Retargeting vs. Remarketing: What’s the Difference?

One question: How many times have you visited different sites to buy products, but in the end none of them attracted your attention? Or how many times have you gone to the site of Digital Marketing or another online store, but after reviewing the desired products, you stopped buying?

Well, in fact, we, you, and all the web users in general have visited store sites many times without making a purchase; We came out of it. This habitual user behavior is a nightmare for Internet business owners.

But in the meantime, some of these Internet business executives are doing a smart thing, Retargeting! In fact, with the help of remarketing or retargeting campaigns, they persuade the audience who have already intended to buy the product, etc. to buy again. But how?

In this article, I will fully explain what remarketing is and how you can increase the sales of your online website.

What is retargeting?

Retargeting literally means re-targeting. But in marketing science, it means implementing some kind of advertising for those users who have already visited your website but have not bought. In fact, the goal of retargeting is to sell to the previous audience of the site. This is kind of re-targeting, isn’t it?

Let’s take an example:

For example, today in the role of a customer in Google you search for the phrase “buy website traffic“; In fact, a re-marketing or re-marketing is done here and the process is as follows: your information is stored on the store site, after you do not buy the product, your information is given to the second site, which is a news and advertising site. Then, as soon as you enter the second site, it recognizes your website and tries to persuade you to buy the same product with a retargeting ad.

In the results, you go to the x website and review and check user feedback its various products for a few minutes. But in the end, it is bought carelessly, and you leave the site. A month later you go to site y which is a popular news site; But as soon as you enter, you will see that next to the page, there is an advertisement for a chair model from site x!

Well, before we get into how retargeting works and what it does; It is better to answer 2 important questions first:

Why is retargeting important?

I remember last year taking a tens of hours of digital marketing training class; It was in the first one or two sessions that one of the participants turned to the course teacher with displeasure and said, “Among the visits to my site, very few people buy, and this worries me a lot.”

The teacher asked him, “How many products do they buy for every 100 visitors?” Said 5 people! “Your site is in the best possible condition right now because the 5% conversion rate on the web is a great conversion rate and for some it is a dream,” he said.

That day and according to the information that Master gave us; We found that the conversion rate on the web is between 1 and 5 percent. This means that if a thousand people visit your site;  950 of them leave without buying!

But should we become careless of those 950 people? Normally the answer is yes, but when we work a little smarter and know how high the value of each audience is, the answer is definitely no. With the help of various retargeting and remarketing campaigns, you can buy from the same 950 people who were not supposed to buy from your site; Gain new customers. In addition, with the help of this marketing method; You can even persuade previous buyers of your website to buy the product again!

What I’m talking is literally a miracle, and it can bring a lot of money to your Internet business! Well, now is the time to get to the heart of the matter and get serious it:

How are sales done with remarketing?

The most important part of retargeting ads are cookies. But what is a cookie?

A few months ago, I was browsing a store site in Iran when a particular product caught my eye; Baby tracker! In fact, this product is a small necklace that is hung around the necks of children and after being turned on, it sends the whole route taken by them to the parents’ phone. When I read the specifications of this product, I remembered the “cookies”!

Remarketing Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide

A cookie is actually one or more pieces of JavaScript programming code that is stored in your browser when you log in to a site. These cookies then store various information such as the route you have taken on the site.

In fact, with the help of these cookies, the site stores your information; It finds out which pages you visit and which products you are interested in, and ultimately provides this information to re-marketing systems such as Google. After this information system, with the help of information, in the first encounter it has with you, it tries to direct you to the path of reminding that particular website or product with advertisements. So, we realized that in retargeting, everything is done with the help of cookies.

But one question: do all sites store their own cookies in the user’s browser?

No! If you want your website to use this technique and store user information; You need to get a retargeting code from your system and put it on your site. In this way, in addition to loading cookies and receiving the required information, the code automatically sends them to the desired system. Of course, know that you are free to load cookies on the pages you want and not all pages.

What are the goals of retargeting?

In the next section, I want to introduce retargeting platforms, but I think it would be better to first see what the goals of re-marketing are.

Increase brand awareness

Brand awareness is one of the most important and influential concepts in the field of branding that determines how familiar people are with your brand. In fact, if the audience knows your brand or even heard its name somewhere, the chances of buying your product are higher. (If you are careful, most TV commercials are done solely to increase brand and product awareness.)

One of the goals of retargeting is to increase brand awareness. This means when your audience sees your website ad many times on the web; Even if he does not go there immediately to buy; Eventually, when he decides to buy, he may remember your name and buy from you.

Increase conversion rate

As I said at the beginning of the article;  95% of all web-based website visitors are users who leave your site without buying. Then, with the help of retargeting and remarketing ads, we try to return the same 95% to the site with a better offer and increase the site conversion rate.

What platforms does retarget take place on?

The only places where you can upload your cookies to the system are your website or app. But there are different platforms that you can use for retargeting after loading cookies and receiving information. Here are some of them:

1. Remarketing (Google ads)

I think if I say remarketing is the most effective way of advertising in the online world; I did not lie! Imagine that you have entered a new site today, while you are reading various articles, your eyes fall on the product page of our content production training course and you spend a few minutes reading its details; But since you do not need it much at the moment, you buy it carelessly and leave the site.

Next month you will become familiar with content production skills and find out what your favorite job is; What are you doing now to learn it? You are probably searching for a phrase like content training in Google.

At the same time, our site, which uses Google’s remarketing system, will be displayed to you in link one with the help of Google ads ! This is where you come to our website and because of your previous acquaintance with us and our product; You are much more likely to buy than a regular user.

Now consider the same equation for your product and service! How many lost audiences do you think you will turn into a buyer and even a customer with the help of remarketing?

2. Retargeting on advertising sites

Some of the most visited websites such as USAToday, etc. publish advertisements of other sites to earn money. Let’s say you entered the Digikala site last month, went to the iPhone 7 product page after surfing, and spent a few minutes reading the text on that page. While you were deciding to buy the product, suddenly a friend called you and you had to leave the house to do the necessary work and wash carelessly.

It does not matter why you left the site; The important thing is that you are now a lost customer, unless target uses retargeting ads!

complete your purchase? Of course, you are much more likely to buy than a regular user.

Restore an abandoned shopping cart (product retargeting)

In online stores, one of the permanent problems is the existence of abandoned shopping carts. I mean when the customer enters the site, chooses a product, but after adding it to the cart, for any reason, cancels the purchase and leaves the site.

Retargeting ads allow you to even design an ad for the same user who left their shopping cart and displayed it on another ad site. 

3. Retargeting on social networks

Of course, thanks to sanctions, we in the USA are less against social media advertising, but in any case, one of the most important ways of income of any social network is advertising. For example, in the UK Facebook, you will see a product advertisement, etc., among every few posts. Of course, sometimes advertisements for the USA users are displayed on Instagram.

In any case, I wanted to get to the point that: Remarketing is also done on social networks. This means that you can link site cookies information to social networks and then show your privatized ads to an audience that is browsing social networks. You can now use retargeting ads on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. As you probably know, one of the main activities of the new website is to provide Google organic traffic advertising services ; You can run remarketing ads on your site through the new Google Ads service.

4. Retargeting in mobile applications

You have probably downloaded a foreign application from Google Play many times, but when you use it, you will be surprised to see that an Iranian application is advertised in it! Well, in fact, many of these types of ads are displayed with the help of retargeting. (Not all of them)

Note: In order not to be misled, let’s review once again: You can use the application (your own application) to get information from the user with the help of cookies, or you can send cookies or emails received to advertising applications and retargeting with it do.

Question: Is it possible to re-market with the help of site and application only?

I said above that the only way to load a cookie on a user’s device is just the app and the site; I still say that. But there is another solution that some audiences sometimes use, Use users’ emails. In this case, the business sends emails to its audience, which it has previously received from them through email marketing solutions, to a retargeting system. The system then re-marketing with the help of these Improve your Email Open Rate.

Of course, in this case, like the main mode of advertising, they are not very smart and can often be used to display public ads to previous users. But if this email list is already categorized, you can maneuver it further. For example:

You have a list of email s that you have collected on the content production pages. Now with the help of a retargeting or remarketing system, you can advertise a product that is closer to their taste.

Note: If your users use different emails to sign into Google or social networks; Using this retargeting method is not very helpful. Because retargeting platforms have difficulty recognizing them.

What are the benefits of retargeting?

After all, it is better to look at the benefits of remarketing and retargeting and see what are the reasons that convince us to implement them?

1. You pay less

Normally when you want to advertise in any media, you have to pay a lot of money because of the large number of audiences. For example, normally your ad on Google may be clicked more than 100 times a day and will pay for each click; But remarketing ads are more focused on targeting and eliminating audiences that are less likely to buy; It drastically reduces your advertising costs.

2. It has a higher conversion rate

There may not be much need for a definition on this subject; Because you know from the previous description how high the conversion rate is in retargeting. In fact, in re-marketing, because people are closer to buying and are familiar with your brand (albeit small), the likelihood of buying increases and the conversion rate increases.

3. Helps your branding

People are always faced with a huge amount of advertising, constantly getting acquainted with new brands and forgetting the old ones. But with the help of retargeting ads; Our brand is constantly reminded of the previous audience. That is, even if the customer does not buy the product from us; Will find more awareness of our brand. This brand awareness often leads to shopping.

Do not forget a few points in remarketing!

Before I finish the article, it is better to teach a few important points launching remarketing campaigns. Of course, if the company you work with to launch the ad is a reputable company, they will give you the necessary advice during the implementation of the work; But knowing these points is not without grace.

1. Time

Remember that the customer has a time limit for buying some products. For example, suppose someone enters the Alibaba site and intends to get a plane ticket for today. So if we want to lead him to buy the product later and with the help of retargeting on the most visited sites; It’s wrong.

The best way to get your audience back in this situation is to get help from quick-paying campaigns like Google Remarketing so that the audience can come across our product as soon as they do another search on the same day.

Of course, if the goal is to increase brand awareness rather than rapid conversion, retargeting is a good idea for such an audience, who may be planning to buy plane tickets online in the future.

2. Personalization

To be able to get more returns from retargeting ads; You need to identify the audience as much as possible and personalize the ads. This means categorizing the audience in terms of interests, behavior, etc., and try to send them ads in retargeting that are specific to these audiences or close to their interests.

3. Landing pages

One important point: Retargeting advertising is the next step after landing page optimization! This means that if the product purchase pages of your site are not optimized properly yet, they will not be able to persuade the user to buy and will not work well in converting the user; You do not want to be frustrated if you cannot get the right pitch so invest in a good capo. We always give customers tips on optimizing landing pages before launching Google ads and Google remarketing ads, and then start the campaign. We have clearly seen that this has a great impact on the end result.

4. Better offer

Once a user has stopped buying your product, in re-marketing you should come up with a better and more tempting offer to persuade them to buy.

last word

Finally, we come to the part where we talk the middle ground; In this article, we explore everything from what to re-marketing. But as a final word, I want to remind you of an important point:

In the world of digital marketing, there is such a thing as a sales funnel. This funnel points to your customer’s shopping path and understanding it can greatly affect the increase in sales of your site. Each sales funnel is made of 3 to 6 parts that the customer must go through before buying. For example, the stage of awareness, review, comparison, targeted web traffic and …