In the last couple of months we have run campaigns for politicians running for office in Texas and Connecticut. They have leveraged ReTargeter to help them stay in front of their voter base and also to help in raising awareness and funds for their campaigns.
BTTR Ventures (a company that takes coffee waste and uses it to grow gourmet mushrooms) has recently used ReTargeting to help them in their effort to win the BBC World Challenge, an international competition for sustainable companies. They drove lots of traffic to their site through an aggressive PR campaign and then used ReTargeter to ensure those folks voted for their project. We are happy to announce that BTTR Ventures placed in the top three and was invited to The Hague for the international awards ceremony! 
Since our inception we have been working diligently to increase brand awareness, brand credibility and most importantly revenue for our clients. Here are a couple examples:
Start-up X–
One of our clients is a amazing start-up which helps companies manage their social media presence more effectively. Startup X recently started a campaign with ReTargeter. Soon after the campaign started, the CEO received a call from a board member asking why they were spending money advertising on sites like Yahoo!, ESPN, and major newspapers. The board member had been seeing the ads everywhere on the web and was clearly concerned the company was wasting money. The CEO calmly explained that they were using ReTargeter and they all had a good laugh.
StickerJunkie–
StickerJunkie, a sticker company started by a well known entrepreneur, recently launched a ReTargeter campaign as a stand alone marketing test. What they noticed was truly awesome, not only was there an overall increase in brand awareness and conversions directly from the banners, there was also a general increase in conversions across the site including lifts in direct and search traffic. The most interesting result was an increase in high value orders. The big spenders were taking longer to decide on the purchase and were also visiting competitors sites. These particular folks eventually decided to purchase with StickerJunkie as they saw the ads everywhere.
Contact us today to learn how ReTargeter can help you.
At ReTargeter we work with a clear understanding of our clients marketing funnels so that we can increase traffic, brand awareness and sales. Included below is one basic approach to the internet marketing funnel that has proven effective for many companies. We would love to hear your thoughts and best practices in the comments section.
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Top of the Funnel – Driving Traffic
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Great site for insights into SEO basics and new trends – http://www.seomoz.com/
SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
http://adwords.google.com & http://advertising.yahoo.com/smallbusiness/ysm
Links to your site
Get as many companies / people as possible to link to your site (with relevant keywords)
Blog
Update a blog regularly with relevant and interesting content for your audience
Facebook
Build a fan page and post regular updates; give some personality to your business
Twitter
Post updates that are relevant for your industry – avoid posting too often or posting blatant sales messages
Reach out to people via twitter by using the @ function or by adding them. Engage in conversation!
Use hashtags (example: #topic) that are relevant to your tweets so searchers will find your feed
PR / Direct Sales / Email Marketing
More “traditional” methodologies to drive traffic and interest to your site
Middle of the Funnel – Closing Sales
ReTargeter
www.ReTargeter.com – make sure your visitors never forget your brand
Email Marketing
Send monthly / weekly / quarterly updates with valuable content to your list of contacts
Also use auto-responders for people who are interested and submit an email
Post Sale – Creating trust and word of mouth
Facebook & Twitter & LinkedIn
Connect with your clients on various social media platforms to stay connected
Testimonials
Get testimonials for the site, twitter, facebook and/or the blog
Want a chance to win two months of free retargeting for your company or your favorite charity? Just include “#retargeter” in a tweet and you are automatically qualified. ReTargeter will pick a random winner after 30 days, to be announced on August 15, 2009!
Get free advertising or support your favorite cause. It’s simple, fast, and free.
Let the games begin!
#1: Keep It Simple! – Have one simple message and a clear and powerful image
#2: Buttons Increase CTR – A succinct call to action within a button is ideal
#3: Honesty Is The Best Policy – Make your offer and/or value proposition clear and honest
#4: Give It Away – Hold a promotion or have a contest, give away free products
#5: Beauty Sells – Shameless but true, a picture of an attractive person increases CTR
#6: Be BOLD – Use a powerful headline: get people to think / react & then click
#7: No White Backgrounds – They blend in with the page & don’t allow your ad to pop
#8: Stay Relevant! – Have ads that are relevant to current events or important new trends
#9: Iterate! – Keep trying new ideas & ads until you find one that works for your users
#10: Your Ideas? – We would love to hear from you!! What are your thoughts / best practices?!
We met some great people at the Annual TechCrunch August Capital event which was a blast as always! Great to see innovative new ideas, people and companies from across the world. Check out a few fun pictures below:
Here is a link to the event: TechCrunch August Capital Re-Cap
Arjun Dev Arora (President of ReTargeter) was recently interviewed on The Business Makers Show. Here is the summary and a link to the audio:
Arjun Arora is a third generation entrepreneur and always knew he would start his own business. After taking classes in entrepreneurism at UC Berkeley, Arora tried several jobs before he took the leap. Russ visits with the founder of Retargeter, an Internet advertising company that works by “tagging” visitors to a Web site, then following them around on the Internet and presenting ads after they leave the site. This makes for a very focused effort, giving customers a chance to see ads for the sites they just visited. Arora launched his company in April and, one month later, has advertisers and is cash-flow positive.
San Francisco, Calif. – May 9, 2009 – There’s an old expression in the Silicon Valley that people never get tired of hearing: it’s during the bad times that the true visionaries seek out and seize hidden opportunities.
“Few solutions exist that allow sites and companies to keep users coming back to, say, complete transactions or engage with the website in other more meaningful ways,” says Arjun Dev Arora, Founder and President of ReTargeter.
An electrical engineering and computer science major from U.C. Berkeley, Arora observed from his management experience at Yahoo! that most web marketing discussions are overly concerned with capturing the upper end of the funnel (i.e. bringing users to your website).
Arjun Dev Arora left a lucrative career at Yahoo! Real Estate as the head of Business Development this year in order to devote his time to a side project he had been working since the end of 2008.
Working alongside two well-known Silicon Valley CEOs Auren Hoffman, CEO of RapLeaf, and Tod Saccerdoti, CEO of BrightRoll, Arora officially launched ReTargeter, a site-based retargeting solution for small to medium-sized businesses.
Retargeting aims to encourage past visitors to visit your site again, increasing brand awareness and more tangibly, increasing backend conversions. Simply put, you only have to nudge past visitors with a series of non-invasive banner ads and they will return to re-engage with your site.
By placing a few simple lines of code (or what is called a “pixel” in industry parlance) on the various pages of your website, ReTargeter tags a visitor to your site. ReTargeter then tracks that visitor as they surf the web.
If the visitor happens to stop at one of ReTargeter’s affiliate partner’s websites (of which there are tens of thousands), ReTargeter will then serve up your banner advertisement to the visitor. When he clicks that advertisement, he will be taken back to a contextually relevant landing page on your website. Appropriately, ReTargeter suggests that clients select an ad that reminds their users of the occasion for their last visit.
With clients such as real estate companies, B2B tech companies and even rock bands already using this solution, ReTargeter is helping small and medium-sized businesses attract a loyal customer-base.
Advertisers can track the effectiveness of their ad spend and the advertiser never worries about going over budget. Arora argues it’s more efficient because the lead time for a retargeting campaign is a matter of hours as opposed to a newsletter or email blast.
ReTargeter handles the initial setup and continuous optimization of a retargeting campaign for a flat monthly fee.
Alongside traditional advertising campaigns, ReTargeter’s retargeting solution is an intuitive and powerful means of connecting with visitors who have already expressed interest in what you have to offer. In other words, retargeting is a great way to complement or enhance already successful SEO/SEM campaigns.
“Reinforce your brand, increase sales conversions and optimize your current marketing efforts,” says Arora.
What’s better than that?