Remarketing (or Retargeting) – what is it and how to create targeted advertising that pursues your target audience online

One of the best ways to sell your products or services is by creating advertising that pursues your target audience and is known as remarketing (retargeting). Customers and people in the target audience will be able to see the ads over and over again until they make a purchase.

What it means, how to do it and more information – a comprehensive guide.

What is remarketing?

Remarketing which is known as Retargeting is a marketing method that allows us to woo and track our target audience over and over again and offer them products or services in which they have expressed interest. In fact, while people in the target audience are spending time browsing the web, they see your product or service that they are interested in on your site.

Here is a short example that will illustrate the meaning of remarketing:

Suppose you decide to buy a product for the home, for example, a sofa 2 + 3. You decided to search the internet and social networks and went to different websites to see examples, compare prices, and of course, buy. It is possible that even on a certain website you added the product to the shopping cart on the website to see prices, shipping cost, delivery times, and more.

You decided to leave the site and not buy at the end. But then you notice that you see the same seating system of the site, over and over again, even when reading articles, news, guides, and also when corresponding with friends and family on social networks. You notice that the whole internet recommends you the same sofa and even the ad shows you a 5% discount coupon for immediate purchase.

So you decided to click on the ad, enter the site, and even the seating system is still in the shopping cart and all you have to do is make the purchase with the coupon, and you are done.

An example that illustrates remarketing

So what did we have in this example? Ads that follow you repeatedly until you make that purchase. This method is known as Remarketing or Remarketing.

The basis on which the remarketing method stands is that users do not buy immediately the first time they enter our website or e-commerce store. In fact, only a single percentage makes the purchase and it ranges from 0.5% to about 5% (there may be a deviation here or there depending on the type of business and the type of product or service).

This means that the other users, about 95% or more, are users who do not buy from you on the site or do not leave contact information. Although in practice the same users, there may be quality and good target audience.

Remarketing allows us to reach those 95% or more while browsing and visiting other websites. By simply contacting them and offering them to re-enter the website or digital store to complete the purchase process.

Advantages and disadvantages of remarketing

There are some advantages and disadvantages that need to be known when re-marketing.

Benefits of remarketing

• Possibility to reach a target audience that already knows us but did not make or did not complete the purchase or order on the site.
• Significantly improves the number of sales and customers due to the fact that users recognize the brand.
• Helps build branding and awareness of your business with the target audience.
• Lower marketing costs compared to regular and attractive ads – a higher return on investment and advertising.
• Allows segmentation and access to users according to their location in the marketing funnel (those who only viewed the product, those who added the product to the shopping cart, those who continued to pay, and even those who made a purchase), as well as adjust the marketing message for them (coupon for those who did not complete payment, etc.).
• You can make a dynamic adjustment depending on the type of product the user was looking for.
• Can be advertised in a variety of advertising channels: Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and more.

Disadvantages of remarketing

• A sponsored advertising campaign must be carried out.
• Requires implementation and modification of the code to store the data.

Types of Remarketing

In general, there are 2 main methods in the field of remarketing or retargeting:

• Standard remarketing – Standard remarketing is the method as described before. Audience-based marketing to the audience over and over again to bring them back to the site or digital store and perform the action we want.
• Dynamic remarketing – This is an extension of standard remarketing and is based on a specific fit and based on a specific product or service that the user has reviewed. Most of the time this method is suitable for e-commerce websites that have a lot of products, and the user has browsed and viewed them. Another example is various tourist sites and the like.

Remarketing – How Does It Work?

So how does a remarketing or retargeting method actually work? Well, this secret method works in several steps that are necessary to carry out remarketing to the target audience or customers.

First of all, we need to implement a dedicated code (script or pixel) on the website, landing page, or e-commerce store. This code collects all the information so that we can use it to tailor the ads to the target audience.

When a user enters into your website or digital store, a dedicated cookie is represented by the advertising system, and this cookie is stored in the user’s browser to identify it.

The user performs the various actions on the site (searches for products, enters various pages, adds to the shopping cart, continues to pay, etc.) and the code collects all the information to display it in the information collection system or analytics. The user then continues to leave the site.

We create a remarketing advertising campaign, based on the code and information collected and sent to the advertising system and define the audience for which we would like to display ads. Create ads and adjust the relevant settings.

The ads start running and the user sees them again and again when browsing various websites or apps across the internet. The user then clicks on the relevant ad, enters the site and completes the purchase process.

Advertising channels for a remarketing campaign

So where can I advertise and create campaigns using the remarketing method? Here are some marketing and advertising channels:

• Google Advertising –
  • Google Search – an advertising campaign that allows you to reach a target audience that is searching for a specific keyword.
  • Google Media – an advertising campaign on many websites such as blogs, news sites, magazines and more.
  • Google Shopping – Product-based advertising campaigns and dynamic remarketing to display products that users have been interested in Google search and shopping.
• Facebook Advertising or Instagram Advertising –
  • Facebook / Instagram General – An advertising campaign that allows you to reach a target audience when they visit Facebook.
  • Facebook / Instagram Media – Advertising campaign on news and media sites within instant articles.
  • Facebook / Instagram Shopping – a product-based advertising campaign and dynamic remarketing to display products on Facebook.
• Pinterest Advertising –
  • General Pinterest – an advertising campaign that allows reaching a target audience when visiting Pinterest.
• LinkedIn Advertising –
  • General LinkedIn – an advertising campaign that allows you to reach a target audience by visiting LinkedIn.
• Twitter Advertising –
  • General Twitter – An advertising campaign to reach Twitter users.