Google Ads Retargeting: 6 Tips To Improve Your Campaign

Google Ads retargeting, also known as Remarketing is a way to target people that have been on your website in the past to bring them back. Using Display ads, you can retarget people as they browse other websites and apps to remind them of your business, products or services so they can return to complete important actions for your business like purchasing or contacting.

 

However, Google Ads retargeting is not available for Display ads only. There is Video Remarketing on YouTube, Search Remarketing on Google known as Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA), Dynamic Remarketing for Shopping and a few others.

 

But here we will be focusing on the most popular which includes retargeting people on the Google Display network with your Remarketing ads.

 

First, you’ll need to create audiences in your Google Ads or Google Analytics accounts. And your ads will start running when you have at least 100 members, so it’s important to start creating them early.

 

1. Target other audiences too besides “All users”

 

The first audience you’ll create in Google Analytics should be All users. That’s ok for many advertisers and it really depends on what you’re promoting. For example, service businesses like accountants and architects can have an audience to target all users and retarget everyone who has been on the website, especially because many offer just one or two services.

However, if you have multiple services under your business and are actively promoting them or getting significant traffic for each of them, then you should create an audience for each. This will help you to personalise your ads.

 

And for businesses that sell products online like ecommerce stores, should setup many more audiences like the following:

 

⁃ Cart abandoners

⁃ People who purchased

⁃ People who viewed specific products

⁃ All users

⁃ And hundreds of others that are relevant for you.

 

2. Use the right bid strategy for google ads retargeting

 

There are two types of bid strategies in Google Ads: manual and automated bidding. And within these you have at least seven bidding strategies, which you can use to achieve your goals.

 

 

There is only one manual bid strategy, and it’s known as Manual CPC. However, you can add the automated bid strategy, Enhanced CPC (cost Per click) which will adjust your manual bids for clicks that are more or less likely to lead to a sale or conversion.

 

The good thing about manual bidding is that it gives you more control over your bids and how much you pay per click. But that can be inefficient especially in competitive auctions were bids change constantly.

 

So, for your Google Ads retargeting campaign, I recommend you start with an automated bid strategy like Maximise Clicks. And this will send as much traffic as possible for your budget.

 

Later you can change to a Smart bidding strategy when you have more data and would like to focus on conversions. So, you can switch to Maximise Conversions with a target cost per action (CPA).

 

3. Update your google ads retargeting budget

 

After running your Google Ads retargeting campaign for some time and have had many clicks and conversions, you should review your budget. This is especially important if you are achieving a good ROI or if the campaign is helping to drive overall conversions.

 

 

The budget you set depends on a number of factors. This includes what your conversion goals are. The good thing about Display Remarketing is that it doesn’t often require a large budget because the average cost per click (CPC) can be quite low because they are not actively searching on Google. Instead, they are browsing third party websites and you’ll be retargeting them there.

 

4. Use dynamic remarketing

 

Standard and dynamic remarketing are the two types of Remarketing in Google Ads. With dynamic you can show people the exact products or services they’ve seen on your website, which makes it more targeted and perform better. It also helps to achieve better click through rates (CTR) and you’re likely to perform better for conversions.

 

This helps to bring them back to your website so they can complete what they started. And with a targeted automated Smart bidding strategy like Maximise Conversions with a target cost per action, the Google Ads learning system will calculate the optimal bid for each impression.

 

To get started with dynamic remarketing, you’ll need to provide a feed that includes all of your products or services. You’ll provide this feed in the Business data section of Shared Library in Google Ads. Or if you’re a retailer you can upload your product feed in Google Merchant Centre.

 

5. Schedule your ads for when people are likely to see them

 

With the Ad schedule feature in your Remarketing campaign, you can set the hours or days of the week when you want your ads to show.

 

 

However, start by advertising on all days and hours and then see what you get. You’ll then be able to check your reports to see how your traffic is performing at different times and adjust accordingly.

 

6. Extend the membership duration

 

The default membership duration for Remarketing audiences in Google Analytics is 30 days. This usually works well for many businesses and may not need changing.

 

 

Also, as you setup your audiences you’ll see how many visitors you’ve had over the past 7 days, so you’ll get an idea of how many new members you’ll have over the next few weeks and months.

 

If you find that you get few visitors for your audience, then you should consider extending the membership period beyond 30 days. That will help you to reach and maintain at least 100 members in the audience.

 

Also, the nature of your products or services will help you decide how long the membership should be. For example, if you offer a B2B service with a long buying process, then consider increasing it to something like 180 days.

 

Conclusion

 

As described above, Google Ads retargeting is an effective way to promote your business to your audiences. That’s because many people will arrive and leave without carrying out any actions that are important for your business, like purchasing or contacting you. And it’s not that they’re not interested. Sometimes it’s because they’ve been distracted and so you need to remind them. And this is what you can do with a Google Ads retargeting campaign.

 

Get in Touch

 

As a PPC consultant and Google Ads expert, I have a lot of experience setting up and managing Google Ads retargeting campaigns for a wide range of clients. Reach out to me below to discuss your requirements.