What is remarketing actually?

REMARKETING, also known as RETARGETING, is a tactic of advertising to users, who have already visited your online shop or interacted with your company in other ways. From a technical point of view, a user gets remarked by using a JavaScript tag (known as a pixel) to place a cookie in their browser. By this cookie, users can be identified over different other platforms, i.e. social media or third-party websites within the Google Display Network. The cookie informs the specific remarketing platform to display ads based on the product or page the user has seen before.

The fact that the majority of users will not convert during their first visit to your site is why remarketing is considered a powerful tool. Users who already interacted with your brand or company show a higher interest and are therefore more likely to purchase or convert. Additionally, it is one of the best possibilities to close sales that did not happen yet.

Let’s get started.

Along the famous customer journey, pirate funnel (AARRR framework) or conversion funnel - there are actually different frameworks for describing pretty much the same - the value of a single user increases with each stage and touchpoint.

Choose a framework and visualize your customer journey

First, choose one of the frameworks above – at V_labs, we usually work with the classic customer journey – and write down its different stages:

1. Trigger/ Awareness
2. Interest
3. Review/ Consideration
4. Purchase
5. Aftersales

Tip: Developing a remarketing strategy, it is helpful to focus on the first stages leading up to the conversion (purchase). In general, always keep the customer journey’s stages in mind, even when creating organic content.

Targeting on what?

‍After drafting these stages, there are 2 more steps to do:

Think about which users you might want to target, ask yourself which options you have within each channel or your website. How will users interact with your brand/product? Which important pages will they visit and which actions will they perform on your website?

‍Targeting on which channels?

And Since you've already chosen your preferred marketing mix, there is no need to think from scratch about your marketing channel choice. Still, it makes sense to consider adding further ones – for example, display ads just for remarketing purposes.

Combine your results from the previous steps with the channels you have chosen and add remarketing campaigns where needed and effective.

What does that mean in practical terms?

All the white bubbles at the beginning represent different marketing platforms or channels bringing potentially relevant users to your funnel. Social media channels such as Facebook, Pinterest or LinkedIn (especially in a B2B context) act as excellent starting points for advertising in order to trigger new customers and make them aware of your product or service. These channels can be categorized under the definition of “Push-Marketing-Instruments” – meaning that you as an advertiser show ads to potential customers based on their interests, demographics etc. Besides social media, Google display campaigns or YouTube ads serve as perfect mediums to generate awareness within your target audience too.

To put it in a nutshell: The stage of awareness is often your starting point for remarketing!

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Remarketing can already start after the first touchpoint or interaction with the user. You might begin with retargeting your social media audience, focus on followers, turn them into website visitors, break that down to product category pages or specific product pages and end up with cart abandoners.

There is no ultimate remarketing recipe. Remarketing works differently for every company and within every branch.

However, there are three take-away messages for remarketing:

1. Remarketing is neither limited nor reserved to a single channel, nor o a certain stage along the customer journey.
2. When using remarketing, do it strategically.
3. And last but not least: Test, measure, analyze and repeat!