Retargeting is an oft-discussed topic on this digital marketing blog, mainly because of how effective it can be as a digital advertising strategy. Remarketing, which we regularly interchange with “retargeting“, often leads to better ROAS than any other tactic. It can be a critical tool for small businesses, especially with smaller marketing budgets, in converting online visitors into customers.
Remarketing is a broad term that incorporates several different channels of digital advertising. Understanding the various types of remarketing ads available to small businesses and nonprofits is an important initial step in developing a successful retargeting strategy.
Quick Stats on Remarketing
98% of website visitors do not convert the first time they get to a website. 98%. That is a lot of potential missed opportunity, whether the goal is leads or revenue. Remarketing picks up the slack from here. Retargeted site visitors are 70% more likely to convert than non-retargeted audiences, with 50% lower CPAs.
While the various types of remarketing ads perform at different levels, they are typically the most cost efficient tactic in every channel. They also tend to lead to the highest volume of online conversions.
List vs. cookie retargeting
All (most, but for our purposes today, all) of the various types of remarketing ads rely on one of two methods for targeting your first-party audience: email lists or cookies. Many of the platforms that offer remarketing allow advertisers to upload their CRM database, for instance, in order to target known audiences. This is a tactic we call “list-based retargeting”.
For list-based retargeting, typically only the email address is needed to match to online profiles. This is all done behind the scenes and anonymously, mind you, so you won’t be seeing any personally identifiable performance.
Cookie retargeting is the most common type of remarketing ad. Advertisers set up pixel tracking on their website, and these pixels place cookies on users’ browsers.
Common Ad Retargeting Types
Social Media Remarketing
Remarketing is a high-performing paid social tactic, and the one we most often recommend. Retargeting through social media can be either cookie or email based, offering an option for small businesses and nonprofits to reach past site visitors and email contacts.
Meta (Facebook & Instagram), TikTok, and Reddit all provide the ability for advertisers to retarget their first-party audiences. Meta remarketing is often the top performing tactic for small businesses and nonprofits, delivering low CPAs and a larger share of conversions.
The email matching rate for B2C advertisers tends to be high on Meta as well, meaning businesses are able to reach a higher percentage of their target audience.
As with other paid social ads, social media remarketing includes the use of video, static, and animated creative.
Display (Or Banner) remarketing
When it comes to remarketing types, display is the originator. Display (or banner) remarketing goes back to the early days of the internet, and, like social media, falls into both the list-based or cookie-based category.
Display remarketing covers the other 96%+ of the internet that isn’t a social network, offering advertisers significant reach and inventory. Standard banner ad sizes all support retargeting, as does video advertising in the form of pre-roll, post-roll, and in-banner. It is now even possible to extend social media-based advertising to popular display networks via DSPs such as StackAdapt.
RLSA (Search Retargeting)
RLSA stands for Remarketing Lists for Search Ads. How it works: when a past website visitor later searches for your keywords on Google, you can automatically bid more aggressively on that search, making sure your ad shows up at the top for someone who already knows you.
This is powerful because it combines the highest-intent channel in advertising (someone actively searching for something) with the warmth of an existing relationship. A plumber who has already visited your website is not the same as a stranger searching “plumbers near Solvang”—and RLSA lets you treat them differently.
Best for: service businesses, local businesses, and any scenario where a customer is likely to do research across multiple visits before committing. Great for businesses that run paid search already (or nonprofits utilizing Google Grants), since RLSA layers on top of existing Google Ads campaigns with no separate budget required.
Using Email as a retargeting tool
When discussing retargeting types, we as digital marketers often overlook email. But, trigger emails often serve as a form of remarketing, too. They can be sent when a known user leaves items in their cart, for example, or after a defined amount of time lapses between site visits. Abandoned cart emails average 3x higher open rates than any other email type.
Screechy Cat Media can help your business or nonprofit with trigger-based emails via marketing automation.
Getting Started with remarketing
Whether some or all of the different retargeting types sound appealing, it is important to prepare for remarketing by adding platform-specific pixels to your website, and developing your email database. If this is all confusing, Screechy Cat Media is here to help. Email us for a no-obligation consultation, and we will help you get started on the right path with retargeting!
