Define the differences between remarketing and retargeting

Even experienced marketers use the terms remarketing and retargeting interchangeably. In fact, the concepts, which are similar in meaning, have a number of differences, and the inability to distinguish between remarketing and retargeting characterizes a marketer as someone who does not understand the intricacies of their profession well enough. So what is the difference? In short, it’s in the strategy itself and the audience that this strategy can reach, and for an extended answer on the differences between remarketing and retargeting, read on the ADV Advantage blog.

Similar, but so different

The main task of advertising managers is to work with audiences, which includes time-consuming processes of building audiences, testing creatives, and working with the data obtained. In cases with a small percentage of conversions, the importance of high-quality work with audiences comes to the fore. After all, you can always get a lot of traffic, but this audience will not bring specific conversions without proper control over their behavior during the first visit to your site. The task of a marketer is to win over users at the stage when they are choosing between you and your competitors. It has long been known that most conversions are generated by loyal users who have already had some kind of contact with the brand. That’s why it’s important to highlight the features of retargeting and remarketing.

About retargeting

Retargeting involves targeting advertising materials to those users who have already interacted with your business, but for some reason never made a purchase. Google Ads, Meta Ads, and other ad networks use cookies to allow advertisers to target this audience and display relevant ads to them on other partner sites that place ads.

Globally, retargeting can be divided into two groups: “on-site” and “off-site”.

Retargeting is most often associated with the on-site category, when a user has already visited your website, was interested in the available information, product, or service, but did not convert. Usually, on-site retargeting is performed

• based on the product;
• based on how the audience visited the site;
• based on the audience that clicked through from an email campaign.

Campaigns with retargeting attributes in Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and Meta Ads usually generate significantly more conversions than similar campaigns without retargeting attributes.

Off-site retargeting used to be quite limited, but the proliferation of social media allows you to remind users of your product much more often and in places that are not on your website. Social networks have learned to accurately understand user behavior and provide advertisers with tools to engage them. That is, if a user interacts with your Facebook page (watches a video, fills out forms, joins events, visits your online store, or even connects to the Wi-Fi network in your offline store), he or she is automatically categorized as an “off-site” interaction.

About remarketing

It is in this area that there is an element that makes people confuse retargeting and remarketing, because these concepts have common attributes. Google Remarketing Tools are actually retargeting tools in the classical sense, which means that the positioning of Google’s own functionality can already confuse marketers. The main thing to understand is that remarketing and retargeting still have common goals, similar terminology, but different strategies.

So what is the main difference?

Retargeting is a method of directing potential customers to the path of making a purchase. It involves working with an audience that is hesitant to make their first purchase but is interested in your brand through existing channels of interaction.

Remarketing is the re-engagement of an existing customer base to another conversion by displaying advertising materials. Remarketing is about reminding the customer about your business using data about their past conversions.

Understanding the difference between remarketing and retargeting

Why do these concepts still live separately from each other, even though they have a common goal? The answer is simple – email campaigns used to be completely separate from paid ads that allow you to interact with users through their behavior on the site. Google Ads and Meta Ads have long since added the ability to interact with potential and existing customers through lists with email addresses. Marketers are able to freely upload lists that contain users’ email addresses, and the system matches the data with user logins. The marketer can then target ads to this audience or add these users to the exclusion list so that they do not see these ads. This allows you to more accurately set up the targeting and save your budget without wasting money on clicks from loyal customers.

The main difference in understanding these terms is that you can still send your customers promotional materials via email, but Google Ads and Meta Ads tools allow you to separate audiences.

When to use remarketing and when to use retargeting

Earlier, we emphasized that the difference between the terms lies in the strategy. But this does not mean that remarketing excludes retargeting or vice versa. A marketer has a wide range of tools to work with two types of audiences within the same strategy. On the one hand, they attract a new audience, and on the other hand, they work with their own user base, getting conversions in the same way. In fact, successful work with a new audience allows you to attract it to a permanent one, that is, one user from the retargeting audience can later move to the category of the remarketing audience.

A retargeting strategy is effective when your business involves a one-time purchase, you have a large advertising budget, and your main goal is to get as many new customers as possible as part of your brand awareness efforts. Most users rarely buy from the companies they see for the first time, but competent work with this audience and brand status will allow you to get the desired conversions in the future.

A remarketing strategy is especially effective when your business involves repeat purchases, you can get additional conversions by providing customers with additional services/products, and your business does not have a large budget for advertising campaigns. For remarketing, you can use many inexpensive communication channels, such as SMS messages and messenger campaigns. It is the loyal audience of regular customers that forms the status of a brand, and organic word-of-mouth advertising is often underestimated.

The blurring of the distinction between remarketing and retargeting is directly related to the cross-referencing of Google Ads and Meta Ads, meaning that the expansion of these platforms’ tools makes life much easier for marketers who truly understand the difference between these terms and use appropriate strategies.