Retargeting versus Remarketing

Retargeting versus Remarketing

To-may-to, to-mah-to, retargeting, remarketing, right? Not so quickly. Despite being used interchangeably in industry blogs, podcasts, and infographics, retargeting and remarketing are not the same. The border is becoming increasingly hazy, especially as more firms adopt an omnichannel marketing strategy.

Here’s the difference between retargeting and remarketing.

What Exactly Is Retargeting?

Retargeting is a powerful marketing strategy that allows brands to reconnect with customers. Retargeting will appear in the form of sponsored advertising (display or social media) that is triggered after a consumer clicks on another ad, visits your website, or searches for you on Google. It’s the best approach to recover abandoned carts or deliver a nice “Hey, remember us?” message to shoppers who looked but didn’t buy.

Retargeting works by identifying which people to add to a specific retargeting or remarketing list using pixel tags (tiny pieces of code on your website) and tracking cookies (which may be thought of as crumbs left by site visitors). You can not only tailor the requirements of your lists (for example, those who only visit three or more product pages), but you can also send personalized ad messages and offers to each segmented list.

You’ve certainly also heard the term behavioral retargeting, which describes the practice of retargeting based on what shoppers click on, the pages they visit, or the amount of time they spend on a website.

In contrast, dynamic retargeting occurs when marketers display targeted retargeting ads to users depending on the products they have browsed or added to their carts.

What Exactly Is Remarketing?

Remarketing is another method for re-engaging customers, but instead of adverts, it uses channels such as email or SMS communications. Remarketing, as opposed to retargeting, focuses on communicating with existing customers rather than reaching out to new ones and closing a deal.

However, remarketing typically entails gathering contact information (such as an email address or phone number) in order to offer appropriate marketing messages. Remarketing can be used to re-engage customers who haven’t purchased with you in a while, or it can be used to give further marketing reminders, such as an invitation to join your loyalty club, to shoppers who have just checked out. The process of upselling or cross-selling to customers is another prominent example of remarketing.

But here’s where the line becomes murky: Some marketers say that retargeting is a subset of remarketing, and that remarketing is merely a catch-all phrase for the process of marketing to a shopper many times. As a result, the names are occasionally used interchangeably.

Aside from the terminology, remarketing and retargeting should both be included in your entire marketing strategy because they meet various marketing needs.

How Do Google’s Remarketing Tools Work?

You may blame Google for part of the confusion surrounding retargeting vs. remarketing – Google’s “Remarketing” products are not, in fact, remarketing at all. They’re actually concentrating on retargeting.

How to Begin Retargeting and Remarketing

Now that you understand the similarities and distinctions between retargeting and remarketing, it’s time to get started!

So, how should we tackle these marketing beasts? With a marketing platform that does all of the legwork. For a good reason, we are a market leader in retargeting and remarketing: their AI-powered solutions make it simple to contact the appropriate shoppers at the perfect time and place. We will have you covered whether you want to deploy retargeting display advertisements or remarketing emails.