Digital Media News

Consumer intent may be the most powerful data that any business has access to when it comes to improving sales and establishing popularity in their industry. Consumer intent shows up when an online user conducts a search using a keyword or phrase that indicates an item or service they're interested in. For example, if someone searches for "black leather boots", you can probably assume that they're thinking about buying a pair in the near future.

A study recently conducted by "Think with Google" found that brands who are relying on demographics alone to reach out to their audience could be missing out on a huge number of potential customers - up to 70% of mobile shoppers. The reason for this is that understanding why someone's searching for something, and what resources they're using to find that thing can help you to maximize your search retargeting campaign, by ensuring you present banners and advertisements to people that show the exact product they need.

Search retargeting (not to be confused with site retargeting) is an exciting and often effective way to grab your audience's attention, and keep it. If you've ever wondered, as a consumer, why sometimes you see advertisements for websites that you've visited in the past show up on other pages across the web, this is a targeting methodology called retargeting at work. Often, these ads will display as you surf around the Internet and serve as a frequent reminder about pages or products that you viewed at an earlier time. To some people, this can be the prompt they need to complete a purpose, or a reminder to simply check back on a purchase they had been considering.

If you're running creative ads online, opting for search retargeting can be a great way to get a target audience that has already expressed interest in your brand to visit your website again. In other words, instead of simply trying to get attention from anyone and everyone, (and paying for the privilege too) - you narrow your search parameters and target an audience that is more likely to actually convert - meaning you use your budget more wisely.

To put it simply, search stats are a great indicator of consumer intent. You can’t argue with the stats: Google alone handles over 40,000 searches every second. To put that into perspective, that’s 3.5 billion searches every day and 1.2 trillion each year. Businesses plow millions of dollars into market research, yet one of the most powerful pieces of market research lie at our fingertips. And, quite often, the data is free.

That’s why search retargeting is so powerful. When you take the masses of search data out there and combine it with creative, intelligent digital advertising, the results can be outstanding. As we know, with online advertising, context is everything. As such, advertisers can use search retargeting to drive huge amounts of customer acquisition, not to mention acquiring new leads and a new audience.

Difference-making online advertising campaigns require innovative strategy, leading technology, careful planning and insightful analysis. ExactDrive’s Advertising Platform and strategic consultant team provides all four, making it easier for you to generate the results you want most. Retargeting coupled with dynamic ads is a very powerful combination. With that in mind we wanted to share with our readers a sample digital media plan that we recently created for a politically focused client.

Search retargeting is the first cousin of website retargeting and they often get along wonderfully when working and coupled together as a two-punch online advertising strategy. Different than website retargeting, which focuses on displaying advertisements only to people that have previously visited a specific website, search retargeting focuses on displaying ads to people that have previously searched for specific keywords or keyword phrases.

Simply put, search retargeting is a highly effective way to target people who have proven to be interested in certain topics, services and/or products based on their search history.