

Putting retargeting to work for your startup - brandnewlow
http://planscope.io/blog/putting-retargeting-to-work-for-your-startup

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rdl
I kind of ignored all Internet advertising (adblock plus makes it fairly
infrequent, the only exception being on mobile, which I'm working on fixing
myself...), but I've been seeing how effective retargeting is firsthand -- the
"Tile" bt4.0le tracker tags have retargeted me ~everywhere, and it eventually
was enough to make me purchase.

I was curious how one would do this kind of thing as a startup, and this
customer case study is really informative. I was assuming it would be a
several thousand dollar minimum investment, but it's on the order of an
adsense trial, so a lot more approachable.

~~~
brandnewlow
We've got a $25/week minimum and even offer a free trial. You're right, a few
years ago it did require thousands to get started, but like anything else,
retargeting is being democratized and productized.

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stevenkovar
Got a chuckle out of me when I noticed the Planscope news feed ad after
reading this post.

I think the important distinction here is about providing value rather than
the fact Brennan used retargeting for his product. There is a lot of value in
having well educated customers; particularly when their education came from
you, the service provider. This is why webinars can be very effective in
securing the trust of a first-time customer and elevating the lifetime value
of current customers.

Teaching people how to get more out of your product helps them see the path to
ROI more clearly and creates more trust.

I'm curious to see how the 5 Day Course performs as lead generation in a
normal campaign vs. retargeting campaign test.

~~~
marcin
I actually did run comparison test for our client - regular product
retargeting (a site that is very heavy on educational material) vs content
retargeting (specific landing pages with content). The engagement level on
content were off the charts (up to 90% download rate, TOS, Bounce Rate). So
educating works far better. Only trouble is, you need email, which 95% of
visitors are not ready to give you on first hit - that's why retargeting works
so well here.

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thomasd
I doubt it's retargeting that made the difference. Originally, his CPC was >
$1(that's way too much) and he reduced that to ~$0.20. That obviously gave him
more clicks for a fixed budget.

Secondly, the "forced sign up" landing page helps as well.

Reference: [http://andrewchen.co/2013/07/29/the-highest-roi-way-to-
incre...](http://andrewchen.co/2013/07/29/the-highest-roi-way-to-increase-
signups-make-a-minimal-homepage-guest-post/)

~~~
bdunn
AFAIK there isn't a way to set a CPC with Perfect Audience newsfeed ads. I
plugged in a weekly budget and that was it.

~~~
thomasd
Hmm, that doesn't give you much control. I suggest you go straight to the
source and use FB's Power Editor. You get control over everything. Facebook
has one of the most comprehensive targeting tool in the world. As a startup,
you'll want to think of the way you advertise as a customer discovery process.

Know your target audience and target these people as specific as you can. Then
set the maximum price you'll pay to get these people's attention. Fine tuning
can come later.

~~~
brandnewlow
Power editor doesn't do retargeting, with off-site data captured from your
visitors. Power editor is just for targeting people using on-site FB profile
data and activity. I agree though, Facebook's targeting is indeed awesome.

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tomgruner
Retargeting can be effective, but it starts getting really annoying a few
weeks after you decided against a product and for me creates a negative image
of that company because I feel almost harassed. If you use it, I would
recommend trying to limit the time frame or frequency of ads shown to
something reasonable. Maybe a lot of impressions for a few days, then a few
impressions per week for up to 2 weeks, then maybe just a few brief
impressions after that. But don't go on for months.

~~~
marcin
Frequency and time capping are actually a common sense in retargeting. Having
said that, current tools are not great at it as it's hard to do proper cohort
campaign/analysis. We're addressing it with both time and impression caps, as
well as cookie lifetime. Retargeting people on leisure sites or in times when
they're usually in 'downtime' mode can also be a problem, which is why precise
insight into individual placements is necessary.

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pm
I didn't know this was a thing, but I'd been noticing this phenomenon. I found
it extremely annoying that after going to a website to check something out I'd
see ads for the same thing. Even for things that I'd signed up to, i.e. Parse,
were showing me ads.

~~~
marcin
Not excluding current clients is a common problem, which is actually
technical. Retargeting requires tags placed in multiple places (homepage,
blog, marketing automation, and yes - product). Placing retargeting pixels on
product pages is often seen as risky, detrimental to product performance or
your clients data. I believe the upside from being able to distinguish between
clients and prospects outweighs the risk factors (which are quite superficial
to be honest). There are other ways to exclude current clients such as custom
interactions and landing pages, but that's a longer story.

~~~
brandnewlow
Who says placing retargeting tags on product pages is seen as risky? I've
never heard anything resembling that nor can I think of a reason why that may
be. No need to spread more FUD in the ad space.

~~~
marcin
Product/tech teams raise that concern (logic being that anything could happen
within JS) - in my opinion it's more of a product/engineering/marketing
conflict than any real logic/evidence behind it.

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benologist
Or "How I advertised my startup on HN".

~~~
graeme
I found it to be a very helpful post. I learned something that I can apply to
my own site.

If such a post gets a few sign ups for planescape along the way, I don't see
the harm. But advertising was far from the focus of the post. The author
doesn't even say what planescape does.

The article wouldn't have hit the front page if it wasn't useful. How many
companies are using retargeting + drip email effectively?

~~~
benologist
Articles hit the front page because they get a few early upvotes, not because
they're more useful than the other thousand submissions a day.

And being constantly guerrilla-marketed / growth-hacked / whatever at is
tiresome.

~~~
bdunn
(Author, but not submitter, here. A few friends on Twitter asked for a writeup
of what I was doing with retargeting, and the guys at Perfect Audience ended
up submitting it to HN. Not sure how I'm "growth hacking".)

~~~
abarber
I say keep sharing what you've learned. In fact, it would be great to see a
follow up on this experiment in a couple of weeks, as well.

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dangayle
Small sample size much?

