Stalking Works

If you are a hunter and saw the headline thinking this was a great article on combing the woods for whitetails…you are going to be disappointed on two fronts.  When I was head of marketing and product development for Invisible Fence six years ago, I stumbled upon a social media strategy called Behavioral Retargeting.

In its most basic form, retargeting places ads to people more frequently after they have left an advertiser’s website. Some companies specialize in retargeting, while other companies have added retargeting to their list of methods of purchasing advertising. Retargeting helps companies advertise to website visitors who leave without a conversion – this accounts for about 98% of all web traffic.

Retargeting is done by displaying ads to the user as they browse the internet, via various ad networks that the agency buys media from on behalf of their business customers. Retargeting only serves banner ads to people who have shown at least some amount of engagement in the original brand, which can make it more effective than an untargeted advertising campaign. Where a company has already spent money driving a user to their site in the first place, the term “retargeting” is derived from the concept of marketing to that same user again, in a different manner. Search retargeting, a form of behavioral retargeting, can also be leveraged to drive new customers that have not been to the site before because they are being retargeted based on actions taken on a third-party website.

For example, if you were visiting a popular gun manufacturer’s site like Kimber America and then moved on to other sites such as NSSF.org, Amazon or pick your favorite site, an ad would appear on the page just like it was always placed there.  I nicknamed this tactic my “stalker” campaign.  I was searching Overstock.com for a new brief case to get ready for the SHOT Show in a few weeks, but didn’t buy.  From every site I then visited for several days, Overstock had ads following me around on their specials.

Studies suggest that a company needs to have seven different ‘contacts’ with a customer (on average) before they make a purchase. Retargeting is allowing companies to continue the marketing conversation with a customer after they leave a website. This form of behavioral targeting is a growing trend in the online marketing field.

Personalized retargeting, a related practice, differs from behavioral retargeting as it allows an advertiser to display a banner created on-the-fly for a particular consumer based on their specific browsing behavior. For example, if a consumer visits an advertiser’s website and browses products A, B and C – they will then be retargeted with a display banner featuring the exact products A, B and C that they previously viewed.  This is what Overstock was doing with me.

I really took several weeks to decide whether to test this type of campaign.  I really had a moral dilemma whether following someone around the web without agreed upon action was really kosher.  I tested it for Invisible Fence and had moderate success.  Our campaign was one of the early ones and there really was not any way of stopping ads if you wanted to.  We never received complaints and got quite a few free trials and sales as a result of the campaign.  Now, however, advertisers are putting disclaimers at the top of the ad with an explanation of why they were seeing the ad and a way to get the ads to stop.  I truly believe this the best answer possible and now I would not hesitate to use this tactic.  There are several companies that provide this service such as Fetchback, Criteo and Steelhouse.

I want to wish everyone a Happy Holiday…and so as not to alienate my good friends that hunt, here is a Wyoming whitetail I killed this year…..yes…you guessed it  – stalking.

Mark Thomas is the Managing Director of Marketing Communications for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the trade association for the firearms industry. He was honored by PR News as a finalist for Communicator of the Year. @markevanthomas