Most people don't buy on their first visit. Remarketing brings them back. See how it works and how to set up your campaigns.
The vast majority of people don't make a purchase on their first visit to a website. They research, compare, get distracted, and leave. Remarketing exists to bring these people back, and it's one of the highest-ROI tactics in all of paid media, because it speaks to those who have already shown interest.
In this guide, you'll understand how remarketing works, the types that exist, and how to set up campaigns to re-engage those who have already had contact with your brand.
Remarketing (also called retargeting) is the practice of displaying ads to people who have already interacted with your brand, whether by visiting your website, using your app, or engaging on social media. It works so well because these people are not strangers: they have already shown some level of interest. Re-engaging them with the right message, at the right time, costs less and converts more than seeking entirely new audiences.
To re-engage someone, the platform needs to know who has already interacted with you. This happens through a pixel or tag installed on your site, which registers visitors into lists, or by uploading your own contact lists. From these lists, you create campaigns that appear specifically to these people as they browse other websites, social media, or videos. Therefore, having tracking properly configured is a prerequisite for remarketing to work.
There are different ways to re-engage, according to the previous interaction:
Each type allows you to speak to a group that had a specific type of contact with the brand.
The power of remarketing lies in segmenting by behavior. Not everyone who visited the site is at the same stage. Someone who only saw the homepage is different from someone who added a product to their cart. Therefore, it's worth creating separate lists: general visitors, people who viewed a product, people who abandoned their cart, existing customers. Each list receives a message appropriate to their stage, which greatly increases efficiency.
Some classic and effective uses: re-engaging those who abandoned their cart with a reminder or an incentive; showing an ad for a product to someone who visited that specific product page; offering existing customers a new purchase or an upgrade; and presenting testimonials and social proof to those who visited but didn't convert, overcoming objections. The secret is for the message to align with what the person has already done.
Well-executed remarketing respects certain limits. Control the frequency, so you don't chase people to the point of annoyance. Use exclusions, removing those who have already purchased from campaigns that are still trying to sell them that item. Update lists and set time limits, as interest has an expiration date (someone who visited months ago might no longer be relevant). And take care of the experience, varying creatives to avoid fatigue. Done with balance, remarketing is effective without being intrusive.
Talk to Performa Web and set up remarketing campaigns that convert.
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