8 Types of Remarketing to Consider

Remarketing has become ubiquitous on the web, as users often complain of endless ads chasing them across the web after viewing a product once.

However, when used properly, remarketing remains an effective tool for paid media marketers in all walks of life.

If you’ve tried remarketing and haven’t seen a return, I’d like to share some thoughts on new segments and different types of audiences that you may not have tested.

To keep up with the increasing restrictions on tracking capabilities, ad platforms continue to roll out new options to reach users outside of the traditional pixel-based remarketing framework.

First, let’s start with a basic definition for those who may not be familiar with the strategy.

What is remarketing?

Remarketing (sometimes called retargeting) is a paid marketing strategy that allows you to advertise to individuals who have previously visited your website or engaged with your content on social channels.

Website-based remarketing utilizes pixels placed on websites to reach individuals who have visited specific pages or performed certain events.

Meanwhile, engagement-based remarketing lets you reach people who have engaged with your social media content or watched a video.

Read on to discover the eight types of remarketing you should consider for your campaigns.

1. Pricing Page Visitors

If a shopper visits a pricing page, they are likely to go further in the product research process than others who see the home page.

They might compare costs with competitors and dig into specific features available at the pricing tier.

Grouping pricing page visitors into their categories can generate a higher-intent audience than if you were targeting all your visitors as a group.

Screenshot from salesforce.com, July 2022 (full disclosure: customer website)

These people may prefer to respond to a call-to-action for a product demo or a phone call with a salesperson.

You can also put assets together with tips for evaluating products in your industry, which may attract people to product comparisons.

For example, my former client who sold board management software provided a worksheet for evaluating board software, running remarketing ads on display and social media to convince previous visitors to provide their email addresses.

2. Industry-specific page visitors

Segmenting audiences by industry can be complicated when trying to market to people in niche industries.

If you have pages on your website dedicated to each industry, you can build separate remarketing audiences for each page.

In effect, you will now create a group of people who raise their hands to indicate that they are interested in services in a particular industry.

You can target unique ads tailored by industry to talk to these people more specifically based on their needs.

For example, you might have a guide explaining how real estate developers can use your software to track potential customers and target them to people visiting real estate industry pages.

You may also have different product lines or pricing for different industries.

For example, many companies offer discounted services to nonprofits and want to target these groups individually.

3. Cross-Channel Remarketing

Take advantage of cross-channel opportunities by building remarketing segments for users who visit your site from specific channels and campaigns.

This is a great way to bring audience targeting options from one platform to another.

Additionally, you can take advantage of the lower cost of remarketing on some platforms relative to others.

For example, if you’re running LinkedIn ads, you might want to target people who clicked on ads in campaigns targeting C-suite individuals.

With URL-based audiences, you can use any other channel to effectively target people who match your LinkedIn profile targeting criteria, paying the lower costs of networks like Google Display.

As long as you tag your links with a consistent UTM structure, you can copy the landing page and associated tags into the “URL contains” field when setting up your remarketing audience.

This solution allows you to pay upfront for LinkedIn visitors using their built-in targeting, but avoids the high cost of LinkedIn’s remarketing within their platform.

4. Cart abandoner

Cart abandonment people do the job of finding the product they want and adding it to their cart without going through the checkout process.

Remarketing to users with these ads can encourage them to return to the site and complete the purchase.

Including an offer might also entice people to come back and complete the purchase. However, it’s best to be careful not to make people simply expect that they can manipulate the process to get a discount.

This may also be the time to reaffirm the brand’s selling point.

For example, if you offer a two-year warranty when most competitors only offer a one-year warranty, point that out in your ad.

Come up with a reason to get people back in, which might push them to move them to the fringes of buying sentiment.

5. Previous Purchasers

If someone has purchased from your site in the past, you can remarket them later to encourage them to buy again.

The products you promote and the timing of future remarketing depend on the type of product purchased.

For example, if someone just bought a new backpack, they might be willing to buy related gear, such as trekking poles.

If someone orders a printer, they may not want another printer right away, but may need to replace the cartridges after six months.

You should be careful not to annoy people because they will have a negative view of your brand after they’ve made a purchase, so don’t try it too soon.

Also includes frequency caps allowed by the channel.

6. Higher funnel converters

Especially in the B2B world, converting leads into sales often requires a lengthy process with multiple touchpoints.

Offering downloadable assets like a guide, or inviting people to sign up for a webinar, can entice people interested in raising their hands.

LinkedIn High Funnel AssetsScreenshot of LinkedIn ad, July 2022

You can then build remarketing lists based on users who downloaded higher channel assets, and set up new campaigns for users with lower channel calls to action, such as product demos.

You can target this through a website pixel (reaching people who have filled out a specific form before) or through lead form retargeting in Meta or LinkedIn (reaching people who have filled out an in-platform form).

Think carefully about the buying stage of your target personas and build remarketing for people who interact at every part of the process.

7. Video Viewer

Video viewing remarketing captures the intent of people who haven’t even visited your website.

YouTube, Meta, and LinkedIn are three popular channels that allow creating view remarketing audiences.

YouTube viewersScreenshot from YouTube.com, July 2022

In YouTube, you can segment users based on the following criteria:

  • Watched any video in the channel.
  • watched some videos.
  • Watched any video in the channel (as an ad).
  • Watched some videos (as an advertisement).
  • Channel interactions, including visits, subscriptions, and video likes.
Meta Video ViewersMeta Screenshot, July 2022

In Meta, you can segment any video or video collection of your choice based on the following criteria:

  • Watch the video for at least 3, 10 or 15 seconds.
  • Watch videos at 25%, 50%, 75% or 95%.

Finally, LinkedIn allows you to segment your video audience by 25%, 50%, 75%, or 95%.

Creating an audience of people who commit to watching all or most of your videos can be segmented into higher-intent people who are more likely to download an asset or want to attend a webinar.

People with less watch time may still be willing to see more content in future remarketing campaigns.

8. Page Engagement

Facebook/Instagram page engagement audiences available in the meta ad interface allow another way to capture user intent outside of your website.

If a user chooses to like or comment on a Facebook post, they are showing some level of interest in what you have to offer.

Facebook Page AudienceScreenshot from Facebook, July 2022

Currently, you can target people based on:

  • People who like or follow your page.
  • Everyone who interacts with your page.
  • Anyone who has visited your page.
  • People who participate in any post or advertisement.
  • People who click any call-to-action button.
  • The person who messaged your page.
  • The person who saved your page or post.

You can also combine these criteria to include/exclude people from a group as a target.

For example, you can reach people who have visited your page but don’t currently like or follow it.

Additionally, LinkedIn allows you to retarget people who interact with your single image ad.

You can choose from any engagement (who reacted or commented and who clicked) or limit it to only clicks that are paid for.

Transform your remarketing campaigns

You’re ready to test some new remarketing methods in your campaign.

Consider new audiences that make sense for your brand and goals, and start by building them.

If you’re not sure if your audience is big enough to justify segmentation, build them and see how big they get over time.

Make sure to include engagement-based and site-visit-based audiences in future tracking limits.

Remember, social platform participants are first-party audiences and are more reliable than third-party audiences built through pixels, so they may include more individuals you want to target.

Finally, don’t forget to develop unique and creative messages to communicate with each audience. Launch your campaign and start testing!

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Featured Image: Den Rise/Shutterstock

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