Remarketing and retargeting are often used interchangeably, and it’s why business owners rarely know the difference between retargeting and remarketing. When marketers don’t clearly define their differences, clients can miss out on creating effective digital marketing strategies. Or even worse, focus solely on retargeting ads missing out on the versatility of remarketing.
How Does Retargeting Work?
Retargeting uses customers’ intent data to re-engage with them after showing interest in a particular offer. Typically, retargeting works through retargeting ads paid for by the business owner that Google displays and other search engines and social media sites. How retargeting works is relatively simple.
- A customer visits your site but doesn’t accept your offer.
- The website cookies take note of this.
- Using website analytics, you find out who the customer is and where they came from.
- Retarget based on their location and interest.
- Your website visitors see your ad recapturing their interest.
Retargeting can be a costly and futile endeavor if done incorrectly. Flooding search engines and social media platforms with ads is not retargeting. Retargeting ads should be based only on the interest of your target audience and not just random ads. Done right, retargeting can even target customers who never visited your website.
Although there is targeting in retargeting, there is a slight difference between targeting vs. retargeting. Retargeting gives your customer a second look at your offer, while targeting is what gets you the initial website visit. However, you cannot forget to use data-driven techniques to target when retargeting or confuse it with remarketing.
What is Remarketing?
Many new business owners aren’t aware of remarketing, far less how remarketing works in digital marketing. Remarketing and retargeting are often used interchangeably, but just like advertising and marketing, remarketing is not retargeting. Remarketing and retargeting may have similar objectives, but remarketing works with all digital marketing strategies for customer retention.
Due to not understanding why the difference between retargeting and remarketing matters, many marketers only use retargeting in their digital marketing strategies. This is sad because remarketing can be even more personalized than retargeting, allowing marketers to upsell, build and manage loyal communities. And because remarketing can do more than drive traffic and sales, overlooking it can be detrimental to business growth and sustainability.
Remarketing strategies can also be more budget-friendly than retargeting ads, as they can incorporate much inbound and content marketing in remarketing. And when used effectively, remarketing can still drive sales and increase return customers. Even though retargeting does the same thing on some level, remarketing’s primary goal is to get your customers to remain your customers.
This is why focusing on remarketing strategies is brilliant for long-term business goals. Therefore, remarketing is the better option if you want to achieve more than just increasing revenue in the short term. But to achieve those long-term goals, you must use digital marketing strategies that work well with remarketing.
Ways to Implement Remarketing in Your Digital Marketing Strategies?
Since one of the main remarketing tools is emails, focusing on building a solid email list critical to its success. But email isn’t the only way to remarket. Using website analytics, you can remarket by redirecting to other interests. For example, you can turn them to your YouTube channel if they love your videos.
Other digital marketing strategies you can use in your remarketing campaign;
Personalized Targeting
Yes, remarketing involves targeting, but it should be heavily personalized. Personalized targeting works exceptionally well with email marketing. And by focusing on personal interests, you can remarket to the same visitor in myriad ways, including cross-channel marketing or suggested pricing.
Dynamic Remarketing Content
And, of course, you need to ramp up the quality of your content. You may need to refresh your current content or create new dynamic remarketing content. Just remember to align your content with customer needs.
Think Long Term
Remarketing should always be done with the long game in mind. Something as simple as checking broken links and personalizing redirects can significantly impact your bounce rate and traffic over time. Long-term considerations can also go beyond your remarketing campaign into customer service and website optimization.
Don’t Forget Data
Data is always needed in any successful digital marketing strategy. Without data management and analysis tools, your remarketing strategy will fall flat. Data isn’t just a part of your remarketing strategy; it’s the foundation of all digital marketing strategies.
Always Scale
What do we mean by scaling? Scaling means adjusting your campaign based on your current impact. You will need more impressions to make a significant impact if your low click-through rate. To do this successfully, you will need fresh, reliable data backing.
Since remarketing is always confused with retargeting, marketers tend to use many retargeting tools in remarketing. However, that limits your remarketing strategy to ads and occasionally email, when you can remarket with just about any digital marketing tool. After all, the purpose behind remarketing is customer retention, no matter where they fit in.
How to Make the Most of Your Retargeting Ads Campaign?
One of the downsides of retargeting is that it is not free. Getting an ad on Google Display Network without the actual ads or developing the strategy costs. Though Pay Per Click allows you to control the cost of ads, there’s still the matter of knowing who to target and how. Getting the best value from your retargeting campaign means implementing a few of these tactics:
Data Collection
Do you know there are different types of retargeting? And how you retarget will be based on the data you collect from your website visitors. Ensure you order the data by using the correct data collection tools and adjusting them accordingly. For instance, contextual targeting needs more behavioral data than primary site retargeting, which relies on website cookies. (which is optional for visitors)
Data Analysis
You can’t target if you don’t know what to target. The correct data analysis tools can be the difference between reaching your intended audience or annoying a random person on the internet. Data analysis is a critical part of retargeting, and the right data analysis tools or services can provide insights that can reimagine your digital marketing strategies. Data analysis is also one of those services you should not attempt to do yourself unless you are trained.
Programmatic Display Ads
Programmatic display ads are the premier choice of marketers when retargeting, not only for the best results but also to save money. Programmatic display ads work by bids, allowing marketers to reach who should be contacted and save money. Plus, websites that use display ads are 70% more likely to convert than those that don’t.
Local SEO
Another way to take control of your digital ad spend is by using local SEO. Geofencing mobile marketing is a great way to utilize the power of local SEO and mobile marketing. With geofencing mobile marketing, you can limit your reach to only a regional area and target mobile devices.
Find Low Competition Keywords
A considerable part of your retargeting strategy will be using the right keywords. Find Low competition, high volume keywords to give you the best chance of reaching your target audience. Depending on your industry and ranking ability, these will be keywords under 10 in difficulty and between 10,000 to 50,000 in volume.
As the confusion over retargeting vs. remarketing continues, you can lose money by picking random retargeting ads and calling it remarketing. Sites like Adroll and MailChimp offer to remarket and retargeting ads services but do not help with personalized recommendations, content, and strategy. And when you have no actual remarketing strategy, you can waste time and money on retargeting ads when you should have been remarketing.
Remarketing and Retargeting Issues
To start, very few marketers will differentiate remarketing from retargeting. Even Google’s algorithm, at this point, doesn’t differentiate. And this makes it very difficult for the average business owner to find remarketing information to decide which strategy to choose.
And because retargeting clearly shows how the money is spent and yields faster results, lazy marketers tend to lean towards retargeting strategies. However, remarketing can generate higher cross-channel success, long-term revenue, and customer loyalty. The downside of remarketing is that sometimes those results take longer and require a more consistent and strategic effort.
This means consistently analyzing the data and adjusting your content, strategy, and targeting. With retargeting ads, especially on Google and high-performing social media platforms and services, those adjustments are suggested for you. Still, keyword research will have to be done before creating your ads, and they don’t offer decent audience suggestions until after you’ve spent money on an initial campaign.
Speaking of SEO, it is often ignored in retargeting in favor of ‘more impressions’ by foolishly using high-ranking keywords you are incapable of ranking with. A similar issue occurs in remarketing, where a short keyword is used as the hyperlink instead of a long tail keyword phrase. And with all these remarketing and retargeting issues, you are probably wondering where you can get essential remarketing services that won’t just shove retargeting ads at you.
FrescoData Retargeting Ads and Remarketing Services
While you can go to Google Display Network for your retargeting ads, you still need a retargeting strategy and content, and this is one way FrescoData makes retargeting ads easier. With programmatic display ads, data analysis, and data enhancement services, your retargeting ads campaign won’t be limited to just site retargeting. Add in our dynamic content services, and you can get ads for your business within your budget that convert.
We can retarget through behavior, sequential targeting, or even an email marketing campaign. Your retargeting campaign must not be limited to search engines and social media platforms. Nor does it have to be limited to just increasing sales or even staying online.
As a data-driven marketing agency, we are the perfect data analysis and management services solution. And because remarketing is often confused with retargeting, there is very little remarketing data to draw on. However, as one of the few agencies offering essential remarketing services with data access and analytical capabilities, we are the best option for your next remarketing campaign.
Our remarketing services have proven results even when targeting audiences previously targeted by your competitors. Check out our case study with Halogen Manufacturing and see how we used remarketing to drive results even with previously tapped audiences. Call us today and retarget your customers with remarketing services from FrescoData.
