Advertising plays a critical role in bringing people to the web. However, often they are not ready to buy straight away. That’s when remarketing or retargeting comes in – a miraculous helper for both online stores and customers. How does it work?
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Remarketing and retargeting can significantly increase your conversions and ROI. As many as 98% of new visitors to your page do not generate any conversions. Ad retargeting can deliver a 10x increase in click-through rate (CTR) because customers are already familiar with your brand and product.
So, with proper targeting, you can reach those who are almost ready to buy.
Remarketing vs. retargeting
Retargeting or remarketing? You might find the distinction confusing. Facebook and Google refer to retargeting campaigns as remarketing. Several sources state that it is actually the same thing. They are right, but not completely.
What is the difference?
Both methods of advertising aim to achieve the same goals:
- Targeting an audience that has visited your online store and knows your brand.
- Piqueing the interest of people who are very likely to make a purchase.
- Building a relationship with customers through brand awareness.
A fundamental difference is in the tactics used to achieve these goals. In short, it could be said that “remarketing” is an all-encompassing term that includes re-approaching a person with advertising. This can take the form of PPC advertising (Google/Facebook, etc.), as well as an email or text message.
“Retargeting” is basically a term that is a subset of “remarketing”, because it arose from the essence of paid (PPC) advertising as a label for retargeting advertising at users who have already interacted with an ad (seen it) or a website (visited it).
Use retargeting in your campaigns to increase conversions.
Retargeting in PPC advertising
Retargeting, which is literally the retargeting of PPC advertising, has the task of reminding website visitors about products and services after they leave the website without having made a purchase. You can target users with relevant visual or text advertising, which will be displayed to them when they visit other pages.
You can create retargeting campaigns using Google Ads, Facebook retargeting, in the Etarget network, RTB House, Criteo, LinkedIn Ads and other advertising platforms.
In our region, the company Etarget was one of the most important promoters of the topic of retargeting back in the 2010s, second to Google. It is an advertising system that was able to retarget people with advertising through a network of partner websites. Once, it was a counterpart to Google AdSense and Czech contextual advertising Sklik (Seznam.cz).
Remarketing via Google, Facebook, email and text messaging
In addition to classic reminders in advertising, such as “finish your purchase” or “don’t forget – you left something in the cart”, remarketing is also used for up-selling/cross-selling. In other words, for the sale of more expensive or similar and complementary products (so-called accessories) to the product in which the person was initially interested.
The email format allows a focus on re-engaging current, but perhaps inactive, customers to make a purchase. In addition to emails, text messages are also used to target people.
Wouldn’t you be pleased to receive a text like this? “Valid only until midnight tonight! ECCO sale -50%”
Brands use remarketing to offer relevant complementary products to those already purchased by customers. They can be used a timely reminder to a person when it is highly likely that the previously purchased products (e.g. cosmetics, coffee…) have run out.
Remarketing also makes it possible to appropriately follow up on the last purchase and present a new product of the same brand or category that the customer might also like.
Example of remarketing ad on Facebook.
Dynamic remarketing is the secret weapon of online stores
Dynamic remarketing was put into practice by Google. It is based on displaying the products you last saw on the online store (website) in an advertising area of a banner located practically on any web page.
The key here is that you upload a resource with a list of products to your Google advertising account and a Google tag (code) to your website, thanks to which people can see the most recently viewed products in the advertising area.
If your strategy is aggressive, people can literally see your products everywhere they go on the Internet. To a lay user of the Internet, it may even seem that you control the Internet and that your online store or brand is omnipresent.
You can find all the important information about dynamic remarketing directly on the Google support pages.
Use remarketing and increase the conversion rate
Remarketing, or retargeting, should be used under all circumstances. This form of campaign brings the best results. You are targeting people who have already visited your site or made a conversion.
Up to 56% of brands use retargeting to acquire customers. Read about how we increased our client’s turnover by 339% thanks to Google Ads.
How can remarketing improve brand awareness
Most people need to feel familiar with your brand before making a purchase. Thanks to retargeting campaigns you can always be at the forefront of the minds of potential customers. If they decide to buy from you in the future, it will be a much more natural step for them.
But every coin has two sides.
If you are an online store and you push products on people that they have already seen through dynamic remarketing, you might end up putting them off instead. But if you also add nice, imaginative banners in the style of “discover something new with us” into the mix, or just a banner with a logo and slogan in your remarketing strategy, the result will be better.
A puzzle piece in your strategy
You have to treat your communication (marketing) as a whole. Remarketing is only a piece of the puzzle. Your customer also views your communication comprehensively. Simply put, one banner has to tell the customer “oh, here are the shoes you were looking at”.
Another banner on another website must say “this brand makes really good shoes”. The third banner on Facebook will say that this online store sells a world-class brand and offers “Extra time to try out shoes” or “Free collection”, all with convenience and ease.
It may turn out that a person won’t buy the shoes they saw in the online store through retargeting advertising. However, if the ad is well set up and the media assets are memorable, for the next pair of shoes this person needs, they will definitely go and visit this brand.
Remarketing as a satisfaction survey
Marketing your brand should make people happy. Positive emotions increase memorability. But you rarely hit the bull’s eye on the first go. The marketer must listen to customers and understand what “entices” them in the context of the communicated product.
People love to comment on remarketing on Facebook and Instagram, even when it’s unhelpful or annoying.
In order for remarketing to work well from a technical aspect, the displayed online store products should really be those viewed most recently (at the right price or discount). The ad should send the potential customer to a functional page where the product is not sold out.
Start off with simple stuff
Offer less targeted product-specific content to people who have visited your site once or twice. The click-through rate will logically be lower. However, as the goal is to inform potential customers, you should maximise views and track interactions.
People know how to appreciate a good media asset in remarketing. If your ad collects “hearts and likes”, this is a good sign. People spend a lot of time on social media. At the same time, this space is significantly commercially concentrated.
Advertising is everywhere
If someone pauses at your ad and moves an extra finger to give a like (as funny as it sounds), it is an interaction with your brand, with what you communicate in remarketing, and a certain connection occurs. Memorability is built.
Retargeting saves (cart) lives
Not just new visitors to the site, but also your existing customers had probably placed something in their shopping cart, however, instead of paying, they left the site. Use retargeting ads to remind them that the item they were interested in is still available.
When reminding about the shopping cart, you don’t have to play along with the “strategy” that you don’t actually know that they were on your website. Be direct and offer a practical way for someone to get back to where they left off – through advertising. There are still online stores out there that don’t “remember” what you had in your basket.
Say goodbye to unnecessary frustration
It is possible that something can actually distract you and you shut down your computer, your browser restarts, a day or two passes and everything is gone.
The frustration of having to again painstakingly fill up a basket with ten items from the online store can be so huge that you end up giving up on it. Stress kills. Protect yourself from it. As a useful guardian of the unfinished purchase, remarketing will help you with this.
The retargeting campaign of our partner Nebbia entices you to buy the most popular items in the online store.
“Bestsellers” work in remarketing
Retargeting is an effective way to promote best-selling products. Some people like to have someone else make the decision for them. When making decisions, we look for so-called “social proof”. This is proof that someone else also thinks that this purchase or product is a good choice.
Whether it’s in the form of a product review or a retargeting asset that tells me “go for it, this is great, everyone buys this for this purpose”, the principle of why it works is the same.
We don’t want to make a bad decision. We don’t have time to spend hours doing our own research. Your bestsellers can turn visitors into customers, help overcome the fear of the first purchase in the online store and increase the return on investment into advertising.
Introduce a new collection and reactivate an old customer
You can also use remarketing when introducing a new collection of products. People who visited your online store are a great audience who you can reach with a new product that they didn’t even know existed.
It is worth remembering that if you collect data from your website correctly, you can segment customers and visitors over time as well.
Someone who visited “you” 90 or 120 days ago could have seen a selection that did not interest them. But you may have something fresh, something new that you want to tell the world about.
If you use creative remarketing to reach out to visitors who had a good experience with your brand, you increase the probability that they will also respond well to the “new advertising message”. Technically, this translates into a higher click-through rate, a cheaper cost per click (impression), and a higher conversion rate.
Simply put, advertising works while you earn.
How to get started with Google Ads remarketing
If you already advertise on Google, just add a piece of Google remarketing code to your website. The code is known as a tag or pixel. Through it, you can easily define given users.
Advantages of Facebook remarketing
Facebook has a huge audience and a lot of data that it collects about users. This makes it highly likely that your ad will be shown to potential customers that you lost when they last visited the site.
Site users will see relevant ads based on their previous search history. If you want to start a remarketing campaign on Facebook (retargeting), you must have Facebook Pixel running.
Remarketing will not work without the Facebook Pixel code
You can set up a Facebook Pixel yourself via Google Tag Manager. Alternatively, ask a programmer for help or use one of the plugins on WordPress (if you use it).
Using Business Manager, set up events with which you target only a specific group of people. You can also display specific products that customers have viewed in your ads.
Be careful not to repeat the most common Facebook campaign mistakes we often notice.
Remarketing with contact databases
Database-based remarketing ads work if you have a contact list. Create an audience from email addresses and run a remarketing campaign. The platform identifies users with these addresses and then displays the assigned ad to them.
A Google Ads specialist must be detail-oriented
If you are serious about PPC advertising, connect with people who have experience with Google Ads. They know all the pitfalls and know how to cope with unfair practices of the competition.
In cooperation with MagicScript, we have created a unique way of bidding on margin, thanks to which we can bring partners a higher profit. We will help you with:
- auditing or a complete setup of the Google Ads account,
- creating and optimising advertising, (we guarantee the fulfillment of the set PNO/ROAS and bear financial responsibility if this does not happen; it requires the deployment of the MagicScript tool and clearly defined goals),
- setting up audiences not only according to demographic data,
- automating PPC campaigns (PPC Bee, Supermetrics, MagicScript),
- preparation of detailed automated reports (Datastudio, Zoho Analytics, Power BI).
If you are attracted to the global playing field and believe in your product, don’t hesitate to come and sell with us. Worldwide and without the annoying restrictions of the domestic market.
With thanks to the Dexfinity editors, who helped create this article
Author: Terézia Poláková and Pavol Adamčák
Editor: Martin Bartl
Published by: Róbert Hošták
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