Remarketing and Retargeting: Similar, But Different
Advertising managers spend a lot of time testing audiences, getting creative, and obsessing over numbers. It can be a long process; with only a small percentage of ad clickers actually converting.
While you might be getting a lot of new incoming web traffic, you may not see those numbers translate to sales quickly. And few become a sale the first time they land on your webpage.
In the age of “but we can track everything”, it can be easy to get distracted. It’s easy to forget the true role of marketing: To win people over long before they make the decision to choose your product or company, over others.
Oftentimes, the best people to target are those who have visited your site more than once or have already digitally interacted with you in the past.
Retargeting and remarketing both give the opportunity to reach these customers. And they are the ones more likely to purchase rather than first-time visitors.
And this can be an extremely important strategy in your marketing efforts. Now let’s explore remarketing and retargeting individually, so that the differences become clear to you.
Retargeting
Retargeting can have multiple approaches.
It most often refers to online ad placement or display ads targeting users who have interacted with your site in specific ways without purchasing.
Once a visitor enters your website, clicks on a product, or takes a certain action that you want them to take, a cookie is set in their browser. You can then use this information to “retarget” them with ads based on their interactions once they leave your site.
These ads are placed by third parties, such as the Google Display Network or Facebook. They allow your ads to trigger on other sites that your visitors go to.
Ultimately, retargeting can be categorized into 2: “on-site” and “off-site” events. Each has different strategies you can take depending on the kind of interactions you want to target.
Targeting ‘On-Site’ Interactions
This is the category often associated with retargeting. It involves targeting individuals who have already visited your site. They have interacted with your products and services before. Or they have taken some other action but may not have completed the sale.
Retargeting to those who have had on-site interactions can increase conversions. They can also help retain those who have already expressed interest in your brand.
There are a bunch of ways to retarget. Here are some of the ways you can target individuals who have had onsite interactions:
- Target based on a product that they interacted with, but didn’t buy.
- Target based on how they found your site (social media, a search, or other inbound events).
- Those on your email list who have expressed interest in your brand, but have not yet converted to a sale.
These parameters can be set up within different platforms, such as:
- Google Ads.
- Google Analytics.
- Facebook Ads.
- And many others.
Retargeting campaigns almost always show higher engagement and conversions than non-retargeting campaigns do. This goes back to the fact that it is a lot easier to market and advertise to those who have expressed interest in your brand or industry.
Targeting ‘Off-Site’ Interactions
Retargeting used to be pretty limited to on-website behavior. That changed, though, as more users spent time on social media. The delivery of product and brand information was no longer housed in one place.
Instead, it started to disseminate across other areas. This meant audience interactions now existed in several places that weren’t owned by the brand anymore.
Social media giants like Facebook recognized this and started to make engagement targeting a possibility.
In other words, brands could make retargeting pushes based on what a user did on the platform as it related to their Page, Events, and other Facebook-controlled items that a brand participates in.
Retargeting could now include “users who interacted with your Page” and other similar options. In practice, targeting these users was still retargeting. This became the brave new world of “off-site” interaction targeting.
Why Should You Use Retargeting
Many companies end up focusing their efforts on reaching new customers and forget to nurture the existing relationships with current customers.
Customers who have already visited your website understand your products and your aim, so you don’t have to create a completely new message for this audience. Since they are already familiar with your brand, they trust you, which makes communication with them easier.
In fact, it is not just that they understand you, but, more importantly, you understand them.
You know what kind of products they like, what they don’t like and where they are in the purchase funnel. This will help you create customized ads for these people which will help them to convert better.
Retargeting basically allows you to give the specific customer the right kind of attention in the best manner.
Retargeting Falls under the Umbrella of Remarketing
After you have been able to identify which audience group should be retargeted, you further need to understand how you should target them – in terms of which channels to use and what the ad should contain. This whole process is remarketing.
Ideally, you want to make these ads in such a way that they are direct and focused in order to convert a target audience into actual customers.
The different channels you can use to remarket can be Facebook ads, Google ads and email lists. By creating interesting, attractive and personalized content for your audience, you will be able to catch their attention.
Remarketing
This is where it gets a little confusing and there is some overlap in the industry. Sometimes retargeting is referred to as “remarketing” (even though it actually is remarketing).
An example of this is Google’s Remarketing Tools. They are all retargeting tools in the classic sense, really.
While this may be a little confusing, just remember that remarketing and retargeting do share goals, and that the terminology is not as important as the associated strategy.
That being said, remarketing is more often about re-engaging customers via emails. Retargeting is about moving not-yet customers down the purchase path.
Things like emailing a customer to renew a service or upsell an accessory are traditional examples of remarketing. It can also take the form of a brand “reminding” a user to act, using information about their purchase history.
This frequently happens in email marketing but also takes the form of paid ads targeted toward current customer buckets.
Types of Remarketing
1. Facebook Pixel Remarketing
What is a Facebook pixel? Shopify describes it like this:
“A Facebook pixel is an analytics tool that consists of a code that you can put on your website. The pixel fires [off cookies] to track site visitors. This data allows you to retarget those users with Facebook ads in the future, as well as see what they’re doing on your site when they return.”
You’ll be able to access this audience – and, more importantly, data about them – through Custom Audiences.
So now you have the power of Custom Audiences and the power of demographics of the audience – you get the best of both worlds to create the perfect personalized targeting.
To do this, you have to add the Facebook pixel code to your website, which will allow Facebook to track your traffic. Then use this data to carry out your remarketing campaigns.
2. Google Display Remarketing
By monitoring the data of your website visitors through Google Analytics, you can retarget them with ads on the Google Display Network:
This will give the people who have visited your website just a little more of a nudge by showing them those products they have left behind on your site.
You can enable Google Analytics and connect it with your site to monitor the behavior of your audience and accordingly attract them through personalized ads.
3. Email Remarketing
This is the original channel for remarketing. Companies used only this before Facebook and Google pixels were introduced.
Via all the lead forms that people fill out on your website or all the people who sign up on your e-commerce website, you are able to create a large database of emails. With this email list, you can retarget all your site visitors whether they made a purchase or not.
Have a look at this example. Tarte Cosmetics is retargeting the user on the basis of what is in their cart by remarketing via email.
The email content is very attractive because it’s showing that the product the user wanted (but didn’t purchase) is almost gone. A call to action is included as well which says “Ends Soon,” creating a sense of urgency.
How to Get the Most Out of Your Remarketing Strategy
1. Use Personalization
The best part of retargeting is the information you have about your audience, which is not available through the insane amount of buyer personas that one makes.
We know exactly what the potential buyer is looking for and this is a gold mine for the communication you can then use. You can create content that directly engages the customer.
Keep in mind that 25% of consumers enjoy behaviorally retargeted ads because they remind them of products they’ve viewed previously and 78% of users say that personally relevant content from brands increases their purchase intent.
In this example, the company Nykaa is reminding the customer that they’ve shopped with Nykaa before by showing new and favorite products with the phrase “restock your all-time favorites”:
Furthermore, you can use email subject lines like “We have missed you” or “Where have you been?” for customers who have not engaged with your brand for some time.
2. Offer Discounts and Other Promotions
An important aspect of remarketing is including a promotional offer that will compel the customer to take action. Offers like free shipping, discounts and “buy-one-get-one-free” are tactics that will grab their attention.
As mentioned above, some of the reasons why a person might abandon a shopping cart could be that they were price comparing or they wanted to calculate the cost of shipping.
So a discount on products or free shipping via an email reminder might be just the thing to convert an uncertain potential customer into an actual customer.
3. Leverage Your Best Content
Content marketing is the ultimate contributor to push a user further down the sales funnel. When a brand’s content is engaging and offers something of value, the remarketing strategies will automatically be successful.
With the data you’ve gathered from your site visitors, you can create specific content that appeals to specific people at every stage of your marketing funnel. Here are different examples of content that is ideal for each of the four stages:
Stage 1: Attract
- Ads
- Landing Pages
- Website
- Videos (Explainer or Product Demo)
- Infographics
- Handy Checklists
Stage 2: Convert
- Social Media
- Blog Posts (How Tos or Guides)
- White Papers/E-books
- Case Studies
- Webinars
Stage 3: Close
- Ratings & Reviews
- Questionnaires
- Self-Assessments
- E-mails
Stage 4: Delight
- Surveys
- Special Offers
- Contests & Giveaways
- E-mails
- Social Media
- Blog Posts
- White Papers/E-books
The Blurry Line Between Remarketing and Retargeting
These two tactics used to exist in silos: email was its own island, and paid media was limited to top of funnel targeting, and remarketing based on website actions.
However, these two have become somewhat interchangeable in recent years. Well, platforms like Google Ads, Facebook, added the capability to target on-platform using email customer lists years ago.
Email no longer exists as a separate silo of information from the paid media part of the world.
When an email list is uploaded, the platform will then work to match those email addresses with user logins. That matched list is used to show ads to (assuming it meets the minimum threshold of audience size, which varies by platform).
So now you have that blurry line of targeting your email users, perhaps with the same message you’re sending in emails, but doing it with a paid advertisement.
Side notes
When comparing retargeting and remarketing, the overlap and differences have become less clear over the years. But that has also been true for digital marketing, in general.
Their shared goal, though, is to increase conversions to those most likely buy from your brand; and the difference really being the associated strategy.
Retargeting is really focused on paid ads (and can take a variety of forms, and target a broad range of individuals).
Remarketing is focused on email campaigns and reaching out to those who have already had interactions with, allowing for more specific upselling and messaging.
This merging of retargeting and remarketing is really indicative of what we see in digital marketing as a whole:
Attribution is not a clearly defined thing
It used to feel like it was, once upon a time, but it was mostly due to platforms not integrating all the elements marketers had access to.
As these platforms continue to cross-reference one another, the questions become less about what defines a tactic, and more about which blend of them yields the best results.
