Introduction to Retargeting & Remarketing | Nikki Parsons | Skillshare
Drawer
Search

Playback Speed


  • 0.5x
  • 1x (Normal)
  • 1.25x
  • 1.5x
  • 2x

Introduction to Retargeting & Remarketing

teacher avatar Nikki Parsons, Marketing Director

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Welcome to the class

      0:50

    • 2.

      What are retargeting and remarketing?

      1:40

    • 3.

      How does retargeting work?

      2:27

    • 4.

      How is retargeting changing?

      3:33

    • 5.

      What channels can we use for retargeting?

      2:06

    • 6.

      When is retargeting most effective?

      5:10

    • 7.

      Is dynamic retargeting always better?

      4:01

    • 8.

      Thanks for joining me

      1:04

  • --
  • Beginner level
  • Intermediate level
  • Advanced level
  • All levels

Community Generated

The level is determined by a majority opinion of students who have reviewed this class. The teacher's recommendation is shown until at least 5 student responses are collected.

5

Students

--

Projects

About This Class

Retargeting and remarketing are key concepts in marketing.

If you're thinking of setting up a retargeting campaign, but you want to get an overview of the basics first, then join this short, beginner course.

We'll cover:

  • What are remarketing and retargeting?
  • How do they work? What are the different types?
  • How is retargeting changing?
  • What channels can we use for retargeting?
  • When is retargeting most effective?
  • Is dynamic retargeting always better?

Plus, I'll take you through what the latest research has to say. This will give you excellent, practical insights that you can take advantage of right away.

I look forward to seeing you in this short Skillshare course "Introduction to Retargeting & Remarketing".

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Nikki Parsons

Marketing Director

Teacher

I'm a marketing leader living in Basel. I love working in marketing because I am always learning new technologies, new strategies and hustling to stay one step ahead of the competition.

I've worked on a range of projects from social media strategy, to SEO & SEM campaigns, to ASO, to exhibitions, conferences and webinars, to technical trainings, which means I get to collaborate with cross-functional teams and work together to get big projects rolled out and keep communication flowing.

I started my career in hospitality and events, shifting later to marketing leadership roles specialized in digital marketing, branding and event management. Those customer service skills continue to serve me well, and I still love finding new ways to reach, engage with and WOW customers.

... See full profile

Level: All Levels

Class Ratings

Expectations Met?
    Exceeded!
  • 0%
  • Yes
  • 0%
  • Somewhat
  • 0%
  • Not really
  • 0%

Why Join Skillshare?

Take award-winning Skillshare Original Classes

Each class has short lessons, hands-on projects

Your membership supports Skillshare teachers

Learn From Anywhere

Take classes on the go with the Skillshare app. Stream or download to watch on the plane, the subway, or wherever you learn best.

Transcripts

1. Welcome to the class: Hi, my name is Nikki Parsons. I'm a marketing director working on strategic and digital marketing projects. Do you often hear about retargeting and remarketing, but you're not sure what the difference is for you've heard that we're moving into a cookies world, and you want to understand how that will affect the way you market. Join me in this skill share quest to understand what these concepts are, how they work, and how they're changing. I'll also share some of the latest research about retargeting, which might surprise you. So if your goal is to get a basic understanding of retargeting and remarketing, then this short course is perfect for you. I hope you'll join me. Let's get started. 2. What are retargeting and remarketing?: What are remarketing and re targeting? Remarketing and re targeting are terms which are often used interchangeably, but there's actually a key difference. Re targeting is a marketing tactic which advertises something to someone again and usually through a different medium. For example, a comment tactic targets individuals who have previously interacted with your website or app, but did not complete a conversion. The purpose of re targeting is to get these warm leads to come back and complete a conversion action. AA, fill out a contact form, make a purchase on an e commerce site, or whatever other event or activity your business considers to be a conversion. Remarketing is about re engaging existing customers. In this case, you might advertise to customers based on their past purchase history or target a particular customer segment. The lines between these two terms are starting to blur simply because the way we market is changing. It used to be that e mail marketing was exclusively for remarketing purposes, while website data was exclusively for re targeting purposes. But with ad platforms and digital tools constantly evolving and giving marketers more options, we start to be able to do e mail marketing and use web data for both retargeting and remarketing. I'll often use the terms interchangeably in this course as the lines are a little gray and otherwise it can sound repetitive, but now you understand the core difference. 3. How does retargeting work?: How does retargeting work? Traditionally, retargeting has worked through the use of cookies. When a visitor comes to your site, a cookie is placed on their device. Later, when they go elsewhere on the Internet, this cookie informs your ad provider, for example, Google, to serve specific ads based on the pages the person visited on your site. This helps you remind them about your business and also lets you tailor the creative they see specifically to someone with at least some knowledge of your brand. Another way we can re target is using remarketing lists, which allow you to customize a specific campaign, for example, on Google or Linked in ads to that particular audience. So you might upload a list of your leads from your SM and set your ads to target those specific people. Side note. You see here again how the line blurs between retargeting and remarketing, because you actually use a remarketing list to re target. You can also use these remarketing lists to actually remarket by uploading a list of existing customers. Usually, you have to have quite a large list of companies or contacts for these ad suppliers to accept your list for an advertising campaign. It doesn't let you just target that one CEO you might be going after for a sale. That kind of micro targeting is not allowed. There are two main variations of retargeting, I've already shared the standard one, which is where ads are displayed to past visitors as they go around the web. So for example, I was browsing books on Amazon and later on, when I'm on a different website, I see ads suggesting I buy something on Amazon. But there's also dynamic re targeting. Where you take that a small step further and show or mention in your ad creatives the specific products or services that the individual was looking for. So in my example, not only am I now seeing Amazon ads, But I'm being advertised the specific books I was looking at in those graphics in those ads. I'm being dynamically retargeted. That's the main reason why retargeting is so effective because the ads can be more engaging and personalized to the user. Retargeting ads are successful because they help brand recall, they increase conversion rates, and ultimately give me as the marketer more ROI on my advertising. 4. How is retargeting changing?: How re targeting is changing. Re targeting without third party cookies has become increasingly relevant due to privacy regulations, but also just changes in consumer privacy preferences. This has a lot to do with the difference in first party data versus third party data. First party data is collected by you, your organization, from your leads, customers, and wider network. You can collect first party data from your website, apps, social media, CRM, e mail, other direct customer touchpoints. Typically users provide their first party data through interactions like form submissions, where consent can be specifically requested. Third party data is collected by a third party. A, AKA a person organization that does not have a direct relationship with the person from whom the data is collected. It's typically aggregated from various sources and sold to businesses for advertising purposes. Think you can already infer from these definitions, which one is seen as more compliant with data protection laws, and that's first party data. Because that data is collected with a direct user interaction and typically with specific consent, it poses fewer risks. However, third party data enables a business to have a much wider reach. Until now, if you wanted to scale and reach new audiences, third party data remarketing has been a great way to achieve that. Nevertheless, the current trend, especially as browsers like Chrome are phasing out third party cookies in the near future, so they say for some time, is towards first party data. This will also significantly change how marketers run their campaigns, not just retargeting campaigns, but all campaigns, as we'll need to find alternative tracking methods or use things like contextual targeting. Contextual targeting doesn't require user data, making it a privacy friendly alternative. With contextual re targeting, add suppliers analyze the content being viewed and display ads to repeat website visitors based on this content. For example, if you were browsing a website selling gourmet cookies and left without making a purchase, you'd then see an advertisement for the same cookie company when reading a food blog about cookies. But importantly, neither the cookie company nor the ad provider knows exactly who you are. But research shows that better tracking of consumer behavior can actually be a good thing for consumers because it reduces the length of time when they receive irrelevant targeting. Better tracking allows the company or the ad supplier to realize earlier that the consumer is not relevant to the ad campaign, and therefore, the targeting can stop earlier. Of course, AI and machine learning are changing retargeting, just like they're changing everything else these days. Both use algorithms that can analyze large datasets to predict user behavior and better optimize ad placements. We can also use AI to help create a huge number of add assets, which can dynamically display in the right copy, graphic, and format that will resonate most with our target audience. Ultimately, retargeting is changing because of privacy concerns, changes in consumer behavior, and because of new technology. 5. What channels can we use for retargeting?: Let's talk more about the different ways we can re target. There's quite a few tactics we can use, e mail marketing, SMS or messaging apps, direct mail, display ads, app advertising, social media ads, RLS A ads, and video ads. With e mail marketing, we use trigger based e mails to re target users who have interacted with their website or brand in general. To send them highly personalized and well timed e mails. With direct mail, we can take the online communications offline by sending physical adverts to users to create a tangible touchpoint. With display ads on platforms like the Google Display Network or Ad role, we can serve ads to users as they browse different websites. Even those we have no connection with. App advertising is quite similar and done through Google's AdMob or Facebook's audience network. We can serve ads to users on mobile devices as they interact with apps. Social media ads ensure we can market to engaged audiences, and we have a lots of targeting options due to the rich demographic and behavioral data that these platforms collect. Our LSA ads on platforms like Google Ads or Bing ads allows us to reach users in the moment they are actively searching for related products and services. Adds on video platforms like YouTube or Video can help to reinforce our marketing efforts to keep our products and messaging top of mind. We can also use our videos on Smart TVs to place adverts on streaming platforms like Roku and Hulu. That allows us to reach audiences in a more distraction free environment when they are likely ready to watch content and therefore quite highly engaged. Hopefully, talking through all these options is triggering you to think about what channels could work in your own business. Just remember, remarketing shouldn't be done just in isolation. Typically, you'll use several of these channels and use them together for maximum impact. 6. When is retargeting most effective?: When are retargeting ads most effective? Re targeting ads are obviously only effective when targeting users who are already familiar with your brand and have shown interest, but not yet converted. When exactly, should you reach out to this target audience? Once they've shown interest, should you leave a bit of time before reaching out, or should you reach out immediately? There have been several recent studies on this topic, which I think are interesting to share. The first study was published in the Journal of Marketing Research. Researchers conducted an experiment with Canadian Home Improvement Retailer Build Direct, which spends millions of dollars every year on retargeting for its website. They wanted to study if there was an optimal temporal distribution of advertising, AKA, find what time retargeting ads would be most effective. For a bit of background, the retailer Bill direct sells expensive products. The average order is $1,800, and only 0.4% of web visitors make a purchase. If a web visitor does return to the site, the average number of days between the first and last visit is 35 days. The company also faces significant competition. For example, users who visit the Bill Direct website have a 50% chance of visiting the Home Depot website in that same month. Bill Direct launched the campaign using a generic display ad. It had the logo, value proposition, a call to action, and a visual. However, the ad only promoted one of the possible product categories used in the campaign, and no specific products were advertised on the creative. Researchers found that the effects of retargeting happened within a day of the user leaving the website. Their research showed that within the first week of advertising, the most effective day was the first, and 50% of the total effective advertising in the first week occurred within the first two days. When considering that this retailer sells high ticket items that normally require significant time and multiple visits for a lead to convert, this is particularly noteworthy. In addition, they saw evidence of complementarity. What do I mean by that? Essentially, that if users were exposed to advertising in Week one, then the advertising in Week two had a larger effect. That sounds pretty self explanatory, but it was also interesting to read that if the user had no exposure to ads in the first week and only started receiving ads in Week two, that their performance was actually worse than if they received no ads in both weeks. After learning this, you may think like most marketers today that we should retarget in the moment the customer leaves our website. Indeed, websites like booking.com deliver re targeting notifications within minutes after customers abandon their shopping carts and leave without booking a hotel. But according to other research, that's not the best approach and will actually backfire. In a later study published in the Journal of Marketing, researchers conducted an experiment with customers that were randomized to receive a remarketing ad via e mail and app channels across different hourly blocks after they abandon their cards. They also used a control group that received no remarketing ads. Results showed as expected, that without remarketing ads, customer purchases in the control group decayed over time. This is consistent with other marketing literature. However, they found remarketing ads sent up to 1 hour after cart abandonment, actually had a significantly negative incremental impact on customer purchases. AKA, running re targeting ads at that time within the first hour of cart abandonment, meant the brand was paying for worse results than running no ads at all. The same researchers then did a second study. This time retargeting via SMS and found the same results. Interestingly, they also found that when there was a higher number of products in the customer's cards or at higher average prices, that the results were further amplified. So according to the research, according to the latest research, the answer right now to the question when are retargeting ads most effective would be anytime between 1 hour after card abandonment, up until two days after. Just keep in mind that this research focused on that segment of retargeting for cart abandonment, and we also retarget Fort Brown's abandonment to re engage customers or have them complete other conversion events. So this answer is still somewhat niche. There's a lot of other research ongoing. Nevertheless, I find it interesting to help us challenge our assumptions and showcase why we need to test things out and see what works best for our own businesses. 7. Is dynamic retargeting always better?: Is dynamic retargeting always better? You heard me talk about standard versus dynamic re targeting a few lectures ago, you probably think the more specific an ad you can show to lead the better. But did you know that if you're retargeting at an earlier stage in the buyer's journey, that standard retargeting is actually going to be more effective. Surprising. Research published in the Journal of Marketing research, focused on dynamic retargeting. To aim to discover A, whether it was actually effective, and B, what information marketers can use to decide when to deliver these types of ads? They used data from an online experiment, where leads who viewed hotel options on a travel company's website were then retargeted with display ads by the travel company when they browsed their websites. On the other websites, leads viewed either a random ad that contained an image of the specific hotel they had previously browsed, plus three similar hotels, so a dynamic retargeting ad or a random generic brand ad for the travel company itself, a standard retargeting ad. They found that the generic retargeting ad performed better on average. The researchers were also surprised and hypothesized that the effectiveness of a retargeting ad depends on how concretely its message matches how narrow consumer preferences are. For example, initially, when consumers started searching for hotels, they have only a broad idea of what they want. They focus on higher level goals like relaxing vacation. Over time, they narrow down what they're looking for. For example, they decide they want a hotel on the beach. The researchers proposed that leads with a focus on the higher level goals, respond better to advertising messages addressing that pain point. While consumers with more narrowly construed preferences would respond better to dynamically retargeted ads. They tried to test for this by observing if ad visited a travel review site, thinking that if they visited product specific information on a review site like trip advisor.com, that they would be thinking more narrowly about a specific product. They found indeed that standard retargeting was the most effective for consumers who hadn't yet visited a travel review site. While dynamic retargeting became relatively more effective only after AED visited such a site. What should we do with information like this when we're thinking about setting up retargeting ads? First, if we have limited information about our audience, other than the fact that they visited our website or social media channels in general, we should just use standard retargeting ads. As on average, they'll be more effective. If we do have good data on our leads or customers, then we can use that to determine where they are in the buyer's journey to decide if dynamic retargeting makes sense? For example, if we know that a lead has visited our specific product page three times in the last two days, this person probably has pretty narrow preferences. If we know they visited many different product pages, then they're probably still browsing. But if all those product pages are in the same category, then again, we have some level of focused search. Ultimately, this research shows why it's important to understand who your target audience is and what they're looking for. Because your advertising will be more effective. It's also good news for us in marketing, because marketing teams can create more general advertising pieces with a lot less effort and with the peace of mind that those will actually be more effective in certain cases. 8. Thanks for joining me: Thanks for joining me in this short class for an introduction to retargeting and remarketing. After this class, you now have the answers to some of the most frequent questions about these concepts. We discussed what the difference between retargeting and remarketing is, how they work, how they're changing, as well as when retargeting is most effective. I feel confident that you now understand the core fundamentals. So you're better prepared when you decide to create your own retargeting campaign. And the first thing you should do when preparing any campaign is to consider the goals. So if you're looking for help with that, I suggest to check out my skill share class, setting goals for marketing campaigns. And if you enjoyed this course, I'd also suggest you follow my skill share profile. That way you'll be notified when I release another course in future. Lastly, you know, thanks again so much for joining me. I'll see you next time.