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Perusal Tech Pvt Ltd

• 30 Jul, 2021

Remarketing also called Retargeting, are these just new buzzwords or is it something that actually works? Well! Let's see. Imagine a prospective customer browsing your online store, unfortunately the majority of these visitors are not converted to customers, they leave your site before checking out. The reasons can be,

• it's their first visit and they're not sure about your store's credibility,

• they get distracted and simply don't finish the purchase,

• they don't quite find what they're looking for or

• maybe they just decide to do their shopping later

and they end up forgetting about your site completely. This is where Remarketing kicks in. Thanks to cookies, every time a visitor gets to any of your product pages, this information is stored in their device, computer, tablet or phone. Later on advertisement systems can pull this information out even though the prospects already went to a completely different site, searching the web, reading through various sites, browsing social networks, watching videos, no matter what they do. You can now reach them with highly targeted ads. Like Hey! still looking for this phone or you are interested in this blue umbrella so how about this yellow one.

The purpose is to remind them about your online store and bringing them back so they finish their purchase. These campaigns are highly successful since you know exactly who to target and with what offer. You can also suggest alternative products and as a side effect your credibility grows too.

Retargeting & Remarketing, both the terms are used in same sense. The only notable difference is that Google AdWords uses the term 'Remarketing' whereas Facebook Ads uses the term 'Retargeting'. You can run Display Ads across the internet with Google Remarketing on the other hand you can run Social Display Ads across Facebook with Retargeting. The big thing is that you can do more than just target your website visitors, like:

• You can also use customer data from people who have bought from you and an e-commerce store or something like that.

• You can use e-mail as subscribers.

• You can actually upload directly from MailChimp or different providers like that.

• You can also retarget people who are using your app on mobile devices.

• You can also retarget people on the Google Search Network.

SETTING UP GOOGLE ADS REMARKETING WITH GOOGLE ANALYTICS: 

Following these steps to create a Remarketing campaign let's you target your ads to people that have already engaged with your website, so they're more likely to convert.

Let's head to Google Ads to create Remarketing campaign. You can create audience lists in Google Ads by creating a dedicated Remarketing tag in your Google Ads account, or by importing an audience from Google Analytics. If you're already using Google Analytics, then this is the easiest way to start a Remarketing campaign. Using Google Analytics also provides additional flexibility in the way you can include (or exclude) people from your audience list. We're going to look at both options.

Let's start by using GOOGLE ANALYTICS.

STEP 1: Before you begin, you will need to make sure Google Analytics is linked to your Google Ads account. You can check this by selecting 'Settings' and then 'Linked Accounts'.

STEP 2: You can then check to see if Google Analytics is linked. You can check if any Universal Analytics properties are linked and you can check if any GA4 properties are linked.

Basically, GA4 is the new version of Google Analytics, so if you've been using Google Analytics for a while, I would start by checking Universal Analytics. Just look for 'UA'.

STEP 3: Let's head to Google Analytics. To create an audience list to use in Google Ads, select 'Audiences' in the main menu on the left. This will lets you view any existing audience lists and create new ones. Google Analytics automatically creates a list for 'All Users'. If you're tracking transactions, you will also see a list for people who've purchased. You can see there is one custom audience list for users who found the website in organic search results and viewed the blog.

STEP 4: Now let's create a new list. Let's select 'New Audience'. Let's select 'Create a custom audience'. Today, I'm going to create a list for people who viewed a product page on the demo site, but didn't purchase. This will let me target ads to people who've been to my website and viewed a product in Google Ads. However, you can create an audience list for any pages or actions that you've tracked into Google Analytics. So let's name the audience 'Viewed Product Page'.

STEP 5: Now, let's add a condition. Let's search for and select 'page_view'. Let's select 'Add Parameter'. And let's select 'page_location'. Now let's enter 'forward slash', 'product', 'forward slash'. And let's click 'Apply'. This will mean that anybody viewing a page on our website where the URL contains 'forward slash', 'product', 'forward slash' will be included in our audience list.

STEP 6: Now let's select 'Add group to exclude'. By default, this will temporarily exclude users based on our criteria. For example, if someone purchases they won't see any Remarketing ads. However, if they later return to the website and don't make a purchase, then they might start seeing the Remarketing ads again. So for my example, I'm going to select and change it to 'Permanently exclude users'. This means that once someone purchases, they will be removed from the list.

STEP 7: Now I'm going to add a condition. Let's select 'Purchase'. Now let's add a parameter. Let's choose 'event_count'. And we can leave the condition of 'greater than'. and 'zero'. This means that when a purchase event is tracked, that user will be removed from our audience list. And now let's click 'Save'.

The nice thing about audience lists in GA4 properties are that they are re-evaluated as people come back to your website. This means that if someone is included in a list and they later meet the criteria to be excluded, then they will automatically be removed and vice versa.

Now, that we've created our audience, users will begin to be added to the list. This list will automatically become available in Google Ads, but you will need to wait until the list starts collecting users. This can take 12 to 24 hours. So you might need to wait a day until the list becomes available in your Google Ads account.

Now that we've covered the steps for a GA4 property, let's look at what we need to do if we're using a UNIVERSAL ANALYTICS property.

STEP 1: Let's open a Universal Analytics property. There are two ways you can create audience lists in Universal Analytics. You can create a list based on an existing segment, or you can create a list in the admin area. Today, let's create a list in the admin area. Let's select 'Admin'. Now let's select 'Audience Definitions'. And then 'Audiences'. Since it's the first time we're creating an audience list in the property, we can see we're prompted to enable Remarketing. This will also create an audience list that includes all users. Let's follow the steps.

STEP 2: We can now see our first audience list has been created. This will include everybody who visits our website. Now let's create a list for people who've converted on our website. Let's select 'New Audience'. There are pre-defined lists we can choose from. Or we can select 'Import Segment' to use an existing segment we've created in Google Analytics. But I'm going to select 'Create New' to build a new list from scratch.

For this example, I'm going to select 'Conditions'. And I'm going to change 'Sessions' to 'Users', so that people are included in the list across multiple sessions. Now I'm going to select 'Ad Content'. And change this to 'Page'. I'm going to enter 'thank', 'dash', 'you'. This means that people viewing any page on my website that contains 'thank', 'dash', 'you' will be included in the audience list. Now I'm going to click 'Apply'. And I'm going to name the list 'Viewed Thank You Page'. And I'm going to click 'Next Step'.

STEP 3: Now I need to select the Google Ads account. This is where you'll be able to use the audience list for Remarketing. And finally, we need to click 'Publish'. We've now created an audience list in a Universal Analytics property.

Okay, now let's head to GOOGLE ADS.

STEP 1: To see your audience lists in Google Ads, we select 'Tools'. And then 'Audience Manager'. We can now see all of the audience lists for the account. This will include lists that have been automatically created and lists you've created.

Remember, that if you've just created a list in Google Analytics, then you will need to wait up to 24 hours until it becomes available in Google Ads.

Now let's see how to create a CUSTOM LIST based on our Universal Analytics property.

STEP 1: Let's click the plus sign. And let's select 'Custom Combination'. Let's name our list 'Didn't View Thank You Page'. And under 'Website Visitors' we can find the lists we previously created in Google Analytics. Let's select our 'All Users' list. Now let's click 'And'. And change this to 'None of these audiences'. And let's select the list that includes people who viewed our thank you page. Now let's click 'Create Audience'.

This list lets us target ads to people who've visited our website but haven't viewed a thank you page. Since Universal Analytics doesn't re-evaluate users, this list helps to ensure that we won't show ads to people who visit our website and later convert.

Finally, before we create a Remarketing campaign, let's create an AUDIENCE LIST using the dedicated GOOGLE ADS REMARKETING TAG. Using this option means we will need to add the Remarketing tag to our website.

STEP 1: Let's click the plus sign. And select 'Website Visitors'. For this example, we're going to create an audience list for people who view content on our website's blog. So let's name our audience 'Viewed Blog'. For 'List Members' we can see the different ways we can include people in the audience list. We're going to leave the default option of 'Visitors of a page' selected. For our rule, we're going to enter 'forward slash', 'blog', 'forward slash'. Anybody viewing a page on our website where the URL contains 'forward slash', 'blog', 'forward slash' will be included in our list. I'm going to leave the other default options and click 'Create List'.

STEP 2: Now we need to add the Google Ads Remarketing tag to our website. If you're using Google Tag Manager, then you can easily add the Remarketing Tag to all of the pages of your website.

We've now covered four ways you can create Remarketing audiences. We've created audiences in Google Analytics (including GA4 and Universal Analytics), we've created a custom combination and we've configured the Google Ads remarketing tag. And just to highlight, you only need to use one of these options. You only need to create your list once, so you don't need to use all of these. Once you've created your audience list, they will begin to collect details for the users that you can target with your ads. Depending on the type of campaign you create, there are minimum list sizes you will need to meet before your ads begin to show. For Search campaigns, YouTube campaigns, and Gmail campaigns, you need a thousand people on your list. For display campaigns, you need at least 100 people on your list.

Okay, now let's create a REMARKETING CAMPAIGN.

STEP 1: Let's head to our campaigns. And let's create a new campaign. I'm going to select 'without guidance'. And today, I'm going to create a display campaign, but you can use your audience list with another type of campaign. I'm going to select 'Standard' as the campaign type. And I'm going to click 'Continue'. We can name the campaign. Select the different targeting options. Choose a bidding strategy. And enter our budget. I'm going to name the ad group for the campaign.

STEP 2: Now we need to select our audience list. Let's select 'Browse'. And then the 'Remarketing' option. We can now select the audience list we want to target with our remarketing campaign. Traveling down the page, I'm going to set 'Targeting Expansion' to 'Off'. This will mean that our ads are only displayed to people in our audience list. Leaving this 'On' means that Google can automatically show your ads to other people to increase the reach of your campaign.

Now you can create your ads. When you launch your campaign, your ads will be shown to people on your list. That's it! We've created a Remarketing campaign in Google Ads!

Remember you will need to start by creating your audience list. In most cases, creating your audience list in Google Analytics for the greatest flexibility and then using this list in your Google Ads account is recommended. Once you've created your list, you can then create a new, dedicated campaign in Google Ads, and then apply your audience list to the campaign in order to target your ads.