Retargeting vs Remarketing

Retargeting vs remarketing. These are common phrases used when discussing how to market to potential customers who are already interested in your brand. They are similar, as both approaches have the same goals. Some of those goals include engaging audiences likely to make a purchase, as well as creating lasting brand recognition. The differences, however, can be more difficult to understand and utilize. This article will explore the key elements to successfully implement retargeting and remarketing strategies in order to gain additional customers.

What is Retargeting?

The term retargeting refers to identifying people who have engaged with your brand. For instance, perhaps these people browsed your website, looked at your social media, or read about your brand. Then, you directly target them. Retargeting is usually performed through digital ads based on that user’s online activity. 

How Does Retargeting Work?

When a user visits your website, a pixel (an HTML code snippet which is loaded when a user visits a website or opens an email) allows for cookies to capture data about both the people who visit the site and what they do on the sites they visit. With this, marketers can target ads to them on other websites they visit based on their past behavior. For example, have you ever spent time Googling a brand? And then later, received an ad for that brand on Instagram? In that case, you have been retargeted. This is especially appealing to marketers because the retargeting process can easily be completed through third parties such as the Google Display Network. The Google Display Network gives you the opportunity to reach potential customers across millions of websites. 

Getting Started with Retargeting

There are many ways to approach retargeting type efforts, even if customer haven’t engaged with your website previously. You can start by marketing towards individuals based off of their search engine queries. Or, who consume similar content to that of your target audience. For example, if you own a bakery, you can focus on users who have recently Googled “best cakes near me” or interacted with party planning blogs. Similarly, targeting users who have interacted online with content on social media such as an event planning Facebook group, or who have engaged with a competitor online, leads to a higher chance of conversion.

If users have engaged with your online presence, there are many ways to retarget them. For example, you can utilize the way they arrived at your website in the first place. Another way is to advertise based on the specific products they have viewed. An example of this could be running an ad displaying an item that a user clicked on multiple times. This technique drives audiences back to websites. In fact, Kimberly-Clark has seen 50-60% conversion rates when retargeting to consumers who have previously visited the brand website. 

What is Remarketing?

Remarketing, on the other hand, is focused on re-engaging customers through effective email marketing. These emails are triggered by engagement that users take on a brand’s website. These actions can be also be tracked through the use of cookies. Cookies are built specifically for web browsers to track and save information about each time you spent on a website.  

How Does Remarketing Work?

Remarketing efforts are most popularly used for shopping cart abandonment email campaigns, cross sell emails and lifecycle marketing emails. Shopping cart abandonment is a large issue for online sales, in fact, over 3/4 of shoppers choose to leave the site without completing a purchase. However, according to eMarketer, 81% of customers were at least somewhat likely to make additional purchases as a result of targeted emails. These emails can highlight the item that the user was browsing and even include incentives such as an additional discount to close the sale.

Aside from item abandonment emails, cross sell emails can also highlight a different product to provide an additional benefit to the customer. Similarly, business can keep increasing revenue by sending upsell remarketing emails to invites the customer to purchase upgrades or additional add-ons. Email marketing also has an incredible return on investment. According to the Data & Marketing Association, for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $42. Segmented email marketing is a flexible and cost effective way to reach both current and past customers. 

Common Mistakes in Retargeting vs Remarketing

Both retargeting and remarketing are excellent ways to help achieve an increase in sales. However, if they are not executed correctly, they can leave a negative impact on consumers. Let’s address some common mistakes to avoid in order to create effective techniques.

Don’t Be Redundant

Keep in mind the frequency and relevant time period of these advertisements and marketing materials in order to avoid marketing a product that a user has already recently purchased. This can be avoided by making sure all converted leads get removed from your target list for that particular product. This will not only save ad spend but will also help avoid the customer from feeling like your advertisements are irrelevant. That being said, make sure to keep monitoring the online activity and email address of converted customers in order to continue your relationship with them. 

Don’t Get Too Aggressive

Similarly, to avoid cannibalizing your own audience, make sure that your lists are organized so that your audience is not getting targeted simultaneously and or too aggressively. When customers feel overwhelmed by your ads they are likely to become disinterested. Over-targeting can also lead to skews in your own campaign performance data which will make your entire strategy less effective. This can be done by setting a frequency cap on campaigns or subtracting campaign lengths from one another to avoid over-saturation.

Make a Timeline

Next, make sure that your campaign timeline meets the needs of your audience. While retargeting ads or remarketing content can be set to almost any frequency or duration, keep in mind what makes the most sense for your viewers. Focus on the buying cycle of your product or service. For example, if you are selling smaller and more pressing items such as laundry detergent or toothpaste, then campaigns that last only a few days may show better results. In contrast, a larger and more thoughtful purchase such as for a travel destination or a car may be more optimal to target with a longer campaign. Utilize your historical sales data to get a better understanding how to meet these needs. 

Evaluate Your Audience

Lastly, do not be afraid to reevaluate your viewers. Make sure you are not targeting too wide or too narrow of an audience. Exploring and testing these parameters will eliminate wasting ad spend on overcasting your reach. This will also help you avoid missing potential audiences by chasing an audience which is hyper-specific. 

Retargeting vs Remarketing: The Differences

Although both retargeting and remarketing are strategies used with audiences who have or are likely to engage with your online presence, they have differences in effectiveness based on the segment being targeted.

Retargeting focuses on users who are at still in the first stage of the sale funnel but are likely to have interest. Using digital ads to capture their attention helps build brand recognition and peak interest. This repetition of messaging is particularly successful for keeping your brand top-of-mind for when they are ready to make a purchase. Try remarketing if your focus is on attracting new customers, you lack an email list of leads, or if you want to increase your click conversion rate. When creating these digital ads, make sure to take your potential audience into consideration. Include widgets or buttons to easily link to your product page. 

Remarketing is most effective for customers who have shown a deeper interest in your products and services, but may not be ready to make the purchase. Thus, remarketing techniques are more personalized. This helps users around the bottom of the sales funnel commit to the buy. This technique relies on high engagement from your audience and a strong understand of the user perspective.

Try remarketing if you are looking to focus on re-engaging current or past customers, do not have a substantial budget for widespread ads, and you are easily able to collect email information or have an engaged email list. When creating these emails, it can be highly beneficial to include deals or sales related to the products of interest. Or, you can introduce new offerings, write a catchy subject line, and put your most relevant content at the top. 

Personalization also sees a huge payoff in marketing emails.

Retargeting vs Remarketing: Can I Use Both?

Although choosing the right strategy can depend on the target audience and business itself, you can, of course, use both. Retargeting allows you to capture the attention of users during the original prospecting process. Then, remarketing can aid in converting customers to close the sale. In fact, the lines between retargeting and remarketing are blurring together in overall digital marketing strategy. This is because tools like Google Ads and Facebook include features to target email lists directly on their platform.

Whatever your niche is, both retargeting and remarketing strategies can be developed. Both can meet the needs of your business and build lasting connections with your audience. Although they are different, the options and flexibility available with these strategies is endless. Together, they go hand in hand. 

Hopefully, this article explained to you retargeting vs remarketing. For more help with marketing strategies, contact us at SEO Design Chicago today!