8 Remarketing Strategies and Techniques

The good old days of simple PPC keyword marketing are long gone and the gold standard for Online Advertising is now re-targeting. Re-targeting allows marketers to put their ads in front of visitors who have either already shown some sort of interest or have been qualified as a targeted lead based on their Internet activity. These leads convert on a much higher level, are extremely qualified, can easily be segmented into buckets and personas, and generate a higher ROI than traditional PPC strategies.

Search Remarketing: One of the main types of Remarketing looks at a user’s previous search terms and displays relevant ads across the web that user is browsing. Large ad networks can show an ad that matches the keyword to that user on several different sites.

Site Retargeting: The original form of re-targeting was based on placing a cookie on the user’s computer when they visited a certain page on a site. Then when the user left the site, they would be presented with ads directing them back to the original site while browsing the web.

Email Retargeting: Advanced email marketers are using re-targeting strategies based on actions the visitor takes when viewing an email. An example would be re-targeting all the people who clicked through on a specific link and sending them a follow-up email with a special offer related to that link. 

Abandoned Shopping Cart Remarketing: One of the highest converting remarketing techniques is abandoned shopping cart remarketing. A visitor that has reached your shopping cart is obviously close to making a purchase and being able to serve them an ad is extremely valuable. There are two ways this can be accomplished. First, a cookie is placed on the visitor’s computer and an ad network displays your ads to them after they have left your site. Second, JavaScript is placed on the shopping cart and when a visitor begins filling out the form the JavaScript will capture their email address and a third party service automatically delivers an email within an hour.

Engagement Retargeting: Marketers with a lot of engaging content such as videos and rich media can retarget their visitors based on a certain level of engagement with their content. Understanding the user’s intent at specific levels of engagement will help the marketer to present highly relevant ads.

Contextual Retargeting: An often unused but highly valuable marketing technique is to partner with other websites that are extremely relevant to your target audience and exchange pixels with them. Then you can retarget their visitors and they can retarget yours, both of which should fall into the same demographic and fit your ideal personas. Contextual retargeting automatically doubles your reach with retargeting efforts (assuming web traffic is equal).

Geo Targeting: A simple strategy that works to qualify traffic is to target only visitors from a certain geographic region. While it is not a form of remarketing, it is an effective form of targeting.

Behavioral Marketing: On-site behavioral marketing is not a form of PPC but takes users’ actions, intentions, and on-site patterns into consideration in order to deliver the most appropriate content for that user or “persona.” A website may have several different personas and therefore will have different behavioral targeting rules in place for each one.