Remarketing VS Retargeting: Are they the same?

What is the difference between remarketing and retargeting?

The term retargeting was used for the ads that used to follow the targeted consumer everywhere, whereas, remarketing was about reengaging customers via emails. However, with the growing age of internet, the terms have now become more or less the same.

What is remarketing?

Remarketing is basically marketing to someone who has seen your brand before. In the age of the internet, this works with the help of browser cookies. Every time you visit a website, your device collects cookies in order to load the website. These cookies are then used to follow you around to other WebPages as well. With the help of these cookies, the brand is able to constantly remind you about them or their products.

For example, while searching for a new car, you come across a particular website. But for some reason you decide to postpone your purchase, it is most likely that you will forget about that website. In order to keep reminding you, the brand will start remarketing itself by bringing your target ads on even a news website that you visit.

Benefits of remarketing

Remarketing has many advantages. Firstly, it helps the brand in re-engaging with lost customers. The brand gets another shot at impressing the customer and bringing them back to their portal. The brand also gets to improve their return on investment by offering highly relevant advertisements. These advertisements not only popup once but they follow the customer as they continue surfing the web.

Lastly, remarketing brings the window shoppers back and significantly increases online sales.

Why do you need remarketing?

According to a research, an average customer has to visit a website almost 9.5 times before they make a purchase decision. With the help of remarketing, the brand ensures the customer vists their website at least more than once.

It is also proven that over 96% of the visitors leave before converting into a customer. Remarketing helps bring these people back. It also tends to perform three times better than non-personalized ads.

How does remarketing work?

Remarketing takes advantage of a simple cookie-based JavaScript code to anonymously follow the audience all over the web.  Essentially, it works by keeping a track of people who have visited your website. In order to set it up, one can just place a small piece of unobtrusive code on their website. Once that is done, every time a new visitor comes, the code drops the browser cookie and later when the user goes to another website, they start seeing your ads. SEO companies are aware of this and they make sure to hinge visitors using this strategy.

How to setup remarketing?

Remarketing is now available as a feature in the Google Ads management system. The user just needs a Google Ads account in order to enable the feature. One just needs to head over to the admin section in the Google Analytics. From there, the user will need to link their Google Ads account in order to make things easier. Once that is done, the user just needs to ensure that the Remarketing feature is turned on under the Data Collection menu, which can be found in Tracking Info section in Google Analytics.

How much will you end up paying for remarketing?

Remarketing is a handy feature and does bring a lot of consumers back. However, this does come at a cost. Remarketing uses the PPC marketing (Pay per click) strategy, where the digital marketing agencies end up paying for the ads only on the basis of the clicks they receive.

Should you enable remarketing?

Enabling the remarketing feature can help a brand in converting visitors into customers. This type of marketing has proven to be highly effective and thus, you should consider enabling this for your business.