In today's post, I'll show you in detail how due Google Set up AdWords Remarketing can. Basically, remarketing with Google AdWords consists of a series of still and animated images, videos and text ads that are placed on the Google Display and Google Search Network of the respective user so that they return to the original page and carry out the desired conversion. Remarketing has a so-called "targeting option", which can also be used to address users who have not previously visited the website but have similar surfing behavior to the defined target group. For this purpose, certain tracking codes are used that place cookies on the browsers of your website visitors in order to subsequently display targeted advertisements to them.
Remarketing allows you to track down users who have visited your website in the past and have therefore shown an interest in your product or service. They are much more likely to convert than people who have never visited your website. In general, there are a variety of different strategies to best target your website visitors and optimize your Remarketing ads and Campaigns to optimize. I will introduce you to the most successful ones in the following article.
AdWords remarketing options
- Standard remarketing- This function allows you to target ads to your previous website visitors as soon as they search for apps or websites in the Display Network.
- Dynamic remarketing- Here you can design your ads with products and services that users have viewed on your website.
- Remarketing for mobile apps- You can target a user who is already using your own mobile app or has visited your website while they are using other mobile apps or visiting other websites.
- Remarketing lists for search network ads- This function, also known as RLSA, gives you the opportunity to place ads for former visitors to your website that are displayed in the search network.
- Video Remarketing- With AdWords, you can advertise to people who have interacted with your YouTube channel or other videos.
- Remarketing via e-mail list- also known as customer matching, ensures that users see your ads as soon as they are logged into their Google account and, for example, start a search or surf YouTube. To do this, you need to upload a list of email addresses that you have of your customers, for example through newsletter subscribers, to your AdWords account.
Choose the right retargeting target group
The first step in remarketing is to analyze the data and develop your own strategy, where you have to decide which of your website visitors you want to advertise to. These users are then called the "target group", which you can advertise to in various ways:
- based on the product page visited
- based on not visiting a particular page.
- Time on the website
- Number of pages visited
- Demographic focus
- Geographical orientation
With the option of being able to connect certain target groups, including "Customized combinations", you can target people who have only visited one page of your website without visiting another. You should try to target those users who, for whatever reason, have completed the purchase process. canceled to "return" to your site through your ads so that they perform the desired conversion.
Another option is that if you have a "thank you page" on your website, which appears after a user has registered, you can address all target groups on the basis of URLs.
Set up AdWords Remarketing:
In the following I will explain some Procedureshow you can get started:
- Take note of all the URLs you want to address on your website and make a list of them in Excel. Name your target group and list URLs for future reference.
- Make a note of any ideas you have for custom combinations.
- If you have set up a Google Analytics conversion funnel, then use your collected data for analysis
How to set up remarketing codes
To create a remarketing campaign, you need to generate and insert a special code into Google Analytics or AdWords, which you in turn need to place cookies in the browsers of your website. This involves placing a single code on each page, which is the same procedure you already use with Analytics to monitor your website traffic. You should note that you place the code on each page of your website and use the respective URLs to create target groups and custom combinations.
If you already have a Google Analytics account, you can also find your remarketing code there, otherwise I recommend creating an account. You can use the remarketing code to create remarketing lists based on your goals, which gives you the opportunity to target people who have visited at least 4 pages and spent at least 5 minutes on your site, for example.
How to create remarketing lists in Analytics
The following section explains how you can set up the code for Google Analytics Remarketing. Once you are in your Google Analytics account, select the relevant property under "Administration". There you will then find the option "Target group definitions.
Click on the "Target group" button
You then need to connect your Google Analytics account with your Google AdWords account. Once your two accounts are connected, we can now create the target groups. Simply click on "+ New target group" and we can select specific website visitors.
You can freely name your list according to your intention. I will go into more detail about the custom combinations later, but an example of a possible name for your list would be "All website visitors", which covers all visitors to your website and is a rather coarse categorization. I will explain how to set the custom membership duration in a later section of the article.
In order to start collecting your data, you must first make a small adjustment to your current Analytics code, which you have already placed on your website.
After you have successfully changed your code, you must observe further conditions:
- You need at least one active Google AdWords account that is linked to your Analytics account (administrator access required).
- I agree to the Google Analytics terms of use.
- Agree to Google Analytics for display advertisers.
- Update your privacy policy and describe your use of remarketing in online advertising.
If you do not want to agree to the terms of use and do not have access to the account or Analytics, you still have the option to create and manage remarketing lists in AdWords.
How to create remarketing lists directly in AdWords
To do this, you need to click on the "Shared library" link in your AdWords account and then on "Target group management".
Now you can select which target group source you would like to use by clicking on "Create remarketing list". You can choose between "Website visitors, app users, YouTube users, customer list and the user-defined combination.
Retargeting on website visitors in Google AdWords
If you now select website visitors as the target source, we must first name the target group. We then select the list members, where we have the following options to choose from: "Visitors to a page", "Visitors to a page who have also visited another page", "Visitors to a page who have not visited another page" and "Visitors to a page in certain time periods". In the next step, we can then select the respective page visited. We also have the option to determine the initial list size and the validity period.
Retargeting to app users in Google AdWords
When running retargeting campaigns based on our own app users, we proceed in a similar way to website visitors. First, we name our target group, then select the list members (all users of an app, users who have recently used or not used an app, users of certain versions of an app and users who have performed certain actions in an app) and select the respective app platform (IOS & Android). Now we select our app. As with retargeting based on website visitors, we now select the initial list size and the validity period and we have already created the target group for our app retargeting campaign.
Retargeting on YouTube users
Before we create a target group based on YouTube users, the AdWords account must be linked to the respective YouTube account. After linking the two accounts, we proceed as already known. First, we name our target group, select the list members (has watched a video of a channel, etc.) as well as the YouTube channel and edit the initial list size as well as the validity period as desired.
Retargeting based on customer lists
If customer data already exists, retargeting is also a great idea. Here too, simply name the target group and then upload the list members either text email files or use encrypted emails. Detailed information can be found under the two options under "Comply with formatting guidelines to ensure a successful upload". Again, select the validity period and we have already prepared our customer list for Google AdWords retargeting.
How to select the duration of list membership
The duration of your membership depends on how long you want to place a cookie in a user's browser. However, you should always choose the duration as specifically as possible in order to achieve maximum efficiency in relation to your goals and those of your company. The maximum duration can be up to 540 days.
- Do you have an e-commerce website where purchases are only made once every three months? Then you should extend your membership to 90 days.
- Do you have a service that requires you to sign up again every 30 days? Then you should try a 60-day membership so that people are reminded to re-register after 30 days.
Another aspect you should bear in mind is that many users can be annoyed by too much advertising and develop a kind of reactance. The rule here is: less is more.
Use frequency capping
With frequency capping, we determine how long and how often we want to show our ad to an individual person in a certain period of time. This prevents people from feeling harassed by advertising that is too intrusive.
With frequency capping, you can prevent potential customers from developing an aversion to your products or service by determining how often users are reminded of your brand.
How to set up user-defined combinations
You can set up custom combinations that link two different audiences under the "shared library" tab in your AdWords account. This is the same place where you can set up your AdWords based remarketing.
Custom combinations can help you to address potential customers who landed on the first page of the checkout process (shopping cart), but did not reach the confirmation page (many-thanks) and therefore did not trigger a conversion.
To create a custom combination, you must first create a new target group and use the URL of the relevant website. You then give your combination a name or description and select a target group to use as a basis. There are a total of two drop-down menus, the first of which requires you to specify which users you want to target. Here you have the choice between:
- Visitors to a page
- Visitors to a page who have also visited another page
- Visitors to a page who have not visited any other page
- Visitors to a page in a specific time period
Here you select the option "Visitors to a page who have not visited any other page". Now enter a URL in the conversion funnel under visited page. In the next step, "Page not visited", we now enter the URL of the last conversion step to ensure that only non-connections are excluded.
It is always important that you think about a sensible remarketing strategy that matches your own goals.
When user-defined combinations & membership duration meet
One strategy that can also work well for advertisers is so-called delayed targeting.
I will also explain this to you beforehand using an example: a customer is a subscriber to a certain service where members can decide for themselves how long they want to pay for this subscription. Some choose to pay for the subscription every month. In this example, you want to address these specific members and therefore need to create a target group that can reach these users. In the second step, you create another identical target group, but this time not for 30 days, but for 90 days. In this case, you have created a custom combination by formulating the membership duration of 90 days as your target and excluding the target group for 30 days.
The duration of the membership can also overlap with the notifications of your ads. If you have offers that allow users a "free trial" for 7 days, then you could address them after 7 days after their first conversion.
You are the person who knows your own sales cycle best, so think of lots of creative ways to make the most of your strategy. Your users will be reminded of your brand after 30, 90 or 180 days after the launch, depending on their choice, so you should customize the notifications accordingly.
How you can optimize your remarketing campaigns
You have various alternatives for this Optimization of your AdWords campaign:
- A/B TestingUse strong branding, but also vary the messages, offers, images etc. to find out which combinations of image & text are most effective.
- Test user-defined combinationsTest different combinations to get the best results for your account. Also experiment with different combinations of cookie length to find out which period leads to the most conversions.
- Test frequency cap: Do you want to maximize your number of interested website visitors, but at the same time not annoy users with intrusive advertising? Then you should always check your target group size and the number of impressions that your remarketing groups receive.
- Check landing pageCheck here which content your previous visitors associate most with your website.
I recommend that you focus your remarketing ads on brands, as experience has shown that this brings you the most success. The reason for this is that people who are familiar with your website are more likely to register your ads than people who don't know your website as well. Accordingly, you should always make sure that your ads match your website and your brand.
A remarketing code that you have placed on the browser of your former website visitor will cause them to return to your website in most cases. You can of course advertise a special offer in your ad, but you should also reflect this on your landing page. Otherwise, the user may leave your site again if they cannot find the expected offer.
Optimize retargeting campaign based on placements
You also have the option to exclude certain placements, i.e. specific locations in the network such as websites, mobile apps or video ads on which your ads should not be delivered. In contrast to audience targeting, excluding placements in the display network is an easy task, as you have an overview of performance and relevance.
You can find the page on which your ads are displayed in the Display network tab "Placements„.
What should you do now? In any case, I recommend that you remove all websites that do not perform well. Furthermore, you should design your ads in such a way that they also invite unintentional clicks and thus also run the risk of attracting people who are not willing to buy. Another tip: be more tolerant with the performance of your remarketing placements and give your pages as much leeway as you can within your target margins.
Remarketing is a very effective targeting method in the Google Display Network, which can bring you great success if you adapt your offers and ads to a specific target group.
I hope you enjoyed my post on setting up Google AdWords Remarketing. In my latest post, I give you 10 reasons why your AdWords ads not be played off,
