What is Remarketing?

August 14, 2024

Author - Simon Rowles
Simon Rowles
Founder, CEO

Remarketing involves targeting ads to users who have previously interacted with your website or app.

Key Takeaways on Remarketing

Remarketing is a powerful digital marketing strategy used to increase brand awareness, engage previous site visitors, and boost conversion rates. Below are some key takeaways on this strategy:

  • Definition: Remarketing involves targeting ads to users who have previously interacted with your website or mobile app.
  • Platforms: It can be executed across multiple platforms including Google Ads, Facebook, Instagram, and more.
  • Benefits: Enhances ROI, boosts conversions, and maintains brand presence.
  • Strategies: Includes standard remarketing, dynamic remarketing, and remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA).
  • Best Practices: Focus on audience segmentation, timed targeting, compelling ad design, and consistent evaluation.

What Is Remarketing?

Remarketing is a digital marketing strategy that involves showing ads to people who have previously visited your website or used your mobile app. This method allows brands to re-engage users who showed initial interest, thereby increasing the probability of conversion.

How Does Remarketing Work?

  1. Placing cookies on your visitor's device when they visit your site or interact with your app.
  2. When the visitor leaves your site, the cookie sends a signal to your remarketing platform.
  3. You can then display ads to this user via this platform when they browse other websites or search terms related to your products or services.

What are the Benefits of Remarketing?

Benefit Description Increased Engagement Keeps your brand top-of-mind by re-engaging users who are already familiar with it. Higher Conversion Rates Targets users who have shown interest, thus more likely to convert compared to first-time visitors. Improved ROI By targeting more qualified leads, remarketing helps to efficiently utilize the advertising budget. Customized Marketing Allows for highly targeted ads based on users' previous interactions, ensuring relevance.

Who Should Use Remarketing?

Remarketing is suitable for any business that seeks to increase its conversion rates and retain customer interest. It is especially useful for e-commerce sites, service providers, and companies with long sales cycles.

What Types of Remarketing Campaigns Can You Run?

  • Standard Remarketing: Show ads to past visitors as they browse sites within the Google Display Network or Facebook.
  • Dynamic Remarketing: These ads include the specific products or services that the user viewed. Particularly powerful for e-commerce websites.
  • Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA): Customize search ad campaigns for people who have previously visited your website, and target them when they search on Google and its partner sites.
  • Email Remarketing: Send emails to users who have provided their email addresses but did not make a purchase or fully interact.

How To Setup A Google Ads Remarketing Campaign?

  1. Create a Google Ads account if you don't already have one.
  2. Navigate to the ‘Shared library’ section and click on ‘Audiences’.
  3. Install the Google remarketing tag on your website.
  4. Create remarketing lists based on user behavior on your website.
  5. Start creating your campaigns and choose ‘Display Network only’.
  6. Select ‘Interests and remarketing’ and configure your targeting settings.
  7. Create your ads and launch your campaign.

What Are the Best Practices in Remarketing?

  • Audience Segmentation: Dividing your visitors into groups according to their behavior or demographics to tailor ads more specifically.
  • Creative Refresh: Regularly update your ads to avoid ad fatigue.
  • Frequency Capping: Limit the number of times your ads are shown to the same person to prevent overexposure.
  • Tailored Landing Pages: Direct your visitors to pages that reflect the messaging of the ad they clicked to enhance relevance and increase conversions.
  • Performance Monitoring: Continuously track the performance of your campaigns to optimize and improve.

How to Measure the Success of Your Remarketing Campaigns?

Use metrics such as Click-Through Rate (CTR), conversion rate, cost per conversion, and return on ad spend (ROAS) to measure the effectiveness of your remarketing campaigns.

  1. Click-Through Rate (CTR): Measures the percentage of clicks per number of impressions.
  2. Conversion Rate: Percentage of users who convert after clicking the ad.
  3. Cost Per Conversion: Evaluates the cost-effectiveness of your campaign.
  4. Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): Calculates the total revenue generated for every dollar spent on the campaign.

What Challenges Might You Face in Remarketing?

Some of the challenges in remarketing include privacy concerns, ad fatigue, and ad blockage. It's important to address these by ensuring compliance with ad policies, refreshing ad creatives, and employing strategic segmentation.

Remarketing continues to evolve as a key component in digital marketing campaigns, offering a nuanced solution to recapture the interest of potential customers and convert interest into sales effectively.