a strong signal to the user. If there are tons of ads and hyped headlines, they may question the trustworthiness of the company and immediately click off the site. Google takes note of this, and may lower the rank of the website if too many people bounce quickly.

Facebook advertising allows for leveraging of word-of-mouth and social proof, which are powerful tools in advertising. When people see that a friend already likes a product, trust barriers can be broken down much more quickly than with advertising alone.

With Facebook ads, users see the ads on a regular basis. So, over the course of several interactions, they get to see what that brand is about before deciding to click through to their website or Facebook page. This builds a level of comfort and relieves some of the pressure for landing pages and websites to immediately perform.

Consider Using Your Keywords In The Videos Title

Consider using your keywords in the videos title. This is one of the main bits of information that YouTube and Google use to decide what your video is about.

If your video is about another YouTuber then use their username in the title, this may help your video show up more in their related videos section.

Describe your video thoroughly. Most people ignore this step, but you should take it seriously to increase your views. Describe your video as accurately as possible in the space you are given, taking 2-3 paragraphs to write an interesting and precise description of what people can expect when they see the video. This is another great opportunity  to include your keywords and search terms for a higher chance of your video being found.

Use the best tags. Use all of the keywords from your title and description in the "tags" section to get more viewers interested. The more relevant tags you use, the more often your video will pop up when people search it. For example, if you're posting a video of your cute sleepy dog, you could use words like "Sleepy," "Dog," "Hilarious," and "Cutest." Make sure you don't include extra tags in the description, as those are not included when people search for them.

You can use tags that describe your video as well as other relevant popular videos to make sure that as many people as possible see your video when they are searching YouTube.

Share your video as soon as you post it. The earlier you share it, the more likely it will be to be a YouTube sensation. If you wait a week to share it while it barely gets any views, it'll be much more likely to be forgotten by the YouTube community. Remember, timing is everything. Think of when your audience is likely to watch your video and release right before then (evenings and weekends are a good suggestion).

Email your video to your friends, family, and coworkers. Create an email list consisting of the people who know you well enough to be actually intrigued by your new YouTube video, and send them the link and encourage them to watch it. You can even add, "I can't wait to hear what you think!" to show that you really expect them to watch your video. If you don't care about potentially annoying people, just send it out to as many people as you can.

If you have an intriguing subject and a persuasive email, there's a good chance anyone will look at the video without even knowing you very well.

Share your video through social media. Post your video on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google Plus, and any other social networking sites that you've joined. Ask your friends to like, comment on, and share your post. This will help gain some traction on your video post and it may even go viral.

Connect your Google Plus and Twitter accounts to your YouTube. Then YouTube will be able to automatically share each new video you upload. You can also use online automation sites like ifttt.com to post new videos across all your social media accounts automatically.

Use a blog or a website to promote your videos. If you have a blog or a website, you can use it to market your videos. If you don't have a blog or website of your own but know friends with websites or blogs that are popular, ask your friends if they can help you out by sharing your video with their fans. Embedding your video on websites can help your video rank higher in both YouTube and Google.

If your video is something news-worthy then consider submitting your video to a news website like Mashable, if its accepted and posted on a news site then you will be guaranteed  to have many more views.

How to Get More Views on Your YouTube Videos

Many people have become well-known, or even famous, because of their YouTube videos.

1. Use good descriptions, titles, and tags.

2. Promote your video on social media, websites, and blogs.

3. Use good editing. Add some music and include text info.

4. Get subscribers. Ask for likes and shares, and create playlists.

5. Consider buying views, but make sure that it doesn't violate the Terms of Service.

6. Use third party sites with caution.

Name your video file accurately. This is a good place to use specific keywords, or terms that people may type into YouTube search. If you want people to find your video under the search term "funny things to do with your lizard" then that should be the name of your video. This will also help your video be found under the word "lizard" and term "things to do with your lizard". Make sure you include all of your keywords in the video file.

Give your video an appealing title. It should be short, engaging, and to the point. If your video is about your kid spilling macaroni and cheese everywhere, just call it "Mac and Cheese Disaster." It should pique your viewers' interests without giving too much away.

A very effective technique to boost views is to write a title that makes people want to click on it, this is called ClickBait. For example "What this lizard does next will surprise you" or "You wont believe the weird thing this lizard can do".

Three Tiers of Top Level Domains

There are three general quality tiers of top level domains. The high tier domains are the most valuable for use in marketing, search, and website optimization. These are domains like .com, .gov, and .edu. They’re recognizable, they’re common, and they have benefits to SEO in terms of authority. Restricted domains give you that authority, because they’re implicit proof that you are who you claim to be. They aren’t as valuable as many people say they are, but they still have a bit of value to the owner of such a site.

The middle tier are top-level domains that work for hosting a site, and that are perfectly functional, but aren’t necessarily doing you any favors. Most country codes, most generics, and most sponsored domains all fall into this category. It is, frankly, the bulk of the domains available. No one is going to be better than any other, not really.

The bottom tier are actively detrimental domains. They are often used for spam, and simply using one will give negative associations to your brand, and can possibly come with an immediate SEO penalty or lack of trust.

Which Domain Extensions Rank The Best In Google

There’s an interesting phenomenon with regards to the internet that the more tech-savvy among us might not notice, and those less educated in the world of the web are prone to doing without realizing.

The usual URL format is www.example.com. We all recognize this as a website URL. However, there’s one thing missing from that URL that is, in fact, critical. That’s the HTTP:// part of the command, the hyper text transfer protocol, with or without the S for secure. At the same time, the www is not actually necessary for almost all websites.

The www is a relic from a time when subdomains ruled access to a server. The www was the world wide web access, the front-facing page. The same site at ftp.example.com would be the file transfer protocol access, which the site administrator could use to upload and transfer files. A similar URL, pop.example.com, would be the post office protocol, which usually directs to an email server.

However, these days, most web servers relegate this to ports on the domain. Instead of www.example.com and ftp.example.com, you might have example.com:80 for traffic to port 80, web traffic, and example.com:21, traffic on port 21, which directs to the file server. Alternatively, they might replace the HTTP with FTP://example.com, or whatever other protocol they need.

Why do I bring this all up? Have you ever tried to get someone in their 80s to use the internet properly? One thing you’ll often encounter is how engrained the idea of www.example.com is for a URL. Even if your site is http://example.co.uk, getting someone to type that in can be unnervingly difficult. You’ll see a surprising number of people typing in http://www.example.co.uk.com.

This is the primary reason why, when you’re discussing top-level domain extensions, .com is always going to be the winner. The .com TLD, standing for “commercial” as opposed to educational (.edu), governmental (.gov), or what have you, is the default for many, many people.

So, when you ask the question “which domain extensions rank the best,” you’re adding the invisible subtext, “after .com.” The .com domain extension is always, always going to be the number one extension for as long as extensions are commonly used at all.

How Many TLDs Are There?

There are a lot of top-level domain extensions. There are so many that, as of 2015, they are divided into six categories. These are Infrastructure domains, Generic domains, Restricted domains, Sponsored domains, Country Code domains, and Test domains.

Before the addition and reorganization of 2015, all the way back in the early days of the internet in 1998, there were only a relative handful of domains. You had .com, .org, .net, .int, .edu, .gov, and .mil. These are for commercial sites, organization sites, network sites, international organizations, educational sites, governmental sites, and military sites. The latter two are restricted to the United States, as well.

Digital Marketing Definitions Part - I

If you are new to digital marketing, understanding the complex jargon that dominates the industry can be complicated. With words such as conversion and acronyms like SEO thrown casually in conversations, you can feel left out. To catch up, here are definitions of phrases commonly used in the digital marketing industry.

1. CTR – Click-Through Rate

Click-through Rate identifies the percentage of people who click on link. Usually placed in an email, an ad, website page… etc. The higher the CTR percentage, the more people went through. CTR is extremely important for many parts of the Digital world.

2. CPA – Cost per Acquisition

Cost per Acquisition is a pricing model where companies are charged by advertising platforms only when leads, sales or conversions are generated. It’s been around for awhile but has been generating much more traffic as a common pricing model in late 2013 and early 2013. Best part about CPA is you are only charged for the results that you want.

3. CPC – Cost per Click

Cost per Click is a pricing model where companies are charged by publishers for every click people make on a displayed/test ad which leads people to your company’s website (hopefully to a landing page!).

4. CPM – Cost per Thousand

Cost per Thousand is a pricing model where advertising impressions are purchased and companies are charged according to the number of times their ad appears per 1,000 impressions. It’s definitely a favourite form of selling ads by publishers because they get paid regardless by just displaying ads. CPM model really only makes sense if you are trying to increase brand awareness.

5. Conversion

When a visitor takes the desired action while visiting your site, it is called conversion. This can be a purchase, membership signup, download or registration for newsletter.

6. Impressions

This term is used to define the number of times a company’s ad will appear to its target audience. Impression could also be related to a website and the number of times the web page appear in total.

Example of how impressions work: 1 visitor could view 5 pages which would create 5 impressions. 2 visitors could view 5 pages which would generate 10 impressions.

7. Keyword

A keyword is word or phrase that your audience uses to search for relevant topics on search engines. If you are a flower shop, a relevant keyword could be “Buy Red Roses” [short keyword] or “Looking to purchase roses from a flower shop” [long tail keyword]

8. Organic Traffic

This is traffic that is generated to your website which is generated by a Search Engine. This could be traffic from Google, Yahoo or Bing. It’s also known as “Free” traffic. Organic traffic is the best type of traffic!

9. Paid Traffic

Paid search is when a company bids on keywords and makes advertisements around those keywords to be displayed on search engines. These results appear separately, either on the top, bottom or right side of a search results page. Paid traffic also encompasses any form of paid advertisement that directly points to your website.

10. SEO – Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization is a way a company optimizes its webpage allowing the website to rank higher on a search engine’s results page (SERP). The higher your ranking, typically more traffic is generated (if the keyword has traffic) and more targeted traffic.

11. SEM – Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing is a way companies can get higher placement on search engines by bidding on search terms.

12. SERP – Search Engine Results Page

Search Engine Results Page is the list of results provided by a search engine after a search query is made. Essentially, if you are looking for where your website ranks for “Best Digital Marketing Agency” a SERP report will let you know that your website is ranked #4. Meaning that your website is in the Fourth position (1st page).

13. Domain Authority

This is a scale from 1-100 that search engines use to determine how authoritative a company’s website is, 1 being the lowest rank and 100 being the highest. The higher your domain authority the more Search Engines trust you.

14. Keyword Stuffing

This is the practice of using too many keywords in content in hopes of making it more visible on search engines. You will be penalized by search engines if you resort to it. Never keyword stuff, just provide great and valuable content.

15. META Description

The META description is the few lines of text that appear on the search engine results page.

16. RSS – Really Simple Syndication

Really Simple Syndication is a technology that allows users to become subscribers of content and ultimately get automatic alerts if updates are made. They would need an RSS Reader which is where they receive all the updates. Here are a few popular RSS Readers:

17. Viral Marketing

This is a way of marketing where the audience is encouraged by companies to pass on their content to others for more exposure. Usually a successful viral marketing campaign has an easy share functionality. If you had to pay a lot to generate awareness, it wouldn’t be considered “Viral Marketing” (it would be considered paid traffic).

18. Subscriber

A subscriber is a person who allows a company to send him/her messages through email or other personal communication means. These subscribers are high value to publishers and businesses alike. Subscribers keep coming back!

19. Social Networking

Social networking is the practice of using web-based platforms (or mobile) to build online communities where people share common interests or activities. The most common social networks are: Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Pinterest… just to name a few.

20. Landing Page

This is the page on a company’s website that is optimized to act as the entry page to a site. When redirected from external links, this is where the visitors will be led back.