How to Start Your First Remarketing Campaign with Google Ads

 With these five essential stages, you can learn the ins and outs of developing your first Google Ads remarketing campaign.

Every Google Ads strategy must include remarketing.

The question of whether to undertake remarketing ads is no longer relevant; what matters is how to do so.

Remarketing is essential to recapture and engage your audience for a second (or third, or fourth) opportunity at their attention because there are more devices in homes than ever.

It's critical that you understand the setup before launching a successful Google Ads remarketing campaign.

This manual will help you learn advanced techniques for making the most of your marketing budget in addition to the fundamentals of putting up a remarketing campaign.

1. Check That the Right Tagging Is In Place

It's crucial that a website has the appropriate tracking in place for remarketing to serve impressions.

Google Analytics or Google Ads tracking will be used by the majority of websites; I advise having both sources available.

Tag Google Ads

A Google Tag must be used if your Google Ads account is brand new.

Go to Tools & Settings > Setup > Google tag to locate this for your account.

If you're used to calling it a "Global Site Tag," it's now known as a "Google tag."

With any of the following website builders, Google now provides installation configuration:

• Drupal.
• Duda.
• MonsterInsights.
• Typo3.
• Wix.

When manually adding the tag, it has to go right after the head> tag on each page of your website.

Finally, you can deploy the required code in your website container if you have Google Tag Manager.

Tag for Google Analytics

Before using the platform to generate any remarketing lists, Google Analytics tracking is necessary.

Go to Admin > Property View > Tracking Info > Tracking Code to locate the tracking code.

Monitoring Tag Implementation

The "Tag Assistant for Conversions" beta plugin for the Chrome browser is the simplest way to see if tags have been properly used.

Run the Tag Assistant on your website by navigating there. If performed properly, the outcomes ought to resemble these.

The presence of the green checkmark indicates that the tag configuration is flawless.

2. Make purposeful remarketing list

After you have made sure that tracking is set up, you should make deliberate remarketing lists.

When creating remarketing audiences, the aim is crucial.

You would be losing out on a ton of opportunities if your website's targeting was just "All Visitors."

Numerous options are available in Google Analytics and Google Ads to segment your website's visitors as precisely as you like.

Remember that a list with a narrow scope will have trouble serving.

The secret is striking a balance between the size of the audience and their purpose.

Lists from Google Analytics

If you're already using GA4 or Google Analytics, that's where I prefer to build remarketing advertising.

There are more ways to qualify that audience because onsite activity data can be added to lists.

Go to Configure > Audience Definitions in Google Analytics 4 to create an audience.

The assumption here is that a user has already connected their Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts correctly for data exchange.

It's time to use your imagination now.

The secret is to build numerous remarketing lists dependent on how you classify your website.

Here are a few suggestions to get you started on building your remarketing list portfolio:

• visitors to category pages.
• Purchasers/Leads (to exclude in campaigns).
• all appropriate site traffic (determined by time on site, whatever amount is considered above average for your business).
• Authentic Blog Readers (determined by time on site, whatever amount is considered above average for your business).
• view carts.

In this case, I want to compile a list of people for remarketing who visited a certain landing page and viewed at least half of the video there.

Page AND "video percent" (not "OR") are the two important pieces of data to include.

Don't forget to select your audience destinations once everything is finished.

Always make sure to choose the Google Ads account before importing the list.

The list can then be utilized for remarketing campaigns as a result.

Lists of Google Ads

Go to Tools & Settings > Audience Manager > Segments in Google Ads to build lists.

There are five sorts of remarketing lists that can be produced:

• Users of websites.
• consumers of apps
• users of YouTube.
• list of clients.
• individual combinations.
• A more thorough explanation of how to make efficient YouTube remarketing lists is provided in this post.

Make the necessary remarketing lists and decide on a list duration based on the objective. A user may remain in a list for a total of 540 days.

The advantage of using Google Ads remarketing lists is that you can choose to pre-populate the list with users who have recently visited your website. Google Analytics doesn't provide audience filling that is done in the past.

3. Select the Right Assets

Within the Google Display Network, remarketing campaigns of this type are the most common (GDN). Remarketing Search campaigns do exist, though.

Prior to producing the appropriate assets, consider the following:

• What task is being posed to the user?
• What details should the message include?
• Does the messaging of the landing page align with the ad?

When creating remarketing assets, there are important factors to take into account. Here are a few examples:

• formats for static images
• formats for responsive images
• Descriptions and headlines (if using responsive format)
• Experience with landing pages

You may find here a complete list of the uploaded display ad specs for Google Ads.

It's vital to understand that static image restrictions do not apply if utilizing the Responsive Ad format; instead, graphics must be ratio-based.

4. Launch A Campaign For Remarketing

Remarketing campaigns can be created using Google Ads Editor or the Google Ads interface.

Start with the name, budget, and settings for the campaign. Put the audience name in the campaign to keep track of the several remarketing campaigns you're making.

Performance can be made or broken by the campaign parameters. You might anticipate some performance volatility if they are not properly handled or maintained. These consist of:

• Setting for "Observation vs. Target"
• Setting the bid strategy.
• Expansion setting is the target.
• Setting the scene.
• Setting for Frequency Cap.

When adding audiences to a remarketing campaign, select "Targeting" rather than "Observation" from the drop-down menu.

The targeting of the audience is not at all narrowed by keeping it in "Observation" mode.

Make careful to choose a bid strategy based on your objectives when doing so.

For instance, if you choose "Target CPA" and set the price too low, Google will truncate the number of impressions, putting the campaign's ability to serve at danger.

Finally, since the targeted audiences have already heard of your brand, make competitive bids.

Google has cleverly concealed the next setting, "Optimized targeting," under the Ad Group settings.

Whenever running a remarketing campaign, leave this off.

Why on earth would Google want us to extend the same campaign to lookalike people if you went to the expense of making a targeted list?

"People in, or who show interest in, your targeted places" is the default setting.

Although Google suggests using this setting, I suggest altering it to "in or usually in targeted place."

This can be done by switching it to the middle option below, which enables more precise targeting.

Last but not least, frequency cap settings are still crucial because it is annoying for users to view the same advertisement again throughout the day.

Make sure that each user's frequency caps are set to a reasonable level.

5. Review, Refine, and Optimize

Your first remarketing campaign has officially begun!

I assume that's all there is.

Wrong.

Early on, it's critical to keep an eye on how the campaign is doing. Early on, these are some crucial things to look out for:

• Make sure the audience size is sufficient to display impressions.
• Placements (where ads are showing).

There should be sufficient data within a few weeks (give or take, depending on the size of the audience) to begin implementing performance-based optimizations.

The objective is constant improvement.

Remarketing efforts do not involve a "set it and forget it" approach.

Bringing Everything Together

Targeting a specific user demographic is only one aspect of a remarketing strategy. It incorporates messaging, audiences, technology, and other factors.

An effective remarketing campaign might not be possible without even one of these components.