What is remarketing and how does it work?
Remarketing, sometimes also known as retargeting, is a form of online advertising designed to keep your brand in front of bounced traffic. On average, only 2% of web traffic converts on their first visit. Remarketing aims to help capture the reach of the 98% of users who don't convert right away.
But, how does it work? This technology is surprisingly simplistic, using cookies and a simple JavaScript code to anonymously "follow" your audience all over the web. Simply put, you place a small piece of code onto your website. This is also known as a pixel and is unnoticeable to visitors. Every time a new visitor visits your site, the code/pixel drops an anonymous browser cookie. In turn, when your cookies visitors browse the web in the future, the cookie will let the retargeting provider know where to serve the ads, therefore only showing them to people who have visited your site previously.
How does it work?
Remarketing allows you to segment your remarketing lists into endless categories. For example, you can target shopping basket abandoners (people who put an item in their cart and then left your site). It is also important to remember that different products warrant different retargeting Windows. Such as, people who are shopping for travel should be retargeting immediately where as people searching for luxury goods should be retargeted later.
Does it really work?
Remarketing stats (Wordstream)
Many people will ask; does remarketing work? The bottom line is yes, it does. However, it is crucial to use remarketing as a part of a larger digital strategy. Strategies involving content marketing, Google Ads remarketing and targeted display are great for driving traffic, but they don't always help with conversion optimisation. Conversely, retargeting can help to drive conversions but it can not drive new traffic to your site.
Conclusion
So, conclusively, your best chance of success is using one or more tools to drive traffic and using remarketing to then get the most out of that traffic.