People often talk about remarketing and retargeting as if they are the same thing, without considering their differences. However, that’s not always the case, as there are specific vital points that you should be aware of when considering them for your Law Firm’s paid marketing strategies. 

In previous articles, we touched on the subjects as part of a Law Firm’s display ads strategy and Facebook Ads campaigns for Attorneys. We see, however, that there’s confusion regarding the two terms and their use. So in today’s article, we’ll explain the technical differences. We’ll give examples that will help you understand them, and we’ll give you actionable tips on how to use remarketing and retargeting to grow your Law Firm through paid digital marketing.

Let’s start from the beginning; remarketing and retargeting share some common goals but technically different in terms of how they can be applied and who you can target.

  • Who is the main target for both?

When deploying a marketing strategy (not just digital), your end goal is to convert visitors, searchers, or prospective clients in general, into new clients for your Law Firm. But that’s not just a short-term goal; it has to be part of a long-term strategy that helps you convert people before they make a final decision on who to hire when they need legal help. So what if someone interacted with you in the past by clicking on an ad, visiting your website? Or if they digitally interacted with your Law Firm in any other trackable way? If you forget about these people, you minimize your chances to get in front of them again and again. On the other hand, if you go after them, you can eventually maximize your opportunities to take their cases and turn them into clients. Here is where remarketing and retargeting step in, with different approaches, however, so let’s split them and discover what each one can do for your Law Firm.

  • Retargeting

Retargeting, most of the time, refers to “follow-up” strategies targeting users, searchers, visitors who have interacted with your Law Firm’s website in the past without converting. Nowadays, all websites use specific cookies that allow you to track people who have been on your website without completing the full customer journey. It can be a click on a particular web page or a landing page after clicking one of your Law Firm’s Google Ads. Based on their behavior and the interactions you’ve tracked, you can use retargeting to get in front of them again through the Display Networks or Facebook Ads.

Retargeting can be split into two main categories, onsite and offsite. 

a) Onsite Retargeting

That’s precisely the category we described above. A visitor who interacted with your digital assets or completed a few steps on the website without turning into a signed client. How can you target them?

  1. Retarget them based on the specific pages they interacted with. If, for example, you are an Attorney handling multiple types of cases, but a visitor browsed your Bankruptcy Law practice area pages, you can target them with new Ads, display or Facebook, for Bankruptcy Law. The same applies to all other practice areas, such as PI, WC, etc.
  2. Retarget them based on the method they used to find you. If, for example, they saw your Law Firm’s Instagram profile, and from there visited your website, you should try retargeting them on the Social Media platform.
  3. People who have subscribed to your Law Firm through a mailing list have asked for information registering with their email. You can retarget them using your newsletter or personalized emails.

Some of the tools you need to use to stay on top of the challenges are Google Analytics, Facebook and Google Ads, and potentially Google Ads.

 b) Offsite Retargeting

Interactions with a brand (your Law Firm) are no longer limited to the ones completed on a website. In the times of Social Media and thorough information, we have multiple options for offsite retargeting. Let’s consider that your Law Firm specializing in Personal Injury cases has a Facebook page, and a user interacts with it. The Social Network offers options to understand and track user behavior, and based on that, retarget them through engagement targeting. Is that all? Definitely not, so let’s explain what we mean. If you are an Attorney handling Family Law and divorce cases based in Newark, NJ, you can look for places of interest, such as couples/ marriage counseling professionals. You can find their addresses and target people who visited these places (approximately) showing your Facebook ads to them.

  • Remarketing

Some people might consider it a blurry line and misunderstand the difference between the two. Still, truth be told, remarketing shares the same goals as retargeting but is a different approach, another method. What is it all about? Mainly about re-enabling, re-involving users, ex-customers, instead of converting leads to customers. An ideal prospect for remarketing could be previous clients who might need your services again, and you can either target them through various placement ads or emails.

The more people, companies, and marketing strategies stop working in silos, the more techniques will keep overlapping. That’s a reality with remarketing and retargeting. In the past, email marketing would be its own separate category, and paid campaigns would be a different strategy. Nowadays, however, all these overlaps, and as a result, remarketing and retargeting often co-occur within the same strategy.

Time for our key takeaways:

  • Remarketing and retargeting share some common goals often overlap but are different techniques.
  • Retargeting is split into onsite and offsite.
  • The Google Display Network, Facebook Ads, and emailing are some of the methods you can use to get in front of your Law Firm’s prospects.
  • Don’t overlook the importance of remarketing and retargeting for Attorneys. You can get a step closer to your next case at a very competitive CPA.