When you see commercials, billboards, print ads, online ads, etc. for the same company over and over again, you probably think, "They're huge!" Right? Customers' perception of your company has a lot to do with their decision to buy from you. The more you stay top-of-mind to a consumer, the more likely it is that they will purchase from you. So the trick is getting your message in front of your customers at a good rate without having to throw major bucks at a search engine, email marketing campaign, ad network or other advertising vehicle.

The common types of behavioral targeting are effective, but they don't necessarily give the returns that would justify the large ad spend to get the "they're huge" effect. It's costly to contextually or behaviorally target customers via display advertisements. These are great marketing vehicles to use when you have the budget, but when your advertising dollars are limited, these forms of behavioral targeting should be left for the big boys with the budgets that can support them.

Newer behavioral targeting methods, like retargeting, are cost effective and deliver incredible results. Retargeting is categorized as behavioral targeting because the customer's behavior -- visiting your website -- causes that person to be shown targeted displays ads during his or her everyday web surfing activities (visiting sites like Yahoo, Facebook, etc.). You aren't spending money to get placement in front of certain demographics; you are directly targeting customers who have visiting your website.

Here's an example: Jane visits a website that sells cosmetics. She leaves the site for whatever reason -- she wants to comparison shop, she is at work and her boss walks over to her desk, or maybe she gets interrupted by a phone call. When she gets back online, she goes to her Yahoo email account. When she logs in, she sees an ad for the cosmetic website she visited earlier. Later, she goes to CNN.com to read the news and, again, there is an ad for the cosmetics website. She sees ads for the cosmetic website as she visits her favorite celebrity blog website, and also as she goes to a local directory website when she's researching wine bars. Jane is not aware that she is the only person seeing these ads as she visits these web pages, but she is left with the impression that the cosmetic website must be huge since its display ads are everywhere online.

A few months back, one of the investors of FetchBack saw our ads everywhere online and made the comment, "How much are you spending on marketing?" We explained to him that we aren't spending much on advertising; the reason he saw our ads everywhere was due to retargeting, and apparently it had worked in created the "they're huge!" effect we were going for.