Retargeting
Most people who reach your website leave without doing anything, and that is normal. What is not normal is paying full price to find them all over again. Retargeting, which Google calls remarketing, puts your advertising back in front of people who have already shown an interest, usually for a fraction of what it cost to reach them the first time.
It is the cheapest audience you will ever buy and the easiest one to annoy, and the difference is almost entirely in how carefully it is set up. You will be told honestly when your audience is too small to be worth it.
The work
What retargeting involves
Segment by what people actually did
Someone who abandoned a basket, someone who read a case study and someone who bounced off the homepage in four seconds should not see the same advert. Audiences are built from behaviour and written to differently, and targeting everybody who touched the homepage is usually the first default to be undone.
The next part of the message
Adverts are designed and written in sequence, so a returning visitor sees the next part of the story rather than the same message again. Display, native, paid social, search remarketing lists and video run as one audience strategy rather than separate campaigns competing for the same person.
Frequency caps and exit rules
Frequency is capped for each person, and people are removed once they have converted. Following a customer around for a month after they bought is the single most common complaint about this channel and it is entirely avoidable.
Tags, tracking and honest numbers
Audiences, tags and conversion tracking go in properly before anything spends, so the figures afterwards mean something. Reporting covers cost per conversion and what the returning traffic was worth, rather than impressions.
Questions
Common questions
Is retargeting the same as remarketing?
Yes. Remarketing is Google’s name for it and retargeting is the general term. Both mean advertising to people who have already visited your site or engaged with your brand.
How long should we follow someone?
It depends on how long your buying cycle is. A week or two for impulse purchases, longer for considered ones. Indefinitely is never the answer.
Is it affected by cookie changes?
Yes. Third party cookie restrictions have shrunk the reachable audience, which makes first party data and server side tracking more important than they were.
Will it annoy people?
It will if you leave frequency uncapped and keep advertising to people who already bought. Both are settings, and both are usually left at their defaults.
How much traffic do we need?
Enough that a segment reaches a useful size. Very low traffic sites are usually better off improving the traffic first.
Which platforms does it run on?
Google, Meta and LinkedIn cover most audiences, with display and YouTube placements bought through Google Ads. The mix follows where your visitors spend their time, not where inventory is cheapest.
Services
Related to retargeting
Display advertising
Display campaigns with chosen placements and creative built for every ad size, used to build recognition and bring back interested visitors without waste.
Google Ads management
Google Ads managed across Search, Shopping, Display and Performance Max, with costly defaults switched off and tracking tied to real enquiries.
Facebook and Instagram advertising
Meta campaigns with creative made for the feed and audiences built from your own customer data, structured so the platform finds more of the right people.
Tracking and analytics
Analytics and conversion tracking set up around enquiries, calls and sales, with reporting that shows which marketing is actually producing customers.
Email marketing
Email campaigns and automated sequences sent to a list you own, designed and written to be read, with deliverability managed so messages reach the inbox.
Marketing automation
Automated email and follow-up sequences for enquiries, abandoned baskets and slow-burning leads, so no opportunity is missed and your team saves time.
Start a conversation
Share how much traffic your site gets and how much of it converts. You will get a clear answer on whether the audience is large enough for retargeting to be worth running.
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