The A-Z Guide to Remarketing Campaigns

What is remarketing?

Remarketing is growing more and more common as a marketing tactic. It is the technique of targeting people who have already expressed interest in your brand to improve conversion rates and lead creation. As a result, it's a crucial tool for total marketing success.

What is retargeting?

Retargeting helps you to keep your brand in front of potential clients after they leave your website, encouraging them to revisit your offer or website when they are in need.

So what's the difference between retargeting and remarketing?

There is a very subtle difference between these terms. Remarketing, for instance, includes a larger umbrella which can be done through email marketing, social media, paid ads, offline activities, etc.

Even a billboard or an outdoor branding, flyers, etc., are considered remarketing in the larger spectrum of marketing.

On the other hand, retargeting is a subset of remarketing that is limited to online ads. It targets users who have previously visited your website or shown interest in your competitor's website and products.

But since Google Adwords launched and coined the term remarketing way back in 2010 for its online ads, then onwards, most users associate remarketing with Google ads.

Remarketing and retargeting are used interchangeably in generic digital terms and with evolving times.

Why do we need to run retargeting ad campaigns?

Did you know that 96% of the people who visit your website do not buy or engage with your brand?

Let's face it, that's a staggering number! So how do you make sure that those users who had earlier visited your site can be persuaded or convinced to buy from you?

It's a fairly common saying that out-of-sight is out of mind, which holds very true for human beings today. With our attention span shrinking by the day, it would be fair to say that if we aren't reminded enough or persuaded enough, it is highly unlikely that we will remember the brand or the website again, let alone visit it!

Even in today's time, television advertising still rules the roost when it comes to advertising. TV has always been an integral part of our family and lives, and the ads with the visuals and jingles make us remember them even to date.

We are constantly exposed to the ad, and then by default, we get used to seeing it, and when we see the familiar face or the brand anywhere, we can instantly recall and connect with the brand.

For example, we see a commercial for a beauty soap or shampoo; if you see the same face or brand in the newspaper, billboard, or anywhere else, you will instantly recognize the brand by the face or the tagline.

If you read a tagline that says "You are worth it," the answer immediately strikes, and you know it's about L'Oréal. That's the power of remarketing! We do not even realize that we are constantly being retargeted every moment in our lives!

When we talk about billboards or hoardings, when we see the clown or just the M shape, we instantly know it's McDonald's. We've been exposed to remarketing ads so subtly that we aren't even aware of it anymore.

That's precisely what remarketing or retargeting does with online ads!

Since the invention of social media, our content consumption has majorly moved online; hence running ads targeting your audience until they come around is what remarketing campaigns set out to do.

Retargeting campaigns can be done for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google, and other ad networks.

When should you run remarketing ad campaigns?

• Remarketing or retargeting campaigns are not meant for short-term goals; it's a long-term business strategy that may not give instant results. If you get more than 1000 visitors to your website, retargeting those people with ads will eventually help improve your conversion rate.


• Introducing an offer- When you introduce something new to your site, be it an offer or discount, the best way to go about it is to retarget those visitors who had earlier visited your site. Showing offers to them might enable them to make a purchase or convert them.


• Promoting a new collection or product/service- Remarketing things that your current customers enjoy will help convert visitors into customers and enhance the return on investment for your ads.


• Clearing stock or inventory- When you know your sales have seen a slump and want to push your efforts but not at a very high cost, then retargeting campaigns work very well because they are low-cost and effective.


• Building brand visibility- if you aren't present in front of your target audience, you will most likely lose the battle to your competitors. Before making any purchase decision, a customer would always prefer to know a brand. Retargeting ads do that for you. It's a constant reminder that we are here and will always be there for you.

Remarketing efforts can help potential visitors recognize your brand, bring them back to your post-click landing page, and persuade them to take the necessary action.

How do remarketing campaigns work?

There are two ways to retarget your customers, either through pixel or list-based targeting.

So how does pixel-based retargeting work?

Pixel-based retargeting generally relies on the browser's cookies and a code (javascript) that is inserted into your website.

Once the user leaves your site, the cookie notifies the ad networks to serve ads based on the pages they have visited or surfed. They are then constantly targeted through Facebook or Google remarketing ads to get them to visit your site or click on whatever action is stated.

Another exciting aspect of retargeting with pixel is that it immediately starts its job, and you can start pushing ads to people with offers or specific coupon codes to come back and buy from you.

The biggest challenge they will face once the cookieless world kicks in and browser giants won't be able to push cookies everywhere. We are sure that there will be a workaround with this method also.

How does list-based retargeting work?

List-based retargeting is pretty straightforward; the database you have collected of the visitors on your site could be their email address and phone number; you upload that list and start showing retargeting ads to them. Your objective could be anything, from more sign-ups to making a purchase or upgrading their plan or subscription.

The other way to go about retargeting users is obviously through email marketing. This technique of sending personalized emails is practiced by all brands, especially e-commerce players, and they immediately incentivize their offers and try and grab the attention of their users.

Now let's talk about retargeting goals and what you aim to achieve with the ad.

Once you know which type of retargeting option you wanna go with, then the next obvious step in the journey is to select a business goal. So there are a couple of goals, which we will discuss below.

Brand awareness is more about reaching a wider audience to make them familiar with your brand and always being in front of them. Here the idea revolves around top-of-mind awareness and brand recall. It's like screaming, I'm Here, Look at Me!

This is a way of reinforcing your brand in front of your users. It's a long approach compared to the conversion goal, so you should expect a low engagement and click-through rate.

Conversion, on the other hand, is a very targeted approach. The ad's intent is obvious, and they want you to take action. It could be in the form of a landing page or getting their contact details; depending upon the metric you wanna measure for, it could be website clicks, lead information, etc. High chances that the CPL or CPC achieved through these conversion-based retargeting ads could be lower.

Leads to different levels of the buyer's journey to complete the sales cycle. It's all about pushing your qualified leads down the bottom of the funnel, where they make a sale. Maybe entice users with a Free Trial or Free Delivery to end up trying your product or service and might convert into customers if they are happy with the results.

Increasing customer loyalty and lifetime value (CLTV) is what most businesses focus on as a long-term goal. Until and unless you don't have repeat customers who are buying again and again from you, the cost of acquiring a customer then becomes very high. Using retargeting or remarketing, customers are reminded to continue their relationship with your brand so that the CLTV can be higher.

To decrease the cart abandonment rate retargeting and remarketing ads can work wonders when the shopping cart is abandoned, and no purchase is made. The user made it to the last step but did not finish with the purchase. So reminding them through retargeting ads and email campaigns can push the envelope a bit. Showing them what they have left in the cart in the form of carousels or just a single image prompting them to buy with some offers thrown in or a limited period offer can do the magic!

Promoting your new line of products to customers who have visited your site earlier with retargeting ads can help renew their interest in your new product offering and hopefully excite them enough to revisit the site and make a purchase.

No matter the goal, it's critical to match your audience list with the positioning, right creatives, and next step in the conversion process - whether that's an offer on the landing page or a request for further information.

Most used platforms to run retargeting ads:

Facebook retargeting campaigns

To start with Facebook retargeting campaigns, you first need to set up an account on Facebook Business Manager if you already haven't done one yet.

Once you have logged into your account, go to the Audience section our your Ad Manager.

Then click on "Custom Audiences" for retargeting. Then select 'Website Traffic' as the drop-down. Now select the audience whom you want to reach within that drop-down.

Below are the audience options that you will find:

After you've chosen your audience selections, Facebook will send you a pixel tracking code. To track visitors, add this code to your website.

Facebook retargeting allows you to measure conversions from your Facebook advertisements, adjust ads based on campaign data, and produce better ads in the future.

The added advantage of a Meta pixel is that it can also be used for your Instagram followers and users.

Now that you've learned how to set up a retargeting ad on Facebook, you still need to optimize the campaign constantly. Creating an ad will not guarantee results or bring visitors to your site unless the ad isn't optimized

Few tips on optimizing your Facebook retargeting ad have been mentioned in our blog. Go through this if you want to optimize your Facebook ads the right way!

This Neil Patel's Facebook ad cleverly checks all the boxes that a great ad can have! With a very captivating headline and post copy, the proposition is very clear from the content and creative, and the CTA does precisely what it's meant to do, prompt you to take action by adding a bonus course if you sign up!

Google remarketing campaigns

In the US alone, the Google Display Network reaches over 92% of visitors across millions of websites, videos, and devices.

No wonder, Display ads are the most common remarketing ads that we come across.

Let's break down the steps for you to set up a remarketing campaign on Google Adwords.

• Log into your Google AdWords account.
• Select 'Shared Library' from the drop-down menu.
• Select 'Audiences.'
• Click on 'Set-up Remarketing'.
• ''View AdWords Tag for Websites' 'should be selected.
• Select and copy the remarketing tag code provided. Both mobile and desktop websites will benefit from the tag.
• Put the tag code at the bottom of the pages on your website that you want to use for your campaign.
• Your page should be saved and published.
• Check if your tag is working properly with ''Google Tag Assist.''
• Choose ''Continue'.'
• ''Return to Audiences'' should be selected.

Within a few days, the tag will begin collecting website visitors' cookies, and the 'All Visitors' list in your account will start to fill up.

Display Remarketing ad examples

Types of Google remarketing ad campaigns that you can run

You can create customized audience lists and run tests such as frequency cap testing, ad testing, custom combination testing, and bid tests with Google AdWords remarketing.

Standard Remarketing: Ads are shown to previous visitors as they visit Display Network websites and use Display Network applications.

Dynamic Remarketing: The ads displayed to visitors include specific products or services that they viewed on your website.

Remarketing for Mobile Apps: Display advertisements to visitors who have used your mobile app or mobile website.

Remarketing Lists for ads: Display ads to visitors as they conduct additional Google searches for what they require.

Video Remarketing: Display advertisements to visitors who have viewed your YouTube videos. Upload a list of your customers' email addresses for remarketing. These visitors will see your display ads as they navigate through various websites.

Email Remarketing: Upload a list of email ids of your customers. These visitors will see your display ads as they navigate through various websites.

Since Google has a vast reach, when a remarketing ad is run through Google AdWords, you get extensive reach for your remarketing ads, making it much more cost-effective.

LinkedIn retargeting campaigns

You can choose to retarget by website, video ads, Lead Gen Forms, or, a LinkedIn Event.

To retarget by the website, you first need to add a LinkedIn Insight Tag to your website.

If you have installed the Insight Tag already, then you can move on to building audiences.

For those who still need to add the Insight Tag, you can read about it here.

To set up your retargeting audience follow these steps:

- Sign in to your LinkedIn Campaign Manager

- Select the account name for retargeting

- Choose Account Assets from the dropdown menu placed on top, and click on Matched Audiences

- Click on Create Audience

- Select website

- Name your audience

- Choose a date range, you can go up to 180 days in the past

- Include URLs that you want to retarget

- Select Create

Once you have started building your audience, use Matched Audiences for your LinkedIn retargeting ads.

LinkedIn Matched Audiences are custom audience groups that you may utilize in your advertising campaigns as targeting options.

You can use Matched Audiences to:

- Upload a company or contact list.

-Retarget individuals who:

• Visited one of your website's pages.
• Showed interest in your single image ad
• Saw your video ad
• Submitted their contact details on the lead form
• Engaged with your LinkedIn business/personal page
• Registered for your LinkedIn event

- Contacts from a 3rd system can be imported

- Creating lookalike audiences

LinkedIn retargeting ad example:

Yet again, it all comes down to the performance optimization of the ad. You have to constantly monitor and make adjustments to your campaign on the go. Refreshing the content, testing multiple ad formats, or experimenting with your audience can work well in your favour.

Email remarketing

Earlier on, in the above passage, we've already told you how to run email campaigns, but here we want to discuss why it must be done along with your other retargeting efforts.

99% of users have the habit of checking their email every day, and it is by far one of the easiest ways to receive notifications from brands.

So if you are a marketer, you already know that emails have the highest open rates! So definitely not a channel to ignore.

Benefits of email marketing:

• Personalized content creation
• Feedback and surveys are being collected.
• Increasing sales by targeted CTAs.
• Easy way to communicate with your customers.
• Increasing your website's traffic.
• Targeting with timely campaigns.
• Lead generation.
• The right message reaches the right people at the right time.
• Creating cost-effective marketing efforts.
• Increasing the value, you provide to your audience.
• Having a place to promote yourself.
• Take control of your media and contact lists.

We've discussed many ways in which you can remarket or retarget your users and why it's the most crucial thing in today's time. Hopefully, this will convince you to start working on retargeting ad campaigns and driving traffic to your website or landing page in a very cost-effective way.

Though the concept is simple and clear, considering the number of platforms and the specifications that need to be met, like creating audience lists, setting goals, choosing a platform, or optimizing ad performance, it can be pretty daunting for some marketers, especially the ones who are handling way too many clients, are newbies, or have a shortage of resources.

That's why an automated platform like Mediaqart can make it much easier for you to handle your remarketing or retargeting ad campaigns, as we let you run ads on Facebook, Instagram & Google from one place. So this helps you streamline your marketing efforts and gives you a bird's eye view of all your campaigns across channels from one single place/dashboard.

Make sure you are doing this already because retargeting is an excellent way to keep prospects engaged and interact with those who have already expressed interest in your business.