Setting up Boomerang Traffic
Needless to say, not everyone who comes to your site will convert on the first visit; in fact, for most sites, only 2 percent of web traffic converts on the first visit. So how do you get the other 98 percent to“ boomerang” and come back to your site? You do it through a strategy known as ad retargeting.
For instance, say that you go to the online shoe and clothing store Zappos. You look at a pair of shoes and then leave Zappos without buying. Next you visit the Huffington Post to read an article and notice an ad for the same pair of shoes that you were just considering on Zappos. com. You are being retargeted. In this section, we go into more detail about what retargeting is and how to employ it in the following sections.
Defining ad retargeting
After people have visited your site, sales page, or social media page, you can safely assume that they’ re interested in learning more. Even if they left without buying, you can also assume that they didn’ t say no; they just didn’ t have time to take action right then or needed more time to think about your offer. To encourage people to return to your site( like a boomerang), you use the paid traffic strategy of retargeting.
The goal of retargeting( sometimes called remarketing) is to bring people back to your site and get them one step closer to converting. You do this by serving former visitors ads based on their prior engagement with your site. With retargeting, you don’ t try to change prior visitors’ minds; rather, you remind them about your offer.
Although other forms of retargeting exist, we focus on the most frequently used: site-based retargeting. Site-based retargeting uses tracking pixels and cookies to serve your ad to previous site visitors, as we explain in the next section.
Setting cookies and pixels
A tracking pixel( simply referred to as a pixel) is a piece of code that you place on your website to trigger a cookie, which is the text file that stores information about the user’ s visit to your site. The cookie uses a simple JavaScript code and allows ad networks and traffic platforms to identify users when they visit another site, and then serves them targeted ads based on your preferences as an advertiser. Simply put, the tracking pixel delivers information to a server, and the cookie stores information in a user’ s browser so that the server can read it again later. The cookie stores the site visit but does not store any sensitive information, such as the site visitor’ s name, address, or any information that might personally identify the visitor.
When people come to your site, a cookie is placed, and eventually, users leave and visit other sites. The cookie lets your retargeting platform, such as Facebook or Google, know when one of these“ cookied” visitors goes to a site where retargeting ads can be shown. If ad space is available, your retargeting ad may be shown. This entire process is automated