Table of Content: Remarketing Vs Retargeting Guide
- Remarketing Vs Retargeting – Are They Similar?
- Remarketing or Retargeting – Which is Better for your Business?
Let’s get cracked!
Remarketing vs retargeting are the two buzzwords that often create confusion among marketers, especially the newbies. Businesses that have recently moved online, aiming to advertise their products or services across a wide channel, find it hard to comprehend these two marketing techniques. Hence, they make a conclusion – digital marketing is complicated!
Is it so?
Not at all. If you have good knowledge of strategies, tools, techniques, and basic principles, nothing can be more effective than your digital marketing.
Well, we are not here to make a debate on – whether white label digital marketing is complicated or not. We are here to uncover a few facts and put emphasis on remarketing vs retargeting.
Remarketing Vs Retargeting: An In-Depth Comparison
Retargeting vs remarketing in digital marketing are often used interchangeably, maybe because of the few similarities. However, if you go in-depth, you will find a sleek difference between the two. Though people use the words in place of another, both are two different marketing techniques used to meet two different purposes.
To help you sort out the confusion, here we have framed a comparison between remarketing vs retargeting based on a few factors. Let us have a look.
#1. Based on the overall concept
Retargeting ads are usually run on social media like Facebook and other ad-displaying websites where more percentage of users are found active.
Remarketing ads take the help of an email marketing campaign. Through remarketing emails, marketers reach out to the customers directly who have once interacted on the website.
#2. Based on marketing goal
Retargeting ads are designed to generate quality leads and encourage the people who have shown interest in your brand.
Remarketing ads aim to drive more conversions by reaching out to the people who have once interacted on the website or made any kind of action.
Both the marketing tactics are made to build business revenue and increase the chance of brand visibility to those who are most likely to make their purchase from the brand.
#3. Based on target audience
Retargeting ad campaigns are crafted to target a broad audience across the globe. The targeted viewers include the users who have already visited your website, scrolled your products and services, clicked and viewed your ads along with those whom you have served outside your website.
Remarketing ad campaigns are designed to re-engage the viewers who have already interacted and shown interest in your products or services. Usually, email campaigns are used to target these audiences.
#4. Based on types
When you talk about retargeting, on-site and off-site interactions are usually made with these ad campaigns.
When you talk about remarketing via email, a few types of content are used that include products on sales, exclusive offers, greetings, VIP treatment, cart abandonment, and up/cross-sells.
#5. Based on tools
Retargeting ads are usually displayed on various display networks including mobile devices and app notifications.
Remarketing ads are performed via email campaigns.
Let’s explain the two marketing tactics in detail;
What does Retargeting Mean in Marketing?
As we discussed above, Retargeting is a digital marketing technique that is used to describe online ad placements in both textual and image format. The placements are usually made based on the user’s activity on the site. The ads target the users who have once interacted with your site in specific ways but left the site without making any purchase.
How does it Work?
Whenever a user visits a website, browses different products, scroll down the services, or makes a certain action such as subscribing to the channel, registering the name, etc. a cookie is set on their internet browser.
This cookie lets you display the ads to them on any other web page they visit. That’s the specialty of retargeting ads, they can be performed on various third party websites including GDN (Google Display Network) and AdRoll.
Do you know millions of users are likely to get attracted to these retargeting ads? Studies have confirmed that only 0.5% of first-time web visitors get drawn towards email offers. While 9.5% of returning visitors prefer clicking these ads and get converted to relevant customers. There is a 1912% more chance of building conversions through retargeting.
Some popular and effective online platforms that support running retargeting campaigns are as follows;
- GDN
- AdRoll
- Perfect Audience
- Triggit
- Re-Targeter
All these platforms have the potential to install website cookies, track your website visitors, get an insight into the behavior, build networks with display ad groups so as to advertise your brand across a wide network on the internet.
Types of Retargeting
The retargeting method can be classified under two categories –
- On-site events
- Off-site events
Each of these categories has different marketing strategies. Let us explain the two events in detail.
On-site events
On-site events involve targeting the individuals who have expressed their interests in the brand by visiting the site or scrolling down your products and services but have made no purchase yet.
Advertisers often use display ads to convert those potential clients into customers. Such ads increase the number of conversions in no time.
A few targeting ways that are frequently used are as follows.
- Targeting based on the products the users have scrolled.
- Targeting based on how the users knew about your website (via social media, third-party websites, or other inbound events).
- Targeting based on the email contacts who have shown interests but haven’t yet got converted.
You can choose Google Ads, Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, and other forms of paid advertisements to target these audiences.
Off-site events
Off-site events are organized to target the customers who have not yet interacted with the website but are well aware of your brand.
Advertisers use an advanced technique to reach out to those audiences. They perform the job based on customers’ web searches and their interactions with the brand content on social media platforms like Facebook or mobile app. Audiences are thus existing in several places on the internet but are yet to visit the website owned by the brand.
In this case, retargeting campaigns include “users who have interacted with your page” and options similar to this. This overall process is termed off-site retargeting.
6 Steps to Create a Retargeting Campaign on Facebook
As we discussed earlier, retargeting campaigns are usually run on Facebook and other ad display network. Well, prioritizing Facebook, we have listed down the steps to create a successful retargeting ad campaign. Just have a look.
1. Install Facebook Pixel on your Website
This is the most vital and so the very first step to start with. Pixel code is a piece of code that helps users to measure and determine the performance of the website based on specific metrics.
- Go to “Ads Manager”.
- Find “Pixels” under this category.
- Hit the “Add a New Data Source” button.
- Finally, choose “Pixel”.
Don’t worry, Facebook will guide you with the process of setting up a pixel on your website.
2. Understand your Campaign Objective
To set up a successful retargeting campaign, you need to determine the actual goal of running the campaign. Even Facebook wants to know the reason behind creating such a campaign. And it is mandatory to share this with it.
Once you click the “Create an Ad” button, you have to select the right objective under “What’s your marketing objective”. Here you will witness three options – Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion. Select the one you are actually looking for and move on to the next step.
3. Create your Custom Audience
Guess what, Facebook allows you to create your custom audience. Just you need to understand your campaign goals. Once you are done, you can easily find the right audience whom you are going to target through retargeting ads.
Under the “Audience” section, you can set up the type of audience by filtering them out based on demographics, age group, interests, gender, behavior, and so on.
On the right-hand column, you will witness the size of the audience of your retargeting campaign and estimate the daily results.
4. Choose your Ad Placements
Facebook displays ads in multiple areas. This can be your Facebook stories, Messenger, In-stream videos, etc. These are referred to as Facebook ad placements which you can choose based on your campaign goal.
Pick your ad placements based on your devices, platforms, and locations. However, in some cases, Facebook itself recommends you the better one.
5. Select your Daily Budget
If you are assuming that you don’t have to spend a single buck for your retargeting ad campaign, you are wrong. Facebook doesn’t allow users to run free ads. But you can surely select your daily budget and run your ad accordingly.
For your retargeting campaign, you can scroll down the “Budget & Schedule” page and under “Cost Control” you can set your own budget. Yes, you can always start with small figures and raise your budget as you earn a profile from the campaign.
6. Choose Visuals for your Ad
Now, the fun part is, you need to select the ad format – as in how would your ad look like. Whether you want it in carousel format, a single image or video format, or in collection format – you can choose anyone from the list, upload the visual, and hit the confirm button.
Once Facebook reviews your retargeting ad it will be displayed to the custom audience you have selected at the initial step.
What do you Mean by Remarketing?
Remarketing, on the other hand, is also a digital marketing method of re-engaging your customers or potential customers via email marketing campaigns. You all must be aware of the email marketing technique. This is the only prominent method to encourage the prospective buyers who are already hanging down the sales funnel.
For example, a prospective buyer has added an item to the cart but left the site without checking out. You can simply use an email message to remind the user about the added items in the cart. Such a message will encourage the person to visit the page and complete the checkout process.
Emailing an online user about new updates, discounts, and offers, renewing a service, all are some frequent examples of remarketing.
Google dynamic remarketing has the ability to raise the brand conversion rate to 161% compared to other display ads. Considering AgilOne’s study, marketing emails are usually rich with remarketing tactics. Most of the remarketing emails include personalized emails displaying discounts and offers on products, check out an abandoned cart (54%), welcome greetings to the customers (61%).
Like retargeting emails, remarketing email campaigns are crafted to increase conversions by reaching out to the contacts who have interacted with the website by adding items in the cart, wishlist products, signing up, etc. but have made no purchase. These campaigns are usually preferred by retail marketers. Gmail and Dropbox are frequently used to run such campaigns.
4 Steps to Create a Google Remarketing Campaign
Since you have now gained a good idea about remarketing in digital marketing. Then you must be pretty excited about how to create and run a successful remarketing campaign.
Worry not! Go through the following steps that represent creating a Google remarketing campaign. Here we have framed how to set up a Google remarketing campaign. Just note them down.
1. Understand your Remarketing Goal
Generally, a remarketing campaign can be classified into three categories based on the marketing goal.
- First, the campaign is targeted to reach out to the people who have not taken any kind of action on the page. Here, we are talking about generating leads.
- Second, the campaign is targeted to reach out to the people who have left the page without performing the checkout process. Here, we are concerned about conversions.
- Third, the campaign is targeted to reach out to the people who have not yet aware of your brand ad. Here, we are aimed to perform brand promotion.
It is important to know what exactly are you aiming at through your remarketing campaign. This will help you choose the right audience and meet your marketing goals on that network.
2. Create a Remarketing List
Next step is to create a remarketing list on Google. Hope you have Google AdWords account for your business. Login to the account and visit “Shared Library”. Under this, you will have to choose the “Audience” tab to select the right audiences based on your remarketing goal.
This should be followed by installing a “Remarketing tag” on your website. This will give you access to run different varieties of remarketing campaigns.
Once you are done with this, you need to click on “+Remarketing List”. Under this option, you will find assorted options including – website visitors, mobile app visitors, customer emails, and YouTube users.
Choose the option based on your targeted audience and save it.
3. Choose the Proper Remarketing Platform
No matter which option you choose to run your remarketing campaign, your next step should be to choose a proper remarketing platform based on it.
Suppose you want to set up a Display Network remarketing campaign, under the “+campaign” option, choose “Display Network only”. Moving on to the “Create an ad group and add”, go to the option “Interests & Remarketing”.
Select the relevant category under the “Remarketing list”. The moment you select the list, you can witness the number of people belonging to the list.
The entire process remains the same if you choose “Video Viewers” or any other remarketing list option.
4. Hit the Remarketing Option
Choose any remarketing options, define proper bidding, and finally hit the submit button. You can definitely experiment with all other options to understand which one presents you with the better results.
Remarketing Vs Retargeting – Are They Similar?
Yes, they are similar. But they are not the same. At times, you might be using the same message for both the campaigns – remarketing and retargeting. But that doesn’t mean they can be replaced by themselves.
If remarketing delivers the brand message via email, retargeting conveys the message through paid advertising method. That’s the sleek difference, hence, should be kept in mind.
Remarketing or Retargeting – Which is Better for your Business?
Now, choosing between the two remarketing and retargeting is quite challenging. You can’t choose any one of the two to improve your business growth. Instead, you have to think about running both the campaigns if you are desperately aiming to build conversions.
For example, you can use retargeting display ads to nurture your leads and draw in more conversions. While on the other hand, you can use the remarketing campaign to generate interests among the potential consumers who are already in the last stage of your sales funnel.
As you can see, both remarketing and retargeting go hand to hand. There is nothing termed “remarketing or retargeting”. You have to choose both if you want to generate leads and amplify your business sales.
That’s the trick!
Apart from that, if you are planning to run ads via remarketing or retargeting techniques hire us as we have PPC marketing experts that will help you to run your ads with these techniques.
