Everything You Needed to Know About Retargeting and Remarketing!

Did you know that only 2% of visitors make a purchase when they visit an online store for the first time? 92% of consumers don’t even plan to purchase when visiting an online store for the first time. And one-third of consumers who intend to purchase abandon the shopping cart.

Look back at your buying behavior online, and you’ll often find that you browse and look at products online but then leave to look at competitors, wait for payday, or change your mind. That said, it’s in every company’s best interest to pursue you once you’ve visited a site because you’ve exhibited behavior that indicates your interest in their product or service. That pursuit is known as retargeting… or sometimes remarketing.

Retargeting Definition

Advertising systems like Facebook and Google Adwords provide a script for you to put on your website. When a visitor visits your site, a script downloads a cookie to their local browser, and a pixel is loaded that sends data back to the ad platform. Now, wherever that person goes on the web where the same advertising system is deployed, an ad can be displayed to try to remind them of the product or site they were looking at.

You’ve most likely noticed this when you’re shopping online. You look at a nice pair of boots on a site and then leave. But once you leave, you see ads for the boots on Facebook, Instagram, and other publications online. That means the e-commerce site has deployed retargeting campaigns. Retargeting an existing visitor has a much higher return on investment than trying to acquire a new visitor, so brands always use the technique. Retargeted ads are 76% more likely to get clicks on Facebook than normal ad campaigns. 

And it’s not just consumer e-commerce sites that can deploy retargeting campaigns. Even B2B and service companies often deploy retargeting when visitors land on a campaign landing page. Again, they’ve shown interest in the product or service, so it’s effective to pursue them.

Retargeting and remarketing campaigns can be broad or specific to certain activities.

• Visitors who arrive at a site or page can be retargeted. This is pixel-based retargeting, which simply displays ads as visitors browse the web.
• Visitors who started the conversion process by registering or abandoning a shopping cart. This is list-based retargeting, and you can apply personalized display ads, as well as mobile and email messages, because you actually have the prospect’s identity.

Retargeting vs. Remarketing

While the terms are often used interchangeably, retargeting is mainly used to describe pixel-based advertising, and remarketing is often used to describe list-based efforts to re-engage consumers and businesses. Abandoned shopping cart campaigns frequently yield the highest conversion rates and return on marketing investment.

What is Behavioral Retargeting?

Rudimentary retargeting is simply pushing ads to anyone who visited a site-specific page or abandoned a checkout process on your site. However, modern systems can actually observe individuals’ behaviors as they browse the web. Their demographic, geographic, and behavioral information can place personalized and timely ads to increase the chances of conversion and reduce overall advertising costs.

Retargeting Strategies

Iva Krasteva at Digital Marketing Jobs, a UK site for finding digital marketing jobs, details the types of retargeting strategies in her recent article, 99 Retargeting Statistics To Reveal Its Significance For Marketers!

1. Email Retargeting
   • This type is adopted 26.1% of the time. 
   • This works by creating an email campaign where anyone who clicks on your email will start seeing your ads. You can create lists of specific emails to target specific audiences and guide them to what interests them most on your website. 
   • This is done by retargeting code into HTML or the signature of your emails. 
2. Site and Dynamic Retargeting
   • This type is adopted most of the time at 87.9%.
   • This is where a consumer has landed on your site, and you track their next few browse searchers to plant perfectly timed personalized ads to re-attract the consumer. 
   • This is done by using cookies. When consumers agree to cookies, they agree to allow their browsing to be accessible. No personal information is attainable, though. Simply an IP address and where that IP address has been searched can be used.  
3. Search – Remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA)
   • This type is adopted 64.9% of the time. 
   • This works by live marketers on a paid search engine, guiding consumers to the right page with a trail of ads based on their searches. 
   • This is done by viewing who clicked on paid ads before. Depending on the searches, you can retarget the consumers with more ads to lead them in the direction you want them to go.  
4. Video
   • Video advertising is increasing by 40% annually, and more than 80% of internet traffic is video-oriented.
   • This works when a consumer visits your site. You then track their behavior at each level of shopping within your platform. You can place strategic video retargeting ads when they leave your site and start browsing. These can be personalized to target the consumer’s interests to get them back onto your site.  

Retargeting Infographic

This infographic details every statistic you’d ever want to know about retargeting, including the basics, how marketers view the strategy, what customers think of it, retargeting vs. remarketing, how it works in browsers, how it works with mobile applications, types of retargeting, social media retargeting, retargeting effectiveness, how to set up retargeting, goals of retargeting, and retargeting use cases.