A Google remarketing (or retargeting campaign) is an effective way to advertise to people who have previously visited your website, used your mobile app, or are part of your customer base.
You can customize your Google remarketing campaigns to show them relevant ads or personalized ads (dynamic remarketing) as they browse the web or Google.
In this guide, you’ll learn how to set up a Google remarketing campaign to target users who visited your website but did not convert.
It’s one of the most popular and cost-effective remarketing campaign types to get more conversions at the lowest possible cost.
What are Google Remarketing Ads?
Google remarketing campaigns allow you to strategically position your ads in front of specific audiences as they browse the Google network or partner websites.
The idea behind remarketing ads is the creation of audiences to segment users based on specific actions they took while browsing your website.
The main benefits of using Google Ads for retargeting purposes are:
- You can reach audiences who are already familiar with your brand.
- You can personalize ads for each audience or even for each customer using dynamic ads.
- You can use your existing customer data (from your CRM or email management platform) to create audiences for remarketing purposes.
- You can take advantage of Google Ads machine learning capabilities to reach people that are most likely to convert.
- You can reduce your paid advertising costs since remarketing ads traditionally cost less than other campaigns.
How Does Google Remarketing Work?
Google remarketing works in a similar manner as other retargeting campaigns. As shown in the diagram below, for retargeting to work, you need to add the Google remarketing tag on your website.
This allows Google to track which people visit your website and what specific actions they perform.
You can then use this information to create custom audiences in Google Ads to target these people with customized ads while browsing Google search, Google partner websites (Gmail, YouTube, Google Discover), and websites that are part of the Google Adsense network.
Google Remarketing Campaign Types
There are many remarketing campaign types you can run with Google Ads. The most popular are:
Standard remarketing: Show ads to your past visitors as they browse sites and apps on the Google Display Network.
Dynamic remarketing: Boost your results with dynamic remarketing, which takes remarketing to the next level with ads that include products or services that people viewed on your website or app.
Remarketing lists for search ads: Show ads to your past visitors as they do follow-up searches for what they need on Google, after leaving your website.
Video remarketing: Show ads to people who have interacted with your videos or YouTube channel as they use YouTube and browse Display Network videos, websites, and apps.
Customer list remarketing: With Customer Match, you can upload lists of contact information that your customers have given you. When those people are signed into Google, you can show them ads across different Google products.
How to Do Remarketing On Google
- Set up the Google Ads Remarketing Tag
- Create your Remarketing Lists
- Create a Google Display Remarketing Campaign
- Create Retargeting Ads
- Configure Campaign Audiences
1. Setup the Google Ads Remarketing Tag
Before creating a Google ads remarketing campaign, the first step is to set up the Google remarketing tag.
A remarketing tag is a piece of code that allows Google Ads to track user actions on your website.
There are two ways to set up a remarketing tag. The first way is through Google Ads and the second way is through Google Analytics. For more accurate results, it is highly recommended to use both options.
Setup remarketing tag with Google Ads – Add the Google Ads conversion tracking code to your website and then proceed to the next step.
Setup remarketing tag with Google Analytics – to use data from Google Analytics in your Google Ads campaigns you need to Enable Google Signals to allow Analytics to collect data about your website.
- Go to your Google Analytics Account, click the ADMIN button (lower-left corner)
- Locate your Google Analytics Property
- Click the TRACKING INFO option
- Select the DATA COLLECTION option
- Activate DATA COLLECTION FOR GOOGLE SIGNALS
Make sure that the Data Collection for Google Signals option to set to ON, as shown below.
Once you enable Google Signals, you can create an Audience List in Google Analytics and share it with your Google Ads Account.
2. Create your Remarketing Lists
The next step is to create two remarketing lists to use for your campaign.
The first list should include ALL users that visited your website in the past 90 days.
The second list should include ONLY users that visited your website in the past 90 days and converted.
You need these lists so that we can re-target users that visited your website and exclude users who already converted.
Website Visits Audience List
To create a list of people who visited your website in the last 90 days, follow the steps below:
Login to your Google Ads account.
Go to AUDIENCE MANAGER by clicking the TOOLS option from the top menu.
Click the + button and select WEBSITE VISITORS from the dropdown list.
Configure the settings are shown below and click the CREATE AUDIENCE button.
- List members: Visitors of a page
- Visited Page: Match any rule group
- Page URL: contains, enter your domain name
- Pre-fill options: Pre-fill list with people who matched the rules within the past 30 days.
- Membership duration: 90 Days.
Once you click the CREATE AUDIENCE button, Google Ads will start populating your list with users that match the set criteria.
You can check the status and size of your list on the Audience Manager screen.
Website Converters Audience List
The next step is to create a list to include users who already converted so that we can exclude them from our Google retargeting campaign.
There are many ways to distinguish between converters and non-converters. One of the most common is to exclude users who visited a “Thank You Page”. A “thank you” page is usually shown to users after they complete a transaction.
In this example, we’ll include in our list users who visited the ‘checkout/order-received/’ page, which is the ‘Thank You Page’ of Woocommerce.
If you find this concept confusing, you can find more details in the Conversion Tracking Post.
Let’s see how to create this list in Google Ads.
Go to Audience Manager (click Tools from the top menu).
Click the + button and select WEBSITE VISITORS from the dropdown list.
Configure the settings are shown below and click the CREATE AUDIENCE button.
- List members: Visitors of a page
- Visited Page: Match any rule group
- Page URL: contains, enter the URL of your Thank You Page.
- Pre-fill options: Pre-fill list with people who matched the rules within the past 30 days.
- Membership duration: 90 Days.
Once you click the CREATE AUDIENCE button, Google Ads will start populating your list with users. You can check the status and size of your list on the Audience Manager screen.
3. Create a Google Display Remarketing Campaign
Once you have your lists ready, the next step is to set up a Google ads display remarketing campaign.
- Login to your Google Ads account.
- Select Campaigns (from the left menu).
- Click the + button to create a new campaign.
- Select NEW CAMPAIGN from the list.
You’ll be prompted with a wizard to help you go through the process.
Select SALES and continue to the next step.
Review your conversion goals and click CONTINUE.
From the campaign types list, select "Display" and click CONTINUE.
From the campaign subtype, “Select Standard Display Campaign”.
Specify the landing page for your remarketing campaign and provide a meaningful campaign name.
Click CONTINUE to go to the next step.
From the LOCATIONS options select ALL COUNTRIES AND TERRITORIES.
Select the LANGUAGES your customers speak and click NEXT.
BUDGET: Specify your daily budget. That’s the maximum amount you want to spend per day on this remarketing campaign.
BIDDING: Select CONVERSIONS with AUTOMATICALLY MAXIMIZE CONVERSIONS.
Click NEXT.
Click the ADD TARGETING option and select AUDIENCE SEGMENTS.
Click BROWSE.
Select HOW THEY HAVE INTERACTED WITH YOUR BUSINESS (Your data and similar segments).
Click WEBSITE VISITORS.
Scroll through the list of audiences to find the check the first audience created in the previous step (All Website Visits - 90 Days).
Uncheck the USE OPTIMIZED TARGETING option and click NEXT.
4. Create Retargeting Ads
The next step is to create one or more remarketing ads.
Responsive ads are the default ad type for remarketing display campaigns. They work in a similar manner as the responsive ads for Google search ads campaigns but with the addition of visual elements (images, videos).
To create a responsive display ad, upload your assets (images, headlines, logos, videos, descriptions), and Google will automatically test different ad variations to find which versions perform best for different kinds of queries.
When creating a Responsive Display ad, you can provide up to:
- 5 headlines
- 1 long headline
- 5 descriptions
- 15 images
Tips for Creating Effective Remarketing Ads
- Provide ad text for the maximum number of headlines and descriptions.
- Make sure that Ad strength is “Excellent”.
- Click the Preview options button to view how your ads will show up on the different positions.
- Make sure to only use high-quality images in which your business, product, or brand is the main point of focus.
- Avoid overlaid text on top of your images, which can be hard to read in smaller sizes.
- Use the ad descriptions to provide additional detail to articulate your value proposition.
- To ensure maximum performance, make sure your different headlines each say something unique. Be informative, and spell out your value proposition clearly.
- Avoid generic messaging or clickbait. Use sentence case, and avoid using “all caps.”
- In your long headline, you have 90 characters to describe your brand or product’s value proposition. Try and come up with something that will be interesting and useful to users. Depending on where your ad is served, your long headline may be shown without the additional descriptive text. Make sure that the long headline can stand on its own and says something unique.
- Include prices, promotions, and exclusives in your headlines and descriptions. If you have something special to offer, make sure your customers see it. People are usually searching to make a decision about something. Give them what they need to help make their decision. Using terms like special offers, coupons, discounts, promo codes, and bargains is a great way to let people know you’ve got some deals.
5. Configure Campaign Audiences
The last and final step is to exclude the people who already converted.
From the Campaigns List select your Retargeting Campaign.
Click AD GROUPS and select your Retargeting Ad Group (if you haven’t changed the name it will be listed as Ad Group 1).
Select AUDIENCES from the left menu.
Scroll down to find EXCLUSIONS and select EDIT EXCLUSIONS.
Click BROWSE.
Select HOW THEY HAVE INTERACTED WITH YOUR BUSINESS (Your data and similar segments).
Click WEBSITE VISITORS.
Scroll through the list of audiences to find the check the second audience created in the previous step (All Buyers - 90 Days).
Click SAVE.
That’s it. When you start this campaign, your ads will show to users who visited your website in the last 90 days but are not yet customers.
Leave the campaign running for a reasonable period of time (at least 2 weeks) and then follow the Google Ads Remarketing Best Practices to monitor and improve your ads performance.
Google Ads Retargeting Best Practices
Follow the best practices below to get a higher return on investment from your Google remarketing campaigns.
Optimize membership duration - When creating a new audience in Google ads you can specify a value for the membership duration. This determines the period a user will be part of your retargeting audience.
In the example above we have set the duration to 90 days but you can use any value between 0 and 540 days to align the membership duration with the length of your sales cycle.
For example, if you sell theater tickets, you can set the duration to last for a few days only but if you sell items whose life cycle expands into months, like cars, you may want to set the duration to 120 or 180 days.
Optimize your remarketing lists - Retargeting everyone that visited your website is often the easiest way but not necessarily the most effective. For best results, when creating your audiences make use of the member’s rules to exclude:
- People that visited non-important pages of your website
- People that visited your website and bounced (without visiting a second page)
- People that did not stay on your website for more than 10 seconds
Depending on your case you can add more rules to retarget your most valuable visitors only and not waste your budget on retargeting all visitors.
Stop your ads from showing on specific topics - By default, Google will show your retargeting ads on any website and app that users visit. Sometimes it makes more sense to restrict the topics your ads are shown.
For example, you may want to stop your ads from showing on game websites and apps. To do this, you can use the TOPIC INCLUSIONS option to specify topics you don’t want your ads to show.
You can do this by selecting CONTENT > EXCLUSIONS > TOPIC EXCLUSIONS from the left menu.
Use dynamic remarketing for personalized ads - With a dynamic campaign, you can show users the specific products they visited on your website. This is a highly effective campaign type for eCommerce websites selling physical products.
A prerequisite to set up a dynamic remarketing campaign is to have a product catalog published in the Google Merchant Center. If you have an eCommerce website selling multiple products, follow the instructions here to set up a dynamic retargeting campaign.
Use your own data where possible - Creating audiences using data from the Google Ads tag or Google Analytics is the most commonly used method but for best results, you can upload your own customer data to Google Ads. If this is an option, create custom audiences and use them with the Google Ads audiences in the same campaigns.
Use Maximize Conversion Value as the bidding option - when setting your bidding strategy, you can choose between “Maximize Conversions” and “Maximize Conversion Value” as your bidding options.
Both options work well for retargeting campaigns but “Maximize conversion value” can generate better results.
To use this option, you first need to enable conversion tracking with transaction-specific values and that you have enough conversions generated from your campaigns in the last 30 days.
Conclusion
Google Remarketing ads are very powerful and should be part of your marketing strategy no matter what.
When creating a remarketing campaign the most important step is to target the right audience. In a typical scenario, you should target users that visited your website in the past but are not yet customers.
To do that you need to define two audiences. The first one is to keep track of website visitors and the second one is for converters.
During the campaign setup, you add the website visitors in the ‘Audience Inclusion’ settings and the converters in the ‘Audience Exclusion’ settings. This will ensure that your ads will only be shown to users that have not converted yet.
The success of your remarketing campaign depends on a number of things, the most important being the amount of traffic. Websites that have a decent amount of traffic will benefit more from remarketing campaigns than website sites with low traffic.
To learn more about Google Ads, consider taking a Google Ads certification. You'll learn how to use the different Google Ads campaigns to grow your business and get certified on the way.
