REMARKETING: A reinforcement marketing strategy that encourages customers to make a purchase decision

Remarketing is one of the most popular and effective marketing methods used by businesses worldwide.

What is remarketing?

Remarketing is a form of marketing that encourages customers to make a purchase decision. You may not know that whether you’re using social media or surfing the web, you are being “tracked”. The way it works is by following your internet usage habits. The information collected includes the websites you’ve recently visited or products you have clicked through to see on banner ads. When you visit a website, or a brand’s social media channel, comment, press ‘Like’, or share images of products, it will lead to remarketing, either via online advertising or EDM (Electronic Direct Mail).

How does remarketing work?

Let’s imagine that you’re going to buy a pair of Penny Loafers for the first time. Of course, as you’re unfamiliar with these shoes, the first thing you’ll do is research them. Maybe you’ll look at reviews on YouTube, go to Facebook, Instagram, or websites of different brands, and check out Lazada or Shopee to see the price. This information is stored by tagging on the websites you visit. You’ll soon find that Penny Loafer advertisements will start being displayed to you. This is called Remarketing.

Why do brands need to do remarketing?

Interest alone may not be enough to encourage you to buy something, especially if it’s new to you. Or, if the price is high, perhaps you need time to research before you feel confident making a purchase. 

For example, you might be interested in brand A of Penny Loafers. You clicked to see the price and the features and pressed ‘Add to Cart’, but haven’t pressed ‘Pay’ because you’re wondering if there could be a better choice, lower cost, or better design, so you look for information from other brands.

But brand A wants to sell the shoes to you. They already know that you are interested in these shoes. So, they may trigger your memory and encourage you to buy by sending ads to you. It could be the same pair of shoes you added to the cart or other models to give you options. When you see something repeatedly, there is a higher chance that you will ultimately decide to buy that brand, in this case, brand A.

The advantage of remarketing

For any form of online advertising, you usually set your target audience based on gender, age, occupation, interests, or online behaviour. But for remarketing ads, you don’t have to worry about that because you know that your ad will be shown to people already interested in your product, so there’s a greater chance they’ll know a bit about your product or service and decide to buy it. Simply put, it is highly-targeted advertising!

How do I start remarketing?

First and foremost, your business must be online, and you must have a website. It can either be an e-commerce website or a website that provides customer service information and works as a data storage for further remarketing.

It’s worth noting that remarketing will take some time for businesses with a new website as the system needs to collect enough data to use for remarketing ads.

There are two main remarketing channels that people use:

Facebook Remarketing

For Facebook remarketing, you will need to put a tag on your website to collect tracking information. This tool is called Facebook Pixel. Once installed, you can create a Custom Audience in Facebook Ads Manager and create an Ad Campaign to target the audience based on the data you collect.

Google Remarketing

The process is almost the same as Facebook for Google remarketing, but Google’s tool for collecting data is called Google Tag Manager or GTM. Once the information is obtained, it can be used to create your next target audience in Google Ads.

Remarketing is not just about helping customers make a purchase decision. If you sell items that need to be purchased repeatedly, such as household items, you can use remarketing to increase the repeat purchase rate of customers. But remember that in the end, the most fundamental aspect of your product is the quality, because if your product is good, then customers will want to buy it again.