What is Retargeting?

Retargeting is a digital advertising campaign strategy that puts your advertisements in front of the potential customers who have already visited your website. Statistics show, 96-98% of customers leave a website without taking any action or abandoning the cart. That means only 2-4% of the traffic converts to the real customer on their first visit. 49% of the traffic visits a website 2 to 4 times before purchasing the product. Retargeting campaigns help the companies reach out to the customers who do not convert in their first visit. Retargeting reminds the consumers that they have expressed interest in a product and that product provides the solution they were looking for. The retargeting campaign uses search engines and social media channels to reach out to these potential customers.

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How is Retargeting or Remarking Used?

As an internet user you might have noticed that once you visit a site to see some products, the advertisement of the same products keeps appearing on your social media feed repeatedly. It keeps reminding you that you showed interest in the product and you still might need the product. This is called the retargeting advertisement strategy. It aims to bring you back to the site and persuade you to reconsider the offer. The most common form of retargeting is site-based retargeting. This is a cookie-based technology that uses a simple javascript code. It allows the companies to follow their audience all over the Web anonymously. The companies paste a piece of code (sometimes referred as a pixel) into the HTML (usually the header or footer) of their website and that enables them to retarget the customers who have visited the website in the past. Every time someone visits the site, the code drops an anonymous browser cookie. This is a small file that stores information. Later, when the cookied visitors browse the Web, the retargeting provider of the company gets to know when to serve ads and the customer starts seeing the advertisement of that product everywhere, whenever they are online. Studies have shown that retargeting campaigns have either a positive or a neutral effect on 89% of the users. This is to remember the cookies are only allowed to store the information which is not sensitive. The name, address or any other piece of information that might personally identify the user are not stored. 

Retargeting works in the following way 

A user visits a site to watch some products (either because they need it or because they just wanted to check it out) An anonymous browser cookie is dropped The user leaves the site without buying anything The user browse the web Advertisement of the products appears everywhere they go It recaptures the attention of the user the user comes back to the website Either they end up buying the product or they leave again. 

Difference between retargeting and remarketing 

Both the terms often used interchangeably, but there is a small difference between the two. Retargeting is usually done through third-party networks such as Google Display Network and Facebook and remarketing are done through email. So, in remarketing you need to know the email id of the customer. However, the Google AdWords clubs the retargeting display ads and remarketing emails under the single terminology of "remarketing". Thus, most of the marketers use both terms interchangeably. 

Types of Retargeting 

Companies need to open an AdWords account and then the retargeting can be set up. They need to add the code on their website and create a retargeting list. The AdWords remarketing campaigns can be set to display either in searches or on Google's display network. 

Digital Retargeting Banner Ads 

Retargeting can be done via Google's display network. 90% of internet users can be reached out through Display Network ads. Usually, the display ads are related to the websites the user is visiting. For example, if someone is browsing some travel websites, she/he will continue to see ads about travel. However, if a retargeting campaign is on, the ads do not necessarily have to correspond to the subject of the website the visitor is browsing. They might visit a travel website and can see the ads of clothes on that site if the clothes' company is running a retargeting campaign and this particular user has browsed their website. The Display Network retargeting ads start to work once the website of the company accumulates 100 unique visitors within a period of 30 days. 

Digital Retargeting Search Ads 

This allows companies to target users who have searched for specific keywords. A company's website needs to have at least 1000 unique site visitors before their remarketing search ads appear in Google search results.