What is remarketing and how can I use it?

Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA), also known as retargeting, is a type of digital advertising, allowing retailers to target previous website visitors with relevant display ads.

It’s not uncommon for shoppers to abandon their baskets – it could be that they need an extra nudge in the form of a small discount or free delivery. Often, shoppers abandon their baskets due to extraneous distractions we cannot control or minimise.

What we can do is strategically place display ads around the web to appear specifically in front of users who have visited your website before.

How do I choose between a PPC agency and an automated platform? 

How does Google remarketing work?

You can create remarketing ads from within Google Adwords, by accessing your remarketing tag, also known as a tracking pixel. This is a simple bit of code which uses browser cookies, and needs placing into chosen pages of your website.

You can customise the code to add different tags to each different page on your website. Ultimately, the data generated from pixels will facilitate in building out your remarketing lists, breaking them down into different audience segments, and enabling you to promote the most relevant content to the most suitable audiences.

If you’re just starting out, it may be worth targeting everyone who views your homepage or the checkout page while you learn the ropes, before you create more narrowed remarketing campaigns. Just be wary that by targeting more users using broad criteria may be costly.

By remarketing with greater relevance and more configured tracking pixels, you’re less likely to overspend on irrelevant or uninterested shoppers. The more relevant the ad to the target audience, the lower your average remarketing CPC.

RLSA will serve your ad for each targeted shopper up to three times: if the user does not click the ad, or does not complete the purchase, the ads will stop showing for that individual.

How can I use remarketing?

There are a variety of ways to manage your remarketing ads, as described below:
Regular remarketing: advertising to past visitors to your website as they browse other websites and apps involved in the Google Display Network.

Dynamic remarketing: similar to regular remarketing, dynamic marketing allows you to market specific products or services to past website or app visitors.
Once signed into your Google Ads account, navigate to your campaign settings, and click the “Dynamic ads” drop-down menu.

You simply need to check the box for “use a data feed for personalised ads”, and select a suitable Data Feed.
There is also the option to target users who have viewed your Youtube account video/s while they browse Youtube or other websites in the Google Display Network.

What are the advantages of Google Ads remarketing?

Google Ads remarketing enables online retailers to target their past website visitors on Youtube and other Google-owned platforms, as well as using the Google Display Network.

The purpose of remarketing could be to promote a specific product to target market segments or to highlight a time-limited promotion. On the other hand, perhaps your goal is to boost your conversion rate or number of registrations: the tool can help in a number of different goals.

There are a number of benefits of using RLSA:

• Reach your shoppers further down the sales funnel – shoppers who have already viewed products on your site have already expressed interest. If the shopper leaves the page, we can target them again with product-specific ads, incentivising the shopper to move further down the funnel, by adding to basket and completing the purchase.
• Focused ads with maximum personalisation – RLSA presents the opportunity to create remarketing lists to reach specific audiences. For instance, you could create a focused remarketing list for shoppers who added a specific item to their basket but did not complete the purchase.
• Brand reminder – retargeting ads allow retailers to build brand exposure, recognition, and trust amongst current and prospective customers. Since you can choose the audience segments you’re retargeting, you can target the type of websites your customers are likely to visit, even when they’re not actively shopping.
• Large channel – using the Google Display Network, you can utilise your remarketing lists to target shoppers on over 2 million websites and even mobile apps. Therefore, your opportunity to get your brand and specific products back in front of inactive shoppers is amplified.
• Campaign statistics – You can see where your RLSA’s are showing, how much you’re paying and how well they’re performing in feedback reports, so you can quantify the value of remarketing to your business.
• Greater CTR/CR: by combining your remarketing campaigns with additional targeting methods (e.g. targeting by demographic, or targeting audiences with the specific products they viewed on your site), you’ll see better conversion rates.

Just be wary that users can opt-out of your retargeting ads using the settings in the AdChoices programme.

How much does Google remarketing cost?

There are no specific remarketing costs, rather the price you pay is incorporated into the advertising cost of the CPC. Your budget is dependent on your retargeting intentions: for audiences differing by their stage in the purchase level and length of time since their last visit, you may wish to direct Google to increase your CPC by x percent.

Similarly, you can instruct Google to reduce your CPC for certain audiences: for example, you may have audiences have visited your site numerous times and never added to basket or completed a purchase. For users in this audience list, you would want to bid less to target them.

RLSA is another significant metric Bidnamic is able to take into consideration when calculating and setting an individual CPC for every SKU in your catalogue. To learn more about Google Shopping management and the benefits of Bidnamic’s machine learning platform, check out our resources or book a demo with a Google Shopping specialist today.