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Webinar Transcript

Joe:                 All right. Thanks for joining us for today’s webinar. Today’s webinar is going to cover retargeting. This is how you can recapture visitors to your site, people that have already been to your site. You can then show them ads on other site. Today’s topics are going to be the basics of retargeting, tracking visitors, creating campaigns and then advance retargeting.

Greg:               All right. Let’s get started. My name is Greg. I’ll be assisting Joe with his presentation today. Let’s just go over the basics of what retargeting actually is. This is a form of display advertising. It allows you to show ads to previous visitors off your website. Now, these ads can appear on Facebook or in banner spots from regular websites. Now, this requires a tracking pixel and Java Script is added to the pages of your website in order to make this happen. This is just a really great way to have your advertisements track visitors all around the internet and whenever they are ready to purchase your company, your brand or whatever is going to be fresh in their mind because they’ve seen your ad pop up in more than one place.

Basically, if you’ve ever looked at an item like on Amazon or maybe e-Bay and the next thing you know you’re on Facebook or you’re on some other website and you’ve seen ad for that specific product that you were just viewing, that’s what retargeting is. There’s a lot of strength in retargeting to recapture visitors that maybe have seen certain things on your pages. Then tracking pixel, that’s just a common term for a line of Java Script code that will be on your site. It just simply puts a cookie, what’s called a cookie in the visitor’s browser and that’s what’s going to identify that user when they go to other sites so they can see your ads.

Those are some of the terms we’ll be talking about how to keep those in mind. Why use retargeting? Retargeting makes your brand look bigger. If somebody is on your site and the next thing you know everywhere they go on the web they are seeing ads for your site. It creates the perception that, “Wow, this is a big brand.” It lets you encourage customers to be brand ambassadors, you can use retargeting on Facebook to have encourage likes, to encourage people to share post and things like that. It helps you to recover lost sales and abandoned shopping carts. If somebody was on your page and let’s say they were going to buy a t-shirt from your website.

Then for some reason they got to that last page where all they had to do is click buy, put in the credit card information but for some reason they just close the browser and they didn’t buy. You can actually track people that we’re on that specific URL one step away from buying and just serve those ads to them to try to recapture them. Also, allows you to put ads directly where people will see them because anywhere they go on the web there’s so many websites that are serving up retargeting ads that essentially if somebody’s been to your site and now you’re tracking them and you’re retargeting them, they are going to see these ads to them. It can also be much cheaper than PPC because you can target more effectively.

With PPC, you’re just casting a wide net out there trying to capture any user. With retargeting, you’re capturing people that are familiar with your site. They are much more likely to buy something if they are going to come back to your site through one of your ads that way.

Joe:                 Right.

Greg:               Let’s talk about retargeting with AdRoll. AdRoll is a website that you can go to and you can use this for setting up a lot of your campaigns. For general purpose retargeting, this is what you want to use. Now, AdRoll ads can appear on both Facebook and regular website with banners. Now, you’ll need to add the AdRoll pixel to your pages to begin tracking visitors then after that create ad campaigns that target all or just the subset of your visitors. Retargeting with Facebook, again it uses a tracking pixel similar to AdRoll but they are separate tracking pixels. Keep that in mind. You would have to have both installed if you’re running Facebook specific ads versus AdRoll.

Just so you know you can retarget, use it on Facebook using AdRoll. You just get more control, a lot more options of how your ads display when people see them on Facebook if you use Facebook’s advertising platform directly. Way more flexible that way. This is great for promoting, if you’re using Facebook it’s great for promoting a mobile app or even specific products on your page or even just your Facebook page. If you’re just trying to get more likes, more shares on your Facebook page you can promote your Facebook page through Facebook’s retargeting. This also allows for advanced targeting. You can target people specifically by their email address.

If you’ve already had 5,000 people purchased something off your website and you have all of their email addresses, you can dump their email addresses into your Facebook retargeting account and then any of those email addresses with valid Facebook accounts you can send ads directly to those people.

Joe:                 What happens if you’re not ready to retarget?

Greg:               There’s a few things that you should do. The first that we recommend doing is just adding the tracking pixel to your site right now anyways because it’s free to use. You can just start building your visitors list immediately. Obviously that’s something that you can get started with right away. Now, some networks out there are going to have a minimum over 1,000 visitors so just keep that in mind as you’re setting all this up. Now, like Joe was saying before, this is cheaper than PPC to do so it’s a really great way to capture some people that just may not be ready to purchase at that given moment when they are on their site. Focusing on getting these people back to your website to make another purchase I feel like that’s a much better way of spending your budget on advertising.

All right, now we’re getting in, get into actually setting up a retargeting campaign. Again, the first thing you need to do is add a tracking pixel. We’re going to link to any instructions that are available on the web to this webinar. We’ll post this webinar and usually about a couple hours after we’re done with it it will get posted online and any links to any products or any instructions that we cover will be included on that page and will make it very, very simple for you. Adding a tracking pixel, it’s simply a line of Java Script, any body can do this. You just simply paste this into your pages, again there’s specific tracking pixel for an AdRoll account or a Facebook account and there’s several other different companies that handle retargeting leads.

We just strongly recommend AdRoll because it’s so easy to use, great interface so we’re big proponents of AdRoll here. If you have a CMS like a WordPress or Joomla site, something like that, it’s very simple … You just simply add this tracking pixel to either the header or the footer of your site and then that will just add it to every page for you so very simple. There’s also a plug in for WordPress. If you’re a WordPress user, there’s a plug in called insert headers and footers. Using that plug in you can just then go to the settings, simply copy and paste your tracking pixel into either the header or footer and again it’s just on your whole site already. Again, all links to any of this stuff including that plug in will be at the bottom of this webinar once we post it online.

Joe:                 Okay. Let’s talk about segmenting your users. All right. Let’s first talk about what it is and then we’ll give an example of how it applies to a real life everyday situation. What segmenting is, is grouping your users based upon pages that they have viewed. Now, think of creative ways to organize your users and target these people with ads. People who visit the check out page but not the thank you page are perfect people to target with a come back discount. Obviously, they are interest in purchasing because they are at the check out page but they didn’t actually follow through with the sales. You could always go back and try to get them back to your site with a come back discount of 20% or something like that.

Now, an example of how to work segmenting into your real life website now this would be … Pretend you have a website and you guys sell band treatment-shirts. A way to just segment a specific group of people are people that come to your page for the Radiohead shirts or something like that. Obviously you know that they are interested in this band and they are interested in the shirts for this band so you might want to follow this Radiohead fans around on the internet and you see them visit a forum or something like that and maybe you place a retargeting ad on that forum for bands or something like that. That’s just an example of targeting a really specific segment of your users and just making sure that they can come back and maybe you can position some discount or some other coupon in front of them, you get them come back to your website.

It’s just a really great way to capitalize in people who are just maybe not interested in purchasing right at that specific moment but you know that later on they will be. You’re just basically specifying a URL of your site. If you have a page that’s yourdomain/tshirts. Somebody that’s been to that page you can now segment the users, anybody that’s viewed that page you can target them with a specific ad because they’ve been to that page, that’s what segmenting is all about. If you’re a tracking conversion, this is very important for any kind of online marketing campaign. Tracking conversions means if you’re not familiar with the term conversion, conversion is when somebody has completed the goal.

If you’re selling something on your site and when people check out, it automatically sends them to a thank you page, thank you for your purchase kind of thing. Basically, anybody who’s then been to that thank you page is a conversion, that’s one way you can track your conversions there. The purpose for retargeting, you can use your conversions to exclude people from your targeted segments so anybody that’s been to that thank you page, you wouldn’t want to show them that come back discount that Greg was discussing because they’ve already bought. This is how you can just laser target your campaigns by excluding people that you know have already bought that you’re not trying to retarget or the people that have already bought, if you’ve got a new product now you can target them with an ad on, “Hey, come back. Buy this new product.”

Other things that conversions could be considered, if somebody signed up for a newsletter, once they’ve clicked that sign up button you can now segment them into a newsletter sign up segment. Anybody submitted a form or have gone on your website if you have a contact form and they’ve inquired about a sale or something like that, all this different things can be segmented with retargeting. Essentially any unique page view can be marked as a conversion. That thank you page, you mark that as a conversion page. It’s up to you how you’re setting it. If you’ve decided which page of your site means that user has converted a certain goal.

You just simple hit a check box in your retargeting campaign that says anybody that’s been to this page is a conversion and now you can cross check that list versus your segments and make sure that you’re waiting people out that you don’t need to be. This is how you save money throughout a retargeting campaign. All right, how do you create an ad campaign? Now that you have all your users tracked and grouped in the segments based upon their activity, now you can show them ads. This is the fun stuff right here. Create a new campaign in Facebook or AdRoll and then select the users that you want to show ads to. Now, whatever don’t forget to exclude people or the segments that shouldn’t see the ads.

Maybe this is the people who got all the way to the thank you page and they are the people that purchase something. Obviously this people would not need some come back discount to come back to your site so just to make sure that you leave them out of the retargeting campaign. Use compelling banner ads, most retargeting campaigns it’s actual display ads were banners ads so you can make very, very specific ads for each of your segments. If somebody was on a blue t-shirt page of your website and they didn’t buy, you can then retarget them with, “Hey, buy this blue t-shirt that you wanted,” something like that that’s a crude example but that’s what it is.

Use a custom ad that speaks to the visitor based on their activity on your own site. A product photo of the item you want to remind the users about, again the blue t-shirt. If they’ve seen that page of your site, show them that again. Again, this is why we’re targeting so effective because if somebody’s going to click on that ad and come back to your site there’s a much higher chance that they are going to buy versus a PPC campaign where maybe they are out searching the web and they just come to your site to check it out real quick. This people should already be familiar with your website so getting them back to your website much higher chance that they are going to convert into a sale. Keep your banner ad simple too, don’t put click here or too many buttons or too much text.

Keep it just very, very simple, very, very targeted. Also Facebook will reject an ad if there’s too much text on the image. I believe you’re allowed about 20% of the image can be covered and Facebook does have a tool that will describe or will check your images to make sure that they are okay. Again, we’ll link to all that kind of stuff at the bottom of the webinar.

Greg:               Why don’t you continue talking about the Facebook ads?

Joe:                 Yes, ads on Facebook. Facebook ads can also include descriptive text outside the ads, you’ve probably seen if you’re on Facebook you’ve probably seen millions of ads thrown at you. There’s usually a picture of something there and then there can be a headline above it, a display URL below it that will show you exactly which page you’re going to and a little descriptive text there. You want to make sure you have a call to action, in your description there make sure that, call to action is always important in any kind of online advertising campaign. Just direct to your users what you want them to do when they see that ad. You can also use, again you can also use Facebook just comment and share stuff on your news feed.

This is again where the segment of people that have bought something on your site, if they’ve actually bought that blue t-shirt you can retarget them with an ad that says, “Hey, do you love your t-shirt? Tell five friends about the t-shirt that you got. Share this page,” something like that. That’s some of the different things you can do with Facebook. All right, ad specific landing pages. Don’t just put people who click on your ad back to your homepage. Obviously you want to send them to something a little bit more specific than that. Our recommendation, it’s really good to set up a specific landing page that should be set up after you’ve set up the ad.

The page needs to highlight or remind them of the product that you wanted to guide them to or talk to them some more about. This would be, if you had some coupon deal or coupon or something like that, this is where you would go ahead and explain the offer that they saw on the internet so that there’s no more confusion on why they should be back. Now, this is something that you want to keep very simple, you don’t want to overdo it with way too much information but you want to allow the users to reacclimate themselves with your website so don’t just give them way too much information upfront but allow them to ease into it, find what they are looking for and get familiar with your website again.

Landing pages that don’t evoke any familiarity with your website this is going to reduce the overall effectiveness of your campaign. Just make sure that the branding is the same on the landing page as it is on the other pages of your website. Again, just remind that user of actually why they are back, whether it’s the purchase that they didn’t place before or some special offer. Just make sure that that information is right there upfront. Just a slight expansion on that. If somebody was on a specific page of your site and that’s where you’re retargeting. If they are on a specific product …

Greg:               The blue t-shirts.

Joe:                 The blue t-shirts, if they are on the blue t-shirt page and they didn’t convert, when you get them back get them right back to that page, make sure that they are familiar with the site. With the PPC campaign, all you want that user to be able to do is buy that blue t-shirt, you want very little else for them to be able to click on on site. With retargeting, you want to again Greg went over this pretty well. Make sure they are familiar with your website. The same kind of navigation elements, things like that. Then watch your campaign. Once you have a campaign going, keep an eye on it. This is so you, are you getting a proper click through rate.

Make sure you’re not spending too much money on bad clicks. If you see that you got an add out there that just isn’t converting into sales maybe how do I readjust this ad or get rid of it all together. You always want to AB test your eyes too. Within a segment, maybe show 50% of that segment, one version of an ad and 50% another. It can be a simple as just readjusting where a line of text in the ad is and see which one converts better, which one creates more sales. You should always, always in any kind of advertising campaign always AB test different ad types to see which one works better. Then, make sure your targeting isn’t too broad.

Create multiple campaigns targeting different subsets of users and also make sure it’s not too narrow. Don’t waste time trying to target tiny segments of users instead think of broader visitors. All right, advanced retargeting. Let’s just go over some of this real quick and this would be our last slide. After this we’re going to take some questions from you on anything that we went over today. Advance retargeting, this is where you can create a custom audience on Facebook from a CSV or a spreadsheet file of your users email addresses. This would be great if you could go through, you could find a list of the people that regularly open or click in your newsletter and these are the kind of people that you want to target with a, “Like our page ad,” or something like that.

Because you know that people that open and click in your newsletter every single week chances are these people are going to be totally okay with liking your page on Facebook or something like that. That’s the kind of ad that you want to send towards them. Export a list of past customers emails and ask them to review your product. This is another kind of custom ad that you can do is just find all the people that used to use your service or that still do, maybe you haven’t been in touch with them for a while. Just ask them to review your product. It’s great opportunity right there. Combine the audience and visitors to your site with Facebook’s demographic targeting.

For example, you show only ads to visitors of your site that are also part of a particular geographic area or alternatively you could threw in your ad graphic and try different ads for women versus men or young versus old, teens versus 30 year old something like that. With demographics in Facebook, obviously if you are a clothing store again back to the blue t-shirt if that’s a men’s t-shirt you only want to target that ad to men. If it’s a women’s t-shirt you only want to target to women so you can get really, really advance into the segments. If you only want to target, if you think the most likely to convert demographic is women in their 30’s from affluent households.

You can only target that specific demographic with your ads. You can get really, really hyper targeted and that’s what makes retargeting so great. Why it’s such a good platform because you can keep your cost low by targeting only the very, very specific people that you believe will buy your products or that are in the market for your products versus PPC AdWorks. That you’re using to attract new visitors and this is obviously you’re just retargeting people that have been to your site whether they bought or not bought and you can divide up your ads between people that have bought. You can show them, “Hey, we’ve got this new products you might be interested.” People that didn’t buy, you can say, “Hey, come back and we’ll give you 10% off.”

An overview of retargeting we’re going to get into some more things in other webinars that will explain how you … If you’re looking for a total marketing campaign for your website, how do you divide up where you spend what money kind of thing. If you got any questions please feel free to type them in.

Greg:               Send us your questions in the chat box please and we will address them one by one as we get them. Okay, we got a question here asking, “Can you use retargeting campaign without visitors to your site?” The answer to that is no. If you don’t have any traffic to your site, retargeting isn’t where you want to start. This isn’t a starting point for generating traffic. This is retargeting existing traffic.

Joe:                 If you don’t have traffic yet for your website then that’s probably the first thing that you should address. There’s a few different ways that we can help you go about getting traffics for your website. We don’t want to get into that basics of SEO over again but if you have any questions on that obviously we are a company that specializes in managed SEO. Getting traffic for your website is something that we are very good at so just feel free to reach out to us and we’ll give you a customized game play for that. I think that’s it. That’s going to be all of the questions we have there. Thanks for joining us today, we do appreciate it.

We are going to have more webinars on increasing sales, the different ways you can use. We’re going to go over social media a little bit, we’ve already done PPC and retargeting. Then we’re going to do one that’s a combined strategy, how do you properly strategize. If you just start from the beginning how do you do that. Feel free to reach out and contact us and thanks for joining us today. Have a great day. Bye.