Think about walking down the average highstreet. How many storefronts do you normally walk past without so much as looking up to see what’s in the window?
This is normal behaviour, seeing as most of us have no interest in 90% of what we see as we stroll down the highstreet. Chances are that you came for something specific, and that you have a few items of interest that might just be able to distract you from your mission. So let’s say you came to town for a screwdriver, but that you also love martial arts, so you might stop and look in the window of the occasional sports store, health store, or book shop.
Everything else is just noise.
It’s the same thing online. These days we have become desensitized to ads to the point that we give very little consideration for most of the flashing images vying for our attention. And that is after all, what 90% of the internet and advertising all around us is designed to do – get our attention.
Targeted marketing on the other hand is designed specifically to get around these issues and limitations. A targeted ad is an ad that is designed specifically for you – or at least feels that way. To extend the metaphor, it’s a little bit like walking down a highstreet and suddenly everything in all the store windows is stuff that you would have an interest in.
So, the martial artist walks down the road and in the book store he sees the owner holding up his latest tome on martial arts techniques. He walks past the sports store to see sparring equipment in the window. Even the grocers has managed to find a DVD of Bruce Lee from the films section.
And then there’s the screwdriver inside the department store. Rather than head further and look in another shop, this customer now has no reason to go further – they know with certainty that this shop has what they’re looking for.
To achieve this though, you can’t just use conventional targeted marketing online. Targeted marketing takes into account demographics but it doesn’t take into account what a person is actively seeking out – it can’t know what they’re doing at that given moment. Remarketing on the other hand can: it works by showing things that the customer has previously been looking for. In this case, the screwdriver. What will you sell?
