Retargeting, which Google calls remarketing, means building audiences from people who have already interacted with you and showing them ads. Audiences come from website visits recorded by an ad tag, product sign-ups, customer lists, video views or engagement on a social platform. For SaaS, where buyers rarely convert on a first visit, retargeting keeps you in front of people during a long evaluation.
Ways to build retargeting audiences
- Website visitors, segmented by pages viewed, such as pricing or a comparison page.
- Trial users who have not upgraded, based on product events sent to the ad platform.
- Uploaded lists of leads or customers, matched by hashed email (often called customer match).
- People who watched a video, opened a lead form or engaged with a page on the platform itself.
Making it useful rather than annoying
Retargeting works best when the message moves the buyer forward. Someone who read a pricing page might want a customer story or an implementation guide; someone who started a trial might want help with setup. Showing the same generic ad to every visitor for months wears people out.
Exclude customers and recent converters, set frequency limits where the platform allows, and cap the audience window so you are not chasing visitors from long ago.
Measurement and privacy
Retargeting campaigns tend to report flattering results because the audience was already interested. A holdout test, where part of the audience sees no ads, is the clearest way to see what retargeting adds. Browser restrictions on third-party cookies, consent rules and tracking prevention all shrink website-based audiences, which is one reason platforms push first-party list uploads and server-side events.
Example
Stage-based retargeting
Hypothetical company Ravelstone splits visitors into three groups: blog readers, pricing page visitors and trial users. Blog readers see a guide, pricing visitors see a customer story with a demo offer, and trial users see a setup webinar. Customers are excluded from all three.
Common mistakes
Retargeting your own customers
Without exclusions, you pay to show acquisition ads to people already paying you. Upload customer lists as exclusions.
Questions
In practice the terms are used interchangeably. Google uses “remarketing”; most other platforms and marketers say “retargeting”.
