To excel in digital marketing, you need digital strategies that convert. That said, retargeting and remarketing are two proven and tested methods that, if executed correctly, deliver stellar targeted results.
According to Exploding Topics, 1 in 5 marketers prioritize setting aside a budget for retargeting. On the other hand, WebFx reports that B2B companies have amplified their brand awareness by 71% through remarketing.
However, what are retargeting and remarketing strategies, and what role do they play in winning back your customers? Let’s find out together in this brief yet comprehensive guide to "Retargeting vs. Remarketing: A Complete Guide for Marketers.”
Explaining Retargeting
To kickstart our retargeting vs remarketing deliberation, let’s understand retargeting first. The two terms are often used interchangeably despite serving distinct purposes.
To put it in simple words, retargeting is a digital marketing strategy that aims to refamiliarize your potential customers with online ads who at some point landed on your website. In fact, it wouldn’t be wrong to think of retargeting as a re-engagement tactic.
The format of these ads can either be image-based or video. The copy for these advertisements revolves around the core objective of convincing a potential customer to interact with your business once more—this time with an action.
By specifically targeting individuals who have a keen sense of your business, you’re helping them reconnect and engage with your brand. Retargeting is an excellent tactic for increasing brand awareness and inevitably motivating customers to take action.
This “action” can be anything from signing up for a checklist to booking a call or making a purchase. While retargeting ads primarily aim to enhance one’s brand awareness, it can also improve a business's CTR and CRO.
Let’s take a daily life example. Have you ever landed on an e-commerce store and later spotted an ad for the same brand while scrolling Instagram? That wasn’t your FBI agent spying on you—it was, in fact, retargeting ads.
How? Through the usage of cookies or tracking pixels. Both of these tools serve the purpose of monitoring user behavior.
Benefits and Drawbacks of Retargeting
Retargeting ads are vital for accelerating your marketing efforts; however, if not handled tastefully, they can damage a brand’s growth and reputation.
That said, let’s quickly overview the benefits and drawbacks of retargeting in your digital marketing campaigns. The advantages of retargeting are as follows:
- Supports Buyer’s Journey: Retargeting ads help reinforce a visitor’s buying decision since they are already familiar with your brand’s product or service.
- Builds Customer Loyalty: Retargeting ads re-engage your website’s visitors and transform them into returning customers because they are familiar with them.
- Tailored Ads: Retargeting ads are dynamic and highly personalized based on visitors' past interactions, such as the type of products they viewed.
- Data-driven Approach: Retargeting strategy relies on gathering user behavior history based on clicks, page views, user information, and monitoring ad performance that ensures accuracy.
- Targets Multiple Channels: Retargeting ads can reach a targeted visitor on various social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook.
- Boosts ROI: Retargeting serves ads to individuals already familiar with your business; therefore, the chances of converting them are higher.
- Cost-effective Ads: Retargeting involves cheaper ad spend because you’re targeting only one user segment.
The drawbacks, while limited, are all dodgeable if avoided sensibly. Drawbacks of retargeting include:
- Excessive Advertising: A potential customer may get annoyed if a brand constantly targets him/her on multiple social media channels.
- Small Audience: Since retargeting involves serving ads to only those familiar with your business, your outreach is ultimately limited.
- Quality Data Required: To conduct retargeting, you need access to factual user data.
- Ethical Considerations: If not handled with care, your target audience may perceive retargeting as a breach of their privacy.
Step-by-Step Retargeting Method
Here’s a complete breakdown of how to carry out your retargeting strategy:
- Tracking Tools
A visitor lands on your website, and your tracking tools (cookies, tracking pixels, or CRM) monitor their interactions. After collecting sufficient user data, you are ready to proceed to the next step.
- Personalized Segmentation
Now that you have invaluable data on your hands, you can start dissecting the number of visitors who exited your website without taking any action. Selectively segment them, and they’ll become your target audience for serving personalized retargeting ads.
- Run Click-Worthy Retargeting Ads
When it comes to crafting high-converting ads that redirect the target audience to your landing page, both design and copy matter. With retargeting, this process becomes much simpler.
This is because you have a limited target audience, a clear purpose for serving them ads, and sufficient user data to personalize your ads in a way that resonates with them.
- Launching Your Retargeting Campaign
Your tailored ads reach out to users who are familiar with your brand on different social media platforms. They immediately connect and become motivated to click the CTA button that leads them back to your website to make a purchase.
KPIs of Retargeting
If you aren’t aware of what your retargeting key performance indicators are, then it
Clickthrough Rate (CTR)
This metric tracks the percentage of users who click on your retargeting adverts. A high CTR shows that your ad content is both entertaining and relevant to your intended audience.
Conversion Rate
This KPI measures the percentage of people who take a desired action (such as a purchase or signup) after clicking on your retargeting advertising. It is a direct indicator of the campaign's performance in generating sales or leads.
Cost per Click (CPC)
CPC measures the cost you pay for each click on your retargeting advertising. It facilitates tracking spending efficiency and comparing success across campaigns or platforms.
Cost per Acquisition (CPA)
CPA calculates the cost of acquiring a customer or lead through your remarketing campaigns. A low CPA indicates a cost-effective campaign.
Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS)
ROAS calculates the income produced per dollar spent on retargeting. It is a vital indicator of a campaign's overall profitability.
Bounce Rate
This metric measures the percentage of users who click on your retargeting advertising but exit the landing page without taking action. A high bounce rate could suggest problems with your landing page experience.
Frequency
The frequency of your retargeting advertisements determines how frequently users encounter them. While regular exposure can improve brand recall, excessive frequency can cause ad fatigue.
Engagement Metrics
Track behaviors like video views, time spent on the landing page, and clicks on specific CTAs to see how users interact with your ads and content.
Concentrating on these key performance indicators (KPIs) can help you track the performance of your retargeting campaign and make data-driven improvements.
Explaining Remarketing
Now, coming onto the second half of our retargeting vs remarketing guide for marketers. If you’ve understood the concept of retargeting, then remarketing would be even easier to grasp, conceptually.
Remarketing, similar to retargeting, also targets past website visitors. However, the core difference is that unlike retargeting, where users exit without an action, remarketing focuses on users who did take action. They either purchased or abandoned their shopping cart.
To elaborate, remarketing helps your business reconnect with past users who were already motivated enough to take action on your website.
Similar to retargeting, remarketing also uses cookies or tracking pixels to obtain the necessary user information to target users strategically.
By using direct communication via email, SMS, and push notifications, the main objective is to re-engage them and help them repeat or complete an action.
For example, if you run an online clothing brand and a customer purchases a shirt for summer, you can send personalized direct emails informing them of your new fall collection or perhaps an ongoing sale that they would not want to miss out on.
Benefits and Drawbacks of Remarketing
Employing remarketing brings various benefits to your marketing goals and a limited number of setbacks as well. Similar to retargeting, you can easily avoid these minor drawbacks if you’re aware of them. That said, let’s explore the benefits first!
Remarketing can help you obtain an advantageous edge through:
- Boost in Conversion Rate: By re-engaging past customers, you persuade them to shop on your website again; thereby, increasing your conversion rate.
- Personalized Emails: Remarketing includes sending tailored emails based on the user behavior data you collected, such as cart abandonment emails or product recommendation emails, to make them feel heard and seen.
- Repeated Purchases: Since you target customers who are familiar with your brand and have made a purchase earlier, remarketing can help in securing long-term customers.
Drawbacks of remarketing include:
- Spammy Email: Sending too many emails can ruin your brand’s image as it’ll give a spammy vibe.
- Limited Outreach: Similar to retargeting, you are focusing on one segment of users only, so the outreach is relatively small.
Step-by-Step Remarketing Method
The process of remarketing is almost identical to retargeting, with only a few distinct differences.
- Collecting User Behavior Data
Remarketing also utilizes cookies, tracking pixels, or CMS to gather the necessary data needed to commence your marketing campaign.
- User Segmentation
Once you have collected data on users who have interacted with your website and taken action, you can effectively segment them.
- Building an Email List
Now build an email list for those targeted customers. Once you've completed this, you can move on to personalized emailing.
This can include cart abandonment emails, new product launch emails, limited-time offer emails, and product recommendation emails relevant to their last purchase.
Online ads are also a decent approach to remarketing; however, emailing is a more common practice.
- Monitoring Analytics
Track the open rate of the emails sent out. If the percentage is low, then perhaps you need to rework your subject lines, or the quality of the content of your emails isn’t engaging the readers enough.
KPIs of Remarketing
The KPIs of remarketing are also similar to retargeting. They include:
- Engagement rate
- Conversion rate
- Bounce rate
- ROI
- Email open rate
- Click-through rate
Conclusion
As we reach the end of our retargeting vs remarketing discussion, it’s crucial to know the difference between these two similar yet distinctly different digital marketing strategies.
Retargeting focuses on website visitors who left without taking any action, whereas remarketing targets users who have either abandoned their cart or made a purchase before.
Knowing which of the two can serve your business fruitfully would help you gain a competitive edge, and increase your revenue, and overall brand awareness.
Are you prepared to revolutionize your marketing endeavors? Start using Relevic today to launch impactful retargeting campaigns.
FAQs
1. What makes retargeting different from Remarketing?
Retargeting uses ads to re-engage visitors who left without taking action while remarketing focuses on re-engaging past customers through emails or direct messages.
2. How can we leverage retargeting to assist customer journeys?
Retargeting reminds potential customers of your brand, reinforcing their interest and guiding them back toward making a purchase.
3. How does retargeting help accelerate conversions?
Remarketing targets users who have already shown interest by completing an action, increasing the likelihood of repeat purchases.
4. What channels are best for retargeting and remarketing campaigns?
Retargeting works best on social media and display ads while remarketing leverages email, SMS, and push notifications for direct communication.
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