Listener, welcome back to Traffic Jam! This is episode#64 of the podcast show that teaches you how to get traffic and build a super profitable audience online. I am your host James Reynolds and today we are talking not just how to get traffic to your website but how to get it coming back.

In just a moment we will be joined by Chris Evans who is a retargeting expert so if you’ve ever wanted to know how to follow up your prospects with branded advertising for your business as they browse around the internet then today’s session is for you.

But before we get to the interview with Chris, I want to tell you about our website analysis reports which are available at veravo.com. My team and I will put your site through a thorough 30-point audit and tell you how it is performing, both the search engine optimization, usability, and how it compares to other websites in terms of its traffic volume and performance. If you want to get your performance analyzed, head on over to veravo.com, press the analyze my website button which you’ll find in the top right corner of the site, enter the web address you want us to analyze, the email address you’d want us to send the report to and my team will put together a thorough 30-point check of your website and rush it over to you within a couple of days. So to get your own report go to veravo.com.

So before I invite Chris on to the mic let me give him a brief introduction, Chris is the president and owner of Online Profit Strategies which is a marketing agency based out of Charlotte, North Carolina in the USA. His agency focuses on lead generation, lead catcher, sales funnel development, Facebook ads, as well as retargeting which of course is the topic of today’s interview. He’s consultant for Fortune 500 companies, he’s spoken at several marketing conferences and he’s the publisher of his own retargeting course.

So on that note, let’s welcome Chris Evans from Online Profit Strategies.

James: So welcome back listener! This is the interview section of Traffic Jam#64 and today we are joined by Chris Evans for a discussion all about retargeting. Chris, how are you doing?

Chris: I am doing fantastic, how are you?

James: I am doing good, I am super glad that we’ve put this session together and I am going to dive straight in to the content, no fluff here. I have a pretty advanced audience, I think most people listing in will have experienced retargeting in some way, shape or form. As a retargeting expert do you have a metaphor or kind of your own way of describing what retargeting is?

Chris: Yeah, to put it really plain and simply is retargeting really is a second chance. It is a second chance to get a lead, it is a second chance to get a purchase conversion so it is a wonderful thing and I am really excited to be here to talk about this.

James: Cool! It is going to be fun, this is not a new topic we have discussed it a fair amount on the show, in fact we had Mike Rhodes on the show, Traffic Jam#59 where he was saying that retargeting in his mind by Google Adwords is probably the most profitable campaign that you can ever run through the platform. I am curious to know, do you agree with him and if you do, do you have any numbers that might back a claim on that?

Chris: Yeah, I would totally agree with Mike. Mike is a pretty smart guy so pretty much I listen to most things that he says but for the retargeting that we run, we do a lot in Google just like Mike on YouTube and then a tremendous amount on Facebook as well and our numbers, they can be almost unbelievable. The ROI we get can be 500%, 1000% compared to just a front end traffic site. So the whole idea of remarketing, retargeting is it’s a whole process of building rapport, building trust, and building that brand recognition with people so once they go through that process of initially seeing your brand or initially seeing your offer, maybe that willingness to make that commitment or that decision yet so retargeting really is that opportunity for you to continue to persuade and really build a case for why somebody should opt in for your offer or purchase your product.

James: How do you think it has changed our approach to marketing I mean if we sort of think back perhaps to five years where everyone was bashing prospects and visitors over the head ramming them in to squeeze pages really like screwing them to get their email list because they realize that if they left the site there is probably a chance that they never actually get contact with that visitor ever again. How has retargeting changed how we deal with traffic in the first instance to a site?

Chris: Well I think one thing it helps companies not being so douche if you will if you know what I am talking about. But the thing is consumers, and even business owners, if you are in the B2B business, they are becoming more sophisticated every single day. So all the tricks and the trickery and all the things that marketers come up with to try to get somebody a decision, as consumers and business owners are seeing this stuff their sophistication level is basically climbing, they’re just a little bit more numb to the trickery that’s out there so what is happening is we now are forced as marketers or business owners trying to get our products and businesses out there, we are forced to bring more quality to the market, right? So what we are forced to do is whether it is content or we’re showing case studies or whatever it might be. So in my mind retargeting gives us the ability to present that case to our prospects. So if I have clients Bill and Suzy and they accomplish great things to my products and services, if John who’s in my site did not purchase my products, guess what, now I can run a case study of Bill and Suzy and the great things that they have accomplished through my product and service, it gives us the ability to do that and really meet them where they’re at their sophistication level as opposed to just some cheesy looking squeeze page with hyped up copy so that is why I am a huge proponent of retargeting.

James: Where do you think consumers are at in terms of their sophistication? Because I guess most now are probably aware that they’re even retargeted to. It’s not so new now that people just think wow this brand is super prominent out there in the marketplace I am seeing them everywhere. Is that a problem for us marketers and if so is there any pitfalls that we should look out for when constructing our campaigns with that in mind?

Chris: Yeah, you can definitely be very, very creepy in retargeting. And the goal is not to be a creeper. And that is why it is important to have frequency levels in caps on your retargeting. So if you are retargeting somebody you are not hitting them 25 times a day with your ads. Maybe it is one, two or maybe a max of three times in a day where your video ad is displayed to them, but consumers for the most part, they have no awareness of them as they have experienced but they have no way to identify or know what to call it. Many people, in my experience they think that companies are really smart, some of them are, just by their personality, might be a little bit crept out but the percentage is really low. And the people that don’t really mind, from the studies that I had, it is above 50%. People who don’t care about retargeting they’re actually fine with it.

James: I’d like to move forward in a moment and talk about some of the more advanced things that we can do with retargeting, perhaps some of the more creative campaigns, things like case studies that you mentioned but I think it will be worth drawing a little bit of a line in the sand to start with and talk about where we should get started if we haven’t got a retargeting campaign in place already. What do you recommend to your own students like the first campaign and the first step? Where should they get on with it?

Chris: So yes, that is a fantastic question and one thing, no matter what, is like everybody knows that you should have an email list right? If you think about retargeting, it’s the same thing. You’re basically building a list of people who most likely go to your website. There are other forms of retargeting that we could all talk about but it is all about building a list of people who hit your website so pick your vehicle for retargeting, whether you are using Google platform of Facebook – these are probably the two main ones. You grab your script from one of those platforms and at the very least to drop it in your homepage and start building an audience of people who are coming to your site because essentially those are people who raise their hand and have shown some kind of interest on some kind of level so that would be step one. Then once you decide, hey what’s the message that I am going to put out to these people? By that time you’ll have an audience that you can actually target to. And once you get to it, and you want to get a little bit more advanced, you can start segmenting based on the different pages and the call to actions that you have going on.

James: So what do you recommend for a basic campaign? Just lead with a generic branding message? Would it be a testimonial type of campaign? What would be the best one – just go with the broad message to all website visitors?

Chris: I think it really kind of depends but for what I am always trying to tell my clients is to build their email list. So whether they have an offer on their homepage or a certain landing page, it is always about trying to get people back to opt in because for me that is one of the most important pieces in your business and one of the most valuable assets that your business is your email list, so whether it is just an application for a consultation or a video download or whatever it might be, always trying to push people back to that offer so they opt in. That can say, hey grab this report on how to build a basket in underwater in ten minutes so whatever your offer might be and for whatever part of it too. I think it is important as well, if you can and legitimately do it, is build scarcity in to your offer, which I think a lot of people don’t put in their retargeting campaigns but is extremely, extremely effective.

James: Nice advice. I like that concept for the basis of best insurance too, right? If you can get people on to your email list and you can be retargeting to them and then potentially across multiple platforms which I guess we’ll speak about in a minute that is really the best way to go. So let’s assume for a second that we’ve got a broad campaign in play. We’ve targeted everything all website visitors, we’re driving our prospects back to some form of offer, hopefully we’re getting them to subscribe to our email list. What’s the next step? Where do we take our campaigns from here to really push it up to the next level?

Chris: Yes, so a lot of what we do is we build our evergreen funnels so it a lot of automation. So what we do is we have time sequences and a funnel might be 14 days for a front end offer and what we’re doing is we use different plug ins and stuff and this is a little bit more on the advanced site but we used plug ins where we remove the offer based on when they hit that page so what we’ll do is we’ll build an offer for let’ say our funnel is 14 days. We’ll build 14 different audiences and essentially every single day we’ll drop one of those days so they might say an ad on day 1 saying hey we’ve got this product on sale and it is only for 14 days. And this is like another topic that we can talk about. Creating burn list where when somebody hits day 7, all the other days are burnt off so they’re removed from those lists. So then they might see an ad on Day 7 saying hey you only have 7 days to purchase this product, right then on day 14 they don’t see other ads but the only ad they’ll see is hey today is the last day to purchase this product and this is something that is very, very effective that most people don’t implement in to the retargeting because it is a little bit more advanced and utilizing some different plug ins out can actually remove the sales page based on what they hit can be very effective because we know that true scarcity is a very powerful method of persuasion. If you can implement that in to your retargeting strategy, it is super powerful so that is a top notch strategy that pretty much anybody can use.

James: I guess something like that would be very good for an e-commerce type business. Perhaps kind of a second chance offer. If you didn’t buy to this price, hey, if you take us up with in the next 14 days you can get it at 25% off or that type of thing. Knowing that the first time around it wasn’t appealing maybe if you adjust the pricing if that didn’t go around the first time you could get a bite the second time around. So outside of scarcity which I can see would be very powerful especially to an engaged audience that already visited your site, what are the things that we can be doing to really maximize results for this stuff?

Chris: Definitely the branding. Just having your logo in front of people is really important and I think, two, we are being forced, especially with the sophistication level of people out there to build that rapport so branding campaigns, if you have any copy on there or basically just have a really nice image, a really nice ad that you are just running once a day and they see your logo, they see your brand, and that’s it, because the more and more they see it, the more and more they become comfortable with it and subconsciously that trust is built. So that’s one thing, the case studies are extremely important. Again, with helping somebody make that decision of purchasing that product or opting in, hey it must be a good thing. So this is where you can start utilizing YouTube retargeting. For me a video is probably the most powerful communication modality vehicle out there because we are vocal right now but if you are able to see me you can see my mannerisms and my emotions and that is one thing that is really powerful about video and here is a great thing. Most people are not using video in their marketing, let alone in their retargeting, so if you can get a case study 101 with some clients and customers and them providing a screenshot, even that can be powerful because just see the amount of video that is consumed online today. And it is pretty much on every platform where YouTube is. YouTube videos are on Facebook, on blogs, and obviously when people search for YouTube videos online or certain things online so out pops that YouTube video, and they’re on your retargeting list, guess what, you can run that commercial right before that video with a call to action and it is pretty inexpensive. And there are a few other things that you can do with retargeting as well.

James: Yeah I think video is something I’m sure many of our listeners haven’t explored yet. I’m sure there’s a big retargeting via display. There’s probably a few people that have also experimented going on to social and perhaps advertising on Facebook but video is perhaps something you see less often. Where do you actually set this up? Is it via the Google adwords platform or is ti somewhere else?

Chris: Yes, so two parts. You put your videos on YouTube and then you can enter a YouTube account with your adwords and then when you set up your campaigns it just gives you the option what video you want to select so you can get pretty granular on the YouTube Google platform. For the guys out there who are a little bit more advanced, you can basically set up audiences with Google analytics based on certain goals and stuff that you have set up so it is really, really powerful. But it is difficult because the adwords platform can scare people away because it Is pretty intense to actually set up the retargeting is really not that difficult at all and here’s the thing about video. In the past people are afraid of video but now is the best time to do video because it is extremely easy whether you do what people call the VSL or kind of just like the walk through video or you just get out your iPhone and have somebody record it any way you choose video is extremely powerful and definitely should be leveraged because a lot of people in businesses aren’t willing to take those extra steps so for you to be able to beat your competition that way is very powerful.

James: I’m glad that you touched on briefly platforms because I am sure it is a question that you get asked a lot, which is better, adroll, perfect audience, Google adwords, or whatever else. I am guessing you probably have an answer to this question so in your opinion what is the best platform to be using and why?

Chris: Back in the day I was a huge, huge fan of perfect audience as they started out but as they’ve grown and been bought out, I’m not such a big fan. One of the reasons why is because they don’t allow you to put a cap on impressions basically based on their algorithms so I’ll definitely lean towards referencing Facebook for sure, especially when you’re running traffic from Facebook is very, very powerful. The Google platform is such a giant and you almost don’t need to be anywhere else. But here is the thing I kind of want to throw in there. I think what we’re going to see in the future is a big shift in how this is all done. As these big giants especially in the social world are taking over other platforms, you’re going to see this cross pollination of platforms become, right now it is a little bit difficult to retarget somebody who may be in your site on mobile and not on a desktop. But what’s going to happen is these platforms are going to change the way they are building audiences. So for example, Facebook, it won’t be based on a script it will be based on somebody’s account ID, right? So if somebody hits you via mobile from the Facebook platform. You will be able to target that platform towards their desktop or vice versa. So this is something for people to really consider and look towards the future with retargeting and why they should start now as well.

James: And is there any pitfalls and problems to look out for, at least in the current scenario where we’re perhaps working cross platform, maybe with using adwords for YouTube and maybe using Facebook exchange or adroll for Facebook. Do we have any challenges there based on we might have huge amounts of ads appearing and then there’s no audience cap. What do we need to be sort of aware of in that regard?

Chris: Well the really important thing is to make sure and it is really vital that you create a burn list. So if somebody opts in to your offer or purchases your product, you want to remove them from the audience set they are being retargeted on. Because it is not very professional if somebody purchases your products and they opt in and you are still pushing that ad to them. You need to be more advanced and high level. You put them in some other kind of audience maybe you offer them a different product or service. One thing that is also extremely important is to make sure that you have that burn list created. Essentially what you are doing is you’re dropping that same audience pixel on the thank you page. So when they land there, they can be removed from the audience that you have that you’re marketing to them for that initial offer for your product. The other thing too is just make sure that you are offering high quality. Again, when you are looking at sophistication in the competition out there, it is time to up your game especially when you kind of speak to the IM community here which I am imagining you have a good amount of listeners from. It just doesn’t suffice to have a crappy looking brand and a junky looking image more. Things really time for us in the community and beyond to really put thought in to the message and the brand and how we want to be perceived in the marketplace. I think it is going to be really, really important especially going forward because people just don’t believe that hype and the crap that they’re used to.

James: Yeah, totally. Well let’s leave things on a few action steps Chris. For those looking to get started on retargeting and haven’t done so already, what one or two things could they be doing as a result of this conversation?

Chris: Yes, one I would look for where your traffic is coming from, if you are running Facebook ads, absolutely have a Facebook ad pixel. Don’t overthink it, just drop the link on the pages. It is really easy to set up the audience with Facebook ad center and also just get the script from Google. Just get these script drafts and just build an audience for your homepage and if nothing else, start running a brand campaign where your brand is displaying one or two or three times a day and then on that I really want to challenge people to go out there and look at creating a video and put it to market, just try and test it with whatever your products and services to get your video in front of your site, your offer, or your product page.

James: Excellent! Well I know Chris that you actually teach this stuff and are in the process right now of putting a course together to dive a little bit more deeply in to retargeting. Where can our listeners find out a little bit more about that?

Chris: I am finishing the final touches right now but iloveretargeting.com and I go in to great detail on all these stuff. We have done an extreme amount of research and actually implementation on retargeting and I think I could say with a lot of confidence that there is not a course that covers retargeting in the subject of retargeting like I love retargeting so it will be a great course and you’ll want to jump in.

James: Pretty self-explanatory as well. I think it also tells very much people about your belief in retargeting as well, right?

Chris: It’s easy to remember so

James: Absolutely! So I think you the listener can remember exactly what that URL is, it’s iloveretargeting.com but if for any reason you can’t head on over to TrafficJamCast.com/64 where there will be a direct link to Chris’s website plus some of the other resources mentioned in today’s show as well so that’s TrafficJamCast.com/64. Awesome Chris I think we’ll wrap things up there. Thanks so much for coming on the call, it’s an absolute blast and who knows maybe we’ll have another opportunity to do it all again.

Chris: I would love to man, I had a good time.

Thank you to Chris Evans from iloveretargeting.com. You can find out more about retargeting by going to TrafficJamCast.com/64 where you’ll find a special retargeting guide and of course the full transcript of today’s session and a downloadable MP3 as well.

And whilst you’re on the episode page, why don’t you join in on the discussion for this show too? Also, if you haven’t done so already, make sure that you subscribe via iTunes and or Stitcher radio. For iTunes go to TrafficJamCast.com/iTunes and for Stitcher go to TrafficJamCast.com/Stitcher.

Of course we end the show with the traffic jam. It’s a musical jam chosen by our episode guest. Chris Evans has gone for a classic. It’s a Frank Sinatra track and it’s Fly Me to the Moon. Enjoy this one and I’ll see you back here for another episode real soon!