One of the easiest online marketing strategies all brands can take on to increase sales and profit from their pay per click (ppc) campaigns is retargeting.

The definition of retargeting.

Retargeting is advertising across the web to users who have previously been to your website, or app, and relies on cookies associated with a user. One of the most common is the use of Google Analytics to cookie users which can then be utilized by running display ads on the Google Display Network (GDN) through a Google Ads display campaign.

Other platforms such as AdRoll and Facebook Ads use their own proprietary advertising pixel, which will need to be placed on your digital properties, to collect cookies unique to their systems which opens the retargeting capabilities on their ad networks.

Uses cases are endless.

There’s no shortage of creative applications of retargeting as an effective and cost-efficient online advertising strategy to reach audiences of all intents. Retargeting can be used for search, shopping, social, and/or display advertising campaigns. Wherever you can reach users on the web with an ad, more likely than not you can retarget that individual after they visit your website or app.

Search

Google has a term specifically for retargeting applied to paid search campaigns called RLSA (retargeting list search ads). Advertisers are eligible to apply retargeting audiences at either the campaign or ad group level giving flexibility to account structure. Retargeting audiences in search campaigns allows for tailoring both the bid and message to users on Google based on 1st party data.

Not every user is the same, which Google knows very well, and understanding the context and intent of a search based on historical user data opens up campaign optimizations that increase profitability. Bidding down on users with low-purchase intent and optimizing your search campaigns for users with high-purchase intent can provide expansion opportunities for search campaigns.

Shopping

Using the same function as described in the search section, the recommended use case for shopping campaigns is to increase your product bids for users who have high purchase intent or up-sell higher priced product to individuals shopping for a lower priced product.

There are three type of searches that occur on Google and Bing every day.

1. Broad

2. Brand

3. Product or Service

Optimization of shopping campaigns along these search types and audience data allows for appropriate budget spent on users based on purchase intent. When a user who has been shopping a product on your site or app searches again for that exact product on Google, they are a highly valuable user compared to an unknown ("non-cookied") user who is making broad searches.

Display

This is the most common use case of retargeting which every internet user has experienced. Once a user leaves your site or app, that users cookie can be used within your display campaigns to promote the products they viewed on your site/app or a promotional message across the web.

When users have made multiple trips to your site or app and have viewed a particular service or product, but not pulled the trigger on the purchase, remaining top of mind for the consumer with contextually-placed banners can net highly profitable display campaigns.

Social

Facebook Ads makes it easy to retarget your website visitors on both Facebook and Instagram. With simply applying the Facebook Pixel across your website you have access to communicate with your audience once they're on Facebook's properties. It also provides demographic and psychographic information giving additional benefits to brands that leverage the pixel.

Dynamic product retargeting on social is a popular tactic giving brands the ability to show one or multiple products in a single ad unit. This tactic increases sales by showing users the products they engaged with on your website and/or app in their social feeds to easily purchase.

Another layer with Facebook Ads is the ability to retarget users from on-platform interactions. User interactions with your brands Facebook or Instagram page, videos, and/or posts can be turned into targeting for your campaigns. Targeting users who have shown interest in your products or services from on-site (website & app) and on-platform can be more valuable than targeting a general audience for promotional campaigns.

Getting started with retargeting on Google.

It's easy to get started by just applying a Google Analytics tag across every page of your website and the connect your Google Analytics account to your Google Ads account.

1. Apply Google Analytics to every page of your website.

2. Get a Google Ads account.

3. Connect your Google Analytics account to your Google Ads account.

Once you have completed all three of the above steps you’re ready to start retargeting your users across search, shopping, and display campaigns.