Retargeting vs. Remarketing: Two Letters Make a Big Difference

Among the options available to digital marketers are two very similarly named tactics: retargeting and remarketing. In practice, some treat them as if they are the same, but they are probably more different than alike. Here’s how they are similar:

• Both are effective at identifying and reaching prospects who have an affinity for (or may have an existing relationship with) your products, services or financial institution.
  
• Both are methods that help you reach back out to your site’s visitors after they leave.
  
• And both rely on the same basic technology: placing a short piece of computer code in the Internet browsers of your site visitors.

Retargeting
Consider retargeting as offering the broader reach of the two methods. Here’s how a basic retargeting program works:

• You place code on select pages of your website, microsites or landing pages.
  
• Once a visitor lands on one of those pages, your website copies a string of code, called a cookie, to the user’s Internet browser.
  
• After visitors leave your site, online ad platforms such as Google AdWords will be able to read that cookie and display your ad to them as they continue to browse ad-enabled websites.

An example of this approach could appear as a bank placing tracking code on its home page or, even better, a product page for its auto loan products. After site visitors leave, they will be served auto loan digital display ads from the bank as they browse other sites. Clicking on the ad banner brings them back into the lead conversion funnel (ideally via landing pages/microsite, etc.) toward an actual loan application. The success of this approach, of course, assumes that the individual is interested in an auto loan.

Drawbacks of Retargeting
Retargeting only allows you to reach those individuals who have previously visited your site or a specific product page where you don’t know anything more about them. They may not even be in the market to buy a car at all, and therefore have no need for your auto loan. In that case, they’ll ignore your ad.

Note: Google uses the “remarketing” moniker for its display and AdWords-based retargeting platform with may be confusing to some marketers.

Remarketing
Alternatively, remarketing allows you to reach – and market to – prospects who not only visit your site but also are actually more likely to be interested in the product you are promoting.

Remarketing is different because it uses an additional layer of information that retargeting does not. Data that you already have on prospects (or information that they openly share) allows you to market only to prospects that actually state an expressed interest in or need for your product or service.

There are a few ways that remarketing can work. Consider the same bank promoting its auto loan products. Through remarketing, the marketer can tie intent of customers (i.e. a search for “auto loan” or “Ford Explorer reviews”) with other known information about them. As with the retargeting initiative, the bank places a cookie in the browsers of site visitors. To reach existing customers, this can be done post log-in.

Instead of serving ads to everyone, remarketing combines “both the cookie and the search” like this:

• The bank identifies keywords associated with its auto loan ads or with search terms a prospective car buyer might use when searching for a new vehicle and then waits for someone to do a Google (Bing, Yahoo, etc.) search.
  
• Once the combination of the cookie-enabled browser is matched to one of the identified keyword search terms, the bank’s ads will begin to be returned as text search results on search engines, and banner ad for its auto loan products will start being displayed as those prospects browse.

This results in reaching prospects that have already done business with the bank and, even better, expressed clear interest in purchasing and/or financing a vehicle – making them true leads for the auto loan product.

Both retargeting and remarketing have a place in a balanced digital strategy and can be used to complement each other as FIs work to build their product acquisition and share of wallet initiatives.

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