- As a marketer, you've likely seen it before.

You're driving a high volume of site traffic,

but struggling to convert that traffic into sales,

because people are researching, consuming content

and not necessarily ready to buy

within the first few visits.

Are the majority of your site visitors leaving the site

without filling out your lead form or making a purchase?

Are you struggling to re-engage past customers

in a way that drives more sales?

Remarketing is the act of delivering ads to folks

who have engaged with your business in the past.

Remarketing audiences are comprised of first-party data,

which is data that you've collected

through your own efforts.

For example, if you own an online clothing store

and you're actively tracking those who visit your site,

the data that you collect is first-party data.

Let's explore the two main ways

in which first-party data can be leveraged

to support remarketing.

The most common form of remarketing

is cookie-based remarketing.

Have you ever felt that an ad

was following you around the internet

after you viewed a website?

That would be cookie-based remarketing.

This type of remarketing relies on a cookie

or a tracker to be stored within your browser,

which then informs the ad network

that you're part of a group of people

commonly referred to as a remarketing pool

or as an audience

that contains the same cookie.

Cookies can be set based upon the timeframe

that consumers visited the site,

as well as the actions that they took.

That's why you sometimes see ads

that are specific to the exact products or pages

that you engaged with.

The second form of remarketing list

is called custom audiences.

Custom audiences are created

by uploading your first-party data,

such as email addresses and phone numbers

to target an audience with specific ads.

This type of remarketing

relies on Google's ability to match the email addresses,

phone numbers or mobile IDs

that you provide to their user base.

Even if the emails you provide are not Gmail addresses,

you'll often find

that Google is still able

to match those emails to consumers.

This type of remarketing is especially great

for upselling and cross-selling to existing users

and staying top of mind with existing prospects.

It's also great for re-engaging folks

that were leads that didn't close

or that have made purchases in the past,

but haven't visited your site in awhile.

It makes use of information

you already know about the users,

without relying on them

to have recently engaged with your web properties.

Here's an example.

Let's say you sell iPhone cases

and you've recently decided

to start selling iPhone chargers, as well.

Because you've been selling iPhone cases,

you already have a list of folks

that have purchased accessories for that device.

Regardless of whether they've visited your site

within the past 30 days,

it's likely that they would be a good target

for your new product,

so it would make sense to target them with ads.

Cookie-based audiences and custom audiences,

both open up a world of remarketing options.

Keep in mind,

you don't have to stick to one form of audience or another.

In fact, most advertisers typically don't.

Consider how you could create a remarketing strategy

that includes both audience types

for a more comprehensive re-engagement strategy.

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