Overview
You want to know more about remarketing and how it can generate new leads but you don't know where to start. There are many different types of remarketing available, and it can be difficult to decide which one is right for your business.
This guide will teach you the basics of each type of remarketing and how to use them to boost ad campaign ROI.
By the end of this post you'll have learned the following:
- What remarketing is and why it's important
- The basics of remarketing and how to set up a campaign
- 8 different types of remarketing and when to use them
- How to measure the success of your remarketing campaign
- How to optimize your remarketing campaign
What Is Retargeting?
Remarketing is a form of marketing that focuses on customers who have already shown an interest in your company. This can be through a visit to your website, a follow on your social media page, or a click on one of your ads.
Remarketing offers a strategic advertising angle because it allows you to target the most relevant possible audience—the one that is already interested in your business. It works to rekindle their interest in your products and services, which can lead to higher conversion rates and a better ROI.
There are several types of remarketing, such as display, search, dynamic, video, email, and social media remarketing, to name a few. Remarketing campaigns are a paid tactic that utilizes a pixel placed on the website to reach individuals who have visited specific pages, performed certain events, engaged with your social media content, or watched a video.
Before you launch a remarketing campaign, you may want to assess what is currently working well and what isn't worth the effort. To that end, we've created a checklist to audit your Google Adwords account.
Retargeting Fundamentals
Remarketing requires automatic or manually created lists. These lists employ something called remarketing tags. When a visitor visits your website, tags keep track of their activities and add them to the relevant list.
Your remarketing lists' reach will then increase thanks to Google Ads's machine-learning-based technologies like responsive display ads and automatic bidding. Over time, your set to increase key performance indicators (KPIs), such as clicks and conversions.
If you're feeling overwhelmed at this point, you may want to start by learning about the different kinds of Google ads.
Why Retargeting Is Important in Advertising
A remarketing campaign in Google Ads is an incredibly effective tool that helps your business reach its target audience more quickly and effectively.
It allows you to target those who have already shown an interest in their products or services, giving them a higher chance of converting into paying customers.
Remarketing also helps to build brand awareness and visibility, as it reminds customers of what they're searching for while keeping your company's offerings top of mind.
Remarketing has been shown to significantly increase conversion rates, with reports from Marketo showing that 98% of website visitors are not ready to buy when they first visit the site.
Analyzing your competitors is another strategy that can give you insights into running a successful remarketing campaign.
If you'd like to start there, check out our guide on cost-effective competitor targeting tactics.
Remarketing Campaign Setup
Google Ads allows you to create remarketing campaigns to target specific users with personalized ads and increase conversions at a relatively low cost.
Remarketing campaigns are easy to set up and require minimal effort. All you need to do is the following:
- Get the remarketing tag from your Google Ads account
- Create remarketing lists using criteria such as time frames and page visits
- Configure the campaign's settings
- Create ads tailored to different audiences
Retargeting Audiences
Remarketing allows you to target the most receptive possible audience for higher conversion rates and improved ROI. There are a variety of audience segments available to use in remarketing, including.
Website Visitor Audiences
Website visitor list are the retargeting audiences that you can make consisting of people who have previously visited your website. These are in our experience the best types of retargeting audiences you can create. It's particularly useful for increasing conversions and enhancing brand exposure.
Here are some common types of Website visitor audiences that you can create:
Time Since Visit Targeting
- You can create audiences based on how recently somebody visited your website, so you can prioritize spend for people who visited recently.
Visitors to Specific Website Pages Targeting
- Allows companies to target users based on the URLs visited, like people who visited the checkout page for B2C, people who visited the contact us page for B2B services or people who visited the pricing page for B2B SaaS
Events Based Targeting
- This allows you to target visitors who performed a specific action on your app or website, like people who added to cart but didn't convert for ecommerce or people who signed up for a free trial but didn't convert to a paid customer for SaaS
Time Spent on Site
- Allows companies to target those who have spent long periods on the site.
Number of Pages Visited
- Allows companies to target users who have explored more than one page or people who have returned to the website.
Custom Combinations
- Allows companies to target people who visited your website and also fall into a high intent B2B page but not another.
Current Clients or Existing Customers
- You can target a page only accessible to converted leads or customers, like a post-login page or a thank you page so that you can then exclude people who visited these pages from your campaigns as they're probably not likely to convert.
Types of Retargeting Campaigns in Google Ads
Remarketing is not a single solitary strategy. Online retargeting can be done in a variety of methods, and it's best to be familiar with them all. Fortunately, we're here to educate you on 9 different retargeting strategies you can use in your campaigns.
Retargeting on Social Media Ad Platforms
First, it's important to note that you don't have to retarget exclusively on Google Ads. Remarketing on social media can often be more effective due to the organic feel of the ads on the platform.
Social media remarketing campaigns typically involve creating segmented audience lists, mixing them with remarketing ads, and directing them to post-click landing pages.
This way, the audience can be exposed to the brand in a highly personalized and effective manner.
Retargeting With Google Search Ads
Remarketing with search ads allows you to target past visitors who have interacted with your website or content on the search network.
It enables you to customize search ads and target particular audiences that are more likely to convert. Because this is a particularly popular method of remarking, below we'll show how to do remarketing with search ads step-by-step.
Step 1: Set up your remarketing list by defining the parameters of your list. You can target people who have visited your website in the past 30 days or interacted with your videos or subscribed to your channel.
Step 2: Link your YouTube account to create remarketing lists for your videos.
Step 3: Once you have your list set up, you can create custom search ads that target that particular audience. Make sure to create ads that are relevant to the audience’s interests.
Step 4: Now that you’ve created your search ads, you can launch the campaign and start targeting your past visitors.
Step 5: Measure the performance of your search ads and adjust them if needed.
As you complete each step, remember to monitor your campaign’s performance and make adjustments to target the right audience.
Retargeting With Product Ads
Dynamic remarketing (also known as product remarketing) is an advertising strategy used to display ads to people who have previously interacted with a business's website or app.
It works by using a product feed, which is a type of file that contains information about a business's products (such as name, description, image, and price).
The data feed is then used to automatically select certain products that a user has previously viewed or interacted with on a website and display them in an ad.
Dynamic remarketing is a powerful tool that displays highly targeted one-to-one messaging in real-time, providing visitors with an incentive to complete their purchases.
Additionally, dynamic remarketing ads can be scaled as a business grows, allows for easy product addition via .csv, .xls, .xlsx., or .tsv files, and allows for the optimization of bids using Google Ads cost per click (CPC) and conversion optimizer.
Google Display Retargeting Campaigns
Display ad remarketing uses display ads to target people who've already visited a website or interacted with a product or service.
It's most often used to reach people who already have an interest in the brand and to encourage them to complete a purchase or other conversion.
Advertisers can also target ads to audience segments who've interacted with display ads on websites, apps, and other digital channels.
Retargeting With Video Ads on YouTube
Remarketing Video Ads are ads that are targeted to users who have previously interacted with your videos, such as YouTube ads, or on websites and videos on the Display Network.
The ads are personalized to the user and are designed to compel the user to revisit your website or take a certain action.
The characteristics of successful remarketing video ads include:
- Shown at the start of or in between the films that potential consumers are watching
- Tailored specifically to the user
- Served to customers on a list who are signed in to Gmail, Google Search, or YouTube
- Offer adjustable bids for users in a remarketing list.
Additionally, Remarketing Video Ads can be used in search campaigns, and they can be used to display the exact product that the user was viewing in an online store.
Demand Generation Retargeting
Demand Generation ads, formerly called Discovery ads, are an ad type that displays on Gmail, Google Display, YouTube and the Google Discovery App that's supposed to be Google's version of a feed ad. We like Demand Generation ads because they tend to look more organic and cleaner than display, they show on high quality sites and placements and they offer multiple high quality ad types, like Carousel ads, Video ads and image ads.
Gmail Retargeting
Email remarketing involves targeting people who have previously interacted with your business online via email.
Using tailored emails, businesses can send follow-up messages to potential customers who have shown interest in their products or services, offering incentives that may encourage them to revisit the website and take action.
Also, emails can be used to remind users who have not visited the website for a while or opted out of email campaigns, allowing businesses to stay top of mind.
This can be particularly useful for businesses that operate in industries where transactions are rare and there is a long time between them.
Measuring the Success of Your Remarking Campaign
Measuring success is essential to ensure you are making the most of your budget and getting the results you want.
Here are some steps you can take to measure the success of your remarketing campaigns:
- Analyze metrics such as impressions, frequency, and click-through rate to track your campaigns.
- Develop segmented audience lists and combine them with remarketing ads and post-click landing pages.
- Test remarketing display ads and landing pages to develop campaigns that convert better.
- Monitor user activity and engagement with your ads to better understand what type of messaging works best.
- Track the performance of your campaigns over time to see which types of campaigns perform best long term.
- Use analytics to measure the efficiency of your campaigns and optimize them based on the data.
- Analyze the ROI of your campaigns to determine which ones are the most profitable.
Remarketing Campaign Optimization
Optimizing remarketing campaigns helps you reach the most relevant audience, increase your conversion rates, and maximize your marketing efforts.
The optimization process involves testing the remarketing display ads and post-click landing pages to develop targeted campaigns that can lead to conversions.
To further optimize your campaigns, you should experiment with different ad copy, combinations of interest categories, frequency caps, impression share, and landing pages to ensure that they are providing the most relevant content to their audience.
If you believe you think you need to optimize more than your remarketing campaign, check out our guide detailing 23 Google Ads optimization techniques.
Conclusion
If you want to take your advertising efforts to the next level, consider using a remarketing campaign with Google Ads.
It offers a host of features and targeting options that help you fine-tune your campaign to better reach your target audience.
Schedule a free call with us today if you'd like to learn how we use remarketing campaigns to generate highly qualified leads.
Relevant Google Ads Remarketing Case Studies
Want to read examples of our successful projects where we used strong remarketing campaigns on Google Ads? Check out these case studies from Google Ads Projects we worked on:
- Case Study – Google Ads and Bing Ads for B2B Property Tech SaaS Solution
- Case Study – Google Ads and Bing Ads for B2B SaaS for Senior Living
- Case Study – Google Ads for B2B SaaS PR Solution
- Case Study – Google Ads for B2B Web Design Agency
FAQ: Remarketing Campaigns in Google Ads
What is remarketing and why is it important for businesses?
- Remarketing is a form of marketing that targets customers who have previously shown interest in a business.
- It's important because it allows businesses to re-engage potential customers who are already familiar with their brand or products, increasing the likelihood of conversion.
What are the fundamentals of remarketing, including the role of remarketing tags?
- Remarketing relies on automatic or manually created lists, which utilize remarketing tags to track visitor activities on a website.
- These tags help segment visitors based on their interactions, allowing businesses to target them with relevant ads.
How can businesses set up remarketing campaigns in Google Ads?
- To set up a remarketing campaign in Google Ads, businesses need to obtain the remarketing tag from their Google Ads account.
- They then create remarketing lists based on specific criteria such as page visits or time frames.
- After configuring campaign settings, businesses create ads tailored to different audience segments.
What are the eight different types of remarketing campaigns discussed in the blog post?
- Remarketing Audiences
- Website Visitor List Remarketing
- Remarketing on Social Media
- Remarketing With Search Ads
- Dynamic Remarketing
- Remarketing Display Ads
- Remarketing Video Ads
- Remarketing Through Email
How can businesses measure the success of their remarketing campaigns and optimize them for better results?
- Analyze metrics such as impressions, click-through rate, and conversions to track campaign performance.
- Develop segmented audience lists and test different ad variations to optimize for better results.
- Monitor user engagement and adjust targeting and messaging based on performance data.
