Isn’t it really amazing when Alexa or Siri or even our faithful Google Assistant reminds you of something that needs to be done? Just when you thought you forgot, there you have it- A reminder pops up telling you to take action. It’s these little reminders that work wonders in all walks of life.

Digital markets and e-commerce giants also have a revamped set of reminders targeted at their customers! We have seen many users linger on our websites and social media pages, only to come close to conversion. And Lo Behold! They leave! This can be utter saddening. This is where remarketing comes into play. 

•  What is Remarketing?

 Remarketing (in the domain of digital marketing) is one of the greatest arsenals in the field of Growth Hacking. Rather than just making ads appear constantly when you browse, it makes use of scripts and cookies that follows the potential customers thereby showing them your ads to instill them to buy your product. 

Analytics and Data Persona Mapping systems reveal that only 2-4% of fresh site visits result in a direct conversion. This number- by all means is very low compared to your marketing costs. Here, remarketing strategies play its role to bring back your users by showing them your product ads again and again in the sites that they browse.

Benefits of Remarketing:-

1. Lower Marketing Costs: – Although ads are the stepping stones to make a successful conversion, it’s those retargeting ads that seal the process. Thanks to these ads, users can be confident about your product if they see sufficient of these on the sites and social media pages that they visit.
2.  These help you segregate your users: – One can get an idea of the needs of your customers. E.g., if you notice many people searching for a particular service, then you can run a specific retargeting campaign to target those users who searched for the same product before. It would prompt them to buy your product thereby giving you added advantages and profits. 
3. Broadens your reach while improving your brand image: – Growth hacking is all about conversions and user engagements. Users play a vital role in creating business and transactions. Thus it’s necessary to pay attention to their needs. Thus if we can cater to their needs effectively, then they would be interested in our products.

• Basic Retargeting Strategies

Almost 90% of digital marketing agencies and a multitude of similar internet& eCommerce giants like Amazon, Alibaba, etc. make use of retargeting ads to bring back their customers without letting them bounce off to their competitor’s sites. 

The 2 major ways firms use to retarget their users are through:-

a) Social Media Strategies

b) Dynamic Retargeting Strategies

• Social Media Strategies

 When it comes to Social Media retargeting methods, Google & Facebook Retargeting are the best ways to grab user attention. As it turns out, these methods have proven to be so effective to bring back users that these are used by startups and newly established firms to get leads and finally conversions. 

a. Google Retargeting

Google and all it’s subsidiary website extensions make use of Scripts and Cookies – their main use to store user data. Once the cookies get the data that they need, these scripts can be autoloaded in the user’s browsers. They can be hardwired to display the ads of the products or services that they have browsed before. 

They would be viable to see these ads when they watch a video on YouTube, listen to music or read newspapers. The reach of Google is so large that it can reach up to 90% of its intended users. Thus Google Retargeting is a very effective strategy of retargeting that can help almost any firm/strategy.

b. Facebook Retargeting

Facebook has emerged to be a very developing and vast social media platform that has made drastic changes to the way how we look at things. One of them was the usage of Facebook Retargeting. 

Using Facebook as a medium, we now can post ads and in this case, retargeting ads to bring back our potential customers- either to our sales page or their shopping carts. The presence of visually attractive creative and content makes them buy your product. This also makes use of scripts to understand the user’s tastes and interests.

• Dynamic Re-Marketing Strategies

These strategies make use of separate methods each having their own outcomes. It includes:- 

1. Email Remarketing
2. “User Trait” Retargeting
3.  Sales funnel based Retargeting
4. Cross Channel Retargeting

• Email Remarketing

Thanks to the cookies and scripts mentioned earlier,  once we get the info on our user’s tastes, we can very well send custom made offers to these users via emails along with normal targeting campaigns. The addition of a simple HTML code will allow us to display our ads on their devices and browsers. These bring them back to our site, which can result in a higher amount of conversions.

• “User Trait” Retargeting

Analytical Tools have shown that ads that are tailor-made for the users based on their activity on our pages always yield positive results. These can be pulled off by effectively analyzing the type of products that they are interested in, and then showing them these ads (Yes! Thanks to Cookies & Scripts!!)

• Sales Funnel Based Retargeting

Depending on the types of users that visited our site, one can offer them different types of ads related to their purchase and viewing history. This targeting allows you to create distinct ads for each stage in your funnel, in turn ensuring that you deliver the right content at the right time for the person.

• Cross Channel Retargeting

In a world where compatibility is always a vital importance, these similar thoughts also happen to our users. They are looking for ways in which they can get similar content across all of their devices- be it desktops or mobiles or PDA’s (if ever they exist!). So, through this, one can create and maintain separate ads compatible with multiple platforms.

In the end, Retargeting can be thought of as the trump card, when it comes to growth hackers and digital marketing agencies alike. It promises to bring back our potential customers and turns those into our users. The point to be noted here is that all this happens at the least overhead costs.