Retargeting vs. Remarketing : What do they mean?
Retargeting and Remarketing are two buzzwords that marketers often hear and use interchangeably. These two important digital marketing strategies have a common goal in mind – to help you reach back out to visitors who have shown an interest in your brand.
RETARGETING refers to online ad placement or display ads targeting users who have interacted with your site in specific ways. Have you noticed that when you look at a product on a website, you suddenly start seeing ads of that same product in other places such as Facebook where you weren’t seeing them before?
Congratulations, you’ve been retargeted!
Retargeting is one of the most efficient and effective ways to keep customers engaged in a buying process, using browser cookies to follow what the target visitor is looking for, which pages the person is visiting.
Retargeting requires the site visitor to take certain actions in order to trigger the retargeting ad. This may be clicking on a certain product, putting an item in their shopping cart, or visiting a specific site page (like a pricing page) a certain number of times.
When the site visitor takes the desired action, a cookie that’s set in their web browser allows the business to retarget the user with ads based on the specific action they have taken. Triggers one can use for retargeting may include:
- A user’s history of online searches
- Users who share the same interest with your current audience when it comes to content
- Users who have interacted with any of your digital content such as social media posts, ads, videos, etc.
- Users who recently visited a similar website
- Subscribers who have interacted with your emails. For instance, opened a newsletter or clicked a link.
By showing your retargeting ad content to visitors on the sites they frequent, you have an increased chance of getting the visitor’s attention and re-engaging their interests. This will hopefully lead to a successful conversion.
There are two basic strategies for retargeting ads. One approach is to deliver retargeting ad content to visitors after they take certain actions On your site. The other is to retarget users after they take certain actions Off-site.
On-site is the most popular type of retargeting. It involves re-engaging previous site visitors who have interacted with some of your products or services or taken some specific action.
This approach helps you re-engage those who have already shown an interest in your brand. Here are a few different ways that you might target these individuals:
- Reach out to previous site visitors that feature a product they have already interacted with.
- Deliver ad content to email subscribers who have shown interest in your business but have not yet made a purchase.
- Re-engage visitors based on how they found your websites, such as search or social media.
Targeting customers who have made certain off-site interactions is another approach to retargeting.
This allows you to engage consumers who have not yet interacted with your site but may very well be interested in your products based on the similarities they have with your previous customers.
Off-site interaction retargeting often involves targeting users based on their search engine behavior. This means that you would target consumers who search for similar keywords and phrases as those who have previously bought from your company.
REMARKETING on the other hand is associated with re-engaging customers through email marketing. These emails are triggered by actions that visitors take on a brand’s website. One of the biggest reasons why remarketing emails are so effective is because email marketing has a wide reach. With 94% of online adults using email, it’s easy to reach back out to these consumers once they’ve left your site.
The remarketing email serves as a reminder to the visitor of what they’ve left behind. Since the visitor has already clearly shown interest in the product, there’s a good chance that a little reminder might help influence their purchasing decision.
Remarketing doesn’t just revive your brand presence in a customer’s mind. It can also establish a stronger sense of the personal relationship in an otherwise faceless digital transaction. Well-crafted remarketing emails respond to a customer’s unique preferences and values, making them feel taken care of.
The key to a successful remarketing campaign is making the emails helpful, not annoying. If customers feel they’re being frequently shown something they don’t need, they may be less likely to re-engage.
Now that you know the difference between remarketing and retargeting, let’s talk about when it’s most effective to use each strategy. Though the goal of both remarketing and retargeting is the same, they use different strategies to achieve this goal. Knowing the differences between remarketing and retargeting is vital if you want to get the most out of your digital marketing strategy.
Since remarketing focuses on email campaigns, this approach is best used when an email is the best medium for the message you are trying to send. Though retargeting ads are limited when it comes to the amount of content you can deliver in the ad, emails offer a bit more space.
This makes remarketing ideal when you want to not only send the visitor a reminder of what they’ve left behind.
If you want to target a broader range of consumers then retargeting ads may be the ideal way to engage those who are most likely to be interested in your products or services. It’s important to note that remarketing only allows you to reach previous site visitors, retargeting ads can help get your brand in front of new audiences by reaching those who have taken actions online that are similar to your current customers.
Both remarketing and retargeting are great tactics for re-engaging those who have shown interest in your site, brand, industry, products, or services, there is a time and place to use each for optimal results.
Still not sure whether you need remarketing or retargeting? Send us a mail via support@tracemedialtd.com or send DM on WhatsApp 07034586840
