Today’s the big day, today we answer the question, what is remarketing once and for all. But where do we start?
Have you ever wanted to buy something on the internet, only to change your mind at the last minute? Did it also happen that you kept seeing that product everywhere you went, perhaps until you finally made the purchase?
Well, if that’s ever happened to you, congratulations, you have first-hand experience as the target of a remarketing campaign.
In this article, we’ll discuss what exactly remarketing is and how it works. We’ll also have a look at the benefits of this type of marketing and help you decide if it’s right for your business.
What is Remarketing?
Remarketing is the use of technology to remember people that have shown interest in your business in order to show them personalized content and get them to take profitable action.
That profitable action may be returning to your website to complete signing up for a membership or as in the case of our introductory example, returning to a checkout page to complete a purchase.
No matter how good your website is, people that visit will eventually leave, many of them without taking out their wallets (97% to be exact — incidentally the marketing world’s worst kept statistical secret).
That’s not a problem. However, without a prompt, some of them will never return, now that’s a big problem.
You’ve worked hard to get people on your website and you want those that haven’t bought anything to come back and buy. And those that did buy? You want them to come back and buy something else.
Remarketing vs Retargeting
Besides Remarketing you’ve probably also heard of something called retargeting. What’s the difference between these two terms? To answer that question, let’s look at the definition of retargeting.
Retargeting is the use of technology to remember website visitors in order to show them personalized ads and get them to take profitable action.
As you can see, remarketing and retargeting have very similar definitions. But if you pay attention, you’ll also notice that retargeting is not very wide in its scope.
Remarketing on the other hand is quite broad, so much so that retargeting is a subset or branch of remarketing.
Remarketing includes advertising to existing customers and leads, whose contact information you already have, whereas retargeting is more geared towards new audience members or prospects that haven’t had much interaction with you.
Another important difference is the medium of communication. Remarketing is done mostly through email, while retargeting is often done through ads.
To summarize, the main difference between remarketing and retargeting is their scope, target audience, and advertising medium.
This corrects the misconception that remarketing and retargeting are the same, they’re not.
Remarketing is about the re-engagement of people that have interacted with your business in general while retargeting is specific to the re-engagement of website visitors.
But despite their differences, it must be said that these marketing methods are very similar and therefore are both effective ways for marketers and business owners to increase their marketing ROI.
Pro tip: There’s a thin line between remarketing and retargeting. In fact, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that half the internet uses these terms interchangeably. This is something good to keep in mind when you come across other content on this subject: when you think of remarketing think of emails and when you think of retargeting think mainly of ads.
To better understand how effective both these tools are and how you can perfectly incorporate them in your business we’ll have to discuss how exactly they work.
How Remarketing Works
Earlier, we mentioned that technology is used to remember people that have interacted with your business. In this section, we’ll be a lot less ambiguous and talk more about exactly what technology is involved in remarketing.
Email Remarketing
When you send out emails to people in your database or mailing list, most marketing platforms allow you to decide what to do with the people in your contacts based on their behavior (Behavioural Marketing).
That is, you can segment your audience by tagging those audience members that didn’t open your email, or according to those that opened your message but didn’t click a link, and so on.
You can then use analytics (what you know about their interaction with your emails) as well as their purchase history with you, to send them personalized emails and content.
To understand things even better, let’s talk a little about where it all begins, collecting contact information or lead capturing.
When someone makes a purchase, they’ll often give you a way to get in touch, such as their phone number or email. But when businesses want to collect contact information of people that have not yet done business with them, they’ll often send these potential customers to a landing page or squeeze page.
Pro tip: A landing page is a page on a website that has only one focus or call to action. This is a page where prospects are sent so that their contact information can be collected, usually in exchange for a gift, called a lead magnet.
The portion of your audience that visits your landing page and expresses interest in your product or service joins your list of leads.
You will then send your leads some emails, some of which have links to a sales page. When they visit your sales page you hope that they’ll make a purchase. But we all know that things don’t always go as planned, and some of your leads may stop midway through making the purchase.
This is where remarketing comes into play. When a sale doesn’t go as planned you still have a window of opportunity to get your leads interested in your service or product again by persuading them to do so using emails, here’s how:
Using a series of well-crafted emails, you can persuade the leads who clicked through to your sales page to come back.
One such email can be a survey that gets your leads to answer a few questions which would lead to you finding out what went wrong down the line as they wished to make the purchase and how you could fix it. Or you could send them an email with a discount or coupon code.
Retargeting Ads
When it comes to retargeting, a small document called a cookie is often added to the computers of website visitors when they meet certain criteria. For example, you may want to remember visitors to specific pages of your website, such as people that visited a product page but didn’t make a purchase or people that visited your calendar but didn’t book an appointment.
The cookies added to the website visitors’ computer allow you to later show ads to that user, long after they have left your website.
Now that we have a basic understanding of how remarketing works, we’re ready to look at one of the key elements of this type of marketing, namely the Google Display Network (GDN).
What is the Google Display Network?
The Google Display Network is a set of websites and apps that show ads from Google. These sites are owned by Display Partners, who sign up to the network in exchange for compensation.
When business owners advertise with Google, their ads will show up on sites in the display network. The exact sites on which the ads appear will depend on the advertiser’s targeting and campaign choices.
If you‘d like to know even more about the network, stick around! In the meantime, let’s talk about the benefits of remarketing and retargeting.
3 Reasons Why Remarketing is Important
Not sure if remarketing is right for you? Below you’ll find a few reasons remarketing is important and why you should consider using it in your business.
1. Capitalize On Lost Web Traffic
In marketing, every sale counts. Remarketing is perfect for regaining lost web traffic which can mean more sales, which can, in turn, contribute to the growth of your company.
When a lead changes their mind and decides not to buy your product or service, your company loses a potential shot at growth.
As your company grows, it’s important to seize every opportunity to keep that growth steady. This includes chasing after lost web traffic and turning as many prospects as possible into paying customers.
2. Lost Web Traffic Comprises of Interested Individuals
People who have already visited your website and shown interest in the product or service your offering are more likely to convert into buyers than those who haven’t visited your website or shown interest.
This is exactly why you have to put a considerable amount of time into regaining your lost web traffic.
3. Promotion Of Your Brand
Strategically remarketing your goods and services can play a vital role in getting people to know about your brand.
That is, having your product or service showing up at the right time in the right place, will mean better brand recognition and ultimately will result in more sales
Wrapping Up
Remarketing is an effective way to promote your business. In this article, we explained what this type of marketing is and how it differs from retargeting.
After considering how remarketing works, we went on to look at the benefits of a remarketing campaign.
What’s next? Since you’re more likely to make a sale from people who have shown interest in your product or service, than those who haven’t, it’s important to try to re-engage them.
But first, you must engage them (get them onto your website) in a cost-effective way. That’s where a content marketing strategy comes in. We’ve written a great article about the benefits of content marketing, check it out.
