The way we use paid search is ever-changing. Instead of basing everything solely on keywords for ad targeting, there are now more advanced methods that can be used in addition to keywords.
So, when businesses want to get the most out of PPC advertising campaigns, there are numerous steps they can take. One of them is using Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA), also known as search remarketing.
RLSA is a powerful marketing strategy that many businesses are turning to and finding success with and there are numerous reasons for that. RLSA allows advertisers to retarget their past website visitors as they search in Google, and optimise their efforts with different bids, ad copy, and landing pages as they search in Google.
If you don’t know much about search remarketing and want to find out more, you’re in the right place. We have a guide that’ll cover all of the important things, tell you what you need to know about it and reveal the benefits of using this remarketing method. Keep reading to learn more.
What is Google Search Remarketing?
RLSA is a Google Ads feature that allows you to show tailored ads to people who have visited your website or app, and the pages they viewed.
After a potential customer visits your website or app, remarketing begins. This is when data about the customer from a cookie is used to identify them as they search Google.
In simpler terms, ads that are more likely to result in conversions are served to people who have either visited your site before or have shown some interest in your brand. For example, if a potential customer visits your website but doesn’t make a purchase or become a lead, you can try reminding them of your company by placing ads on Google Search next time they look up something related to what you offer.
Additionally, understanding how prospects and customers interact with Google after visiting your site will help improve any future advertising efforts made.
How Does Remarketing Work?
In short, RLSA is about adding previous visitors to lists so that you can retarget them on Google Search and tempt them back to your store in the hope of selling to them if that didn’t happen the last time they were there. You can bid for keywords that are relevant to your brand and what you’re trying to sell on your site.
The tracking of this past website user information is done with the use of cookies and your web server events. This means that their clicks on your site are tracked and that information is then used to assist in retargeting efforts later on. The law says website owners need to notify users when they’re using cookies, and under many jurisdictions, you are obligated to get permission.
RLSAs can be used in two ways:
- Making bid adjustments on your ad groups for users (remarketing lists) who are searching on Google using the keywords you are bidding on
- Set up search ad groups to only be triggered and show ads if a user is on your Remarketing list, and is searching with the keywords you are bidding on
The Benefits of Search Remarketing
When used well, RLSAs can result in more efficient use of ad spend, better conversion rates, and ultimately, better ROI. Because you’re targeting people using specific information about what they’ve browsed on your website, lists can be created. You can then use different ads for targeting different groups of people depending on which list they’re on. So, you could have a list of people who viewed one product and you can then create ads that emphasise that product and draw them back to your site.
Search marketing helps you improve your advertising efforts in many ways including:
- Reach a wider audience by bidding on more generic, top-of-the-funnel terms. By working your way up the search funnel, you will be able to tap into a larger group of potential customers – because you’re targeting people who have already shown an interest in your brand or products.
- Bid higher for your top keywords by leveraging your brand to get more conversions
- Create Ads with Highly Targeted Messages to improve relevance and ad performance.
- Capitalise on Brand Awareness. Leverage your company brand to increase revenue or improve profitability by using a “brand” bid modifier. RLSA lets you turn your existing search campaigns into brand campaigns. More often than not, past website users have a higher conversion rate than new users. An RLSA bid modifier can use conversion metrics to adjust bids in the same way as location and device bid modifiers.
Finally, there are lots of great analytics tools and campaign stats at your fingertips from the moment you start using Google Ads. You can track and measure the success of each of your remarketing campaigns, so you can find out whether your methods are working for you or whether things need to be changed to enhance outcomes going forward.
RLSA Strategies: Tips & Tricks (Deep Dive)
Bid Optimisation
- Attach remarketing lists to “existing search” campaigns. (Standard Search, Shopping and DSA).
- Select Bid Only (observation only) as the targeting setting to show ads to people that have been to your website before, as well as those that have not.
- Segment previous site users into audiences based on levels of engagement or/and recency since the last visit- for advanced ROI bidding.
- Audience lists bid modifier adjustments to the original keyword bid in the same way as location and device bids.
Wider Keyword Targeting
- Use wider keywords that you don’t usually bid on, but just for people who have recently visited your website.
- Create “new” search campaigns just for these keywords.
- Select Target and Bid as the targeting setting. This will show ads only to people that have been to your website in the past. (up to 540 days).
- Create dedicated remarketing campaigns (or ad groups) for RLSA only.
- Show a different ad to site visitors who have viewed a certain page or based on the average visitor session.
Adverts for past website Users
- Ad Copy adjustments
- Show a different ad to site visitors who have viewed a certain page or based on the average visitor session
- Ad Copy adjustments
Maximise a small budget
Google Ads can become costly for entrepreneurs with small budgets. If this is your situation, you might not earn the return you desire from PPC traffic unless you’re willing to invest a considerable amount of time into strategic optimization.
RLSAs allow you to show your ads only to users who have already visited your site. This is important because it conserves your budget and allows you to target a qualified audience that is familiar with your brand.
The only downside to this strategy is that you need a remarketing list with at least 1,000 members in order to use it on the search network. In order for this, you need website traffic levels of 1,000 unique visitors or more within the time frame used for your remarketing list. It’s important to note that these visitors can come from any traffic source, not just PPC..
By examining your Google Analytics account, determine the number of days it normally takes to acquire 1,000 unique visitors. Then, set your Remarketing list membership duration for a similar amount of time.
Bid on more generic terms
A drawback of bidding on more generic keywords is that they tend to be expensive and have low conversion rates. RLSAs can help by allowing you to target a more qualified audience.
For example, a store that carries Nike shoes but not Nike clothes might want to avoid using the term “Nike” in their ads. The word is too vague and could be associated with anything related to Nike. However, if they broke this down into their own ad group and bid on searches containing the remarketing list of users who have already visited their website’s page for Nike shoes, then it would only trigger an ad when someone from that market segment was doing a search.
In other words, this keyword will only be activated when the user demonstrates genuine interest in Nike shoes by previously visiting the Chanel cosmetics page on the advertiser’s website.
By using this strategy, you minimize the likelihood of spending money on ads that will go to waste. Additionally, you can try out different campaigns and test if generic terms attract conversion rates from people who are already visiting your website. When conducting this experiment, I recommend creating an entirely separate campaign. That way, you can manage their performance without worrying about it Affecting your other existing campaigns too much.
Segment your brand campaign
You could even test new traffic vs returning users by creating two versions of the same campaign. For one version, you’ll add the audience (list of all site visitors) as a negative audience ( excluded audience). Or, alternatively, you could reduce bids for new users or increase them for returning ones.
RLSAs allow you to ads specifically to target users who have not visited your website before, which would be ideal if your campaign’s primary focus is increasing new visitors.
Upsell to past converters
There are certain products or services you might not want to advertise on your site. For example, if they have low-profit margins, poor conversion rates, or high return rates. Using RLSAs can help justify advertising for these terms because you know the audience seeing the ads is more qualified.
An example of this would be a laptop retailer who generally wouldn’t make much revenue from selling cases to cold traffic (people that have not been to your website). However, with RLSAs in place, the retailers could still target ads to users familiar with a person or company who have already completed a purchase on your website. Because these users have already bought a laptop from the retailer, they are more likely to buy another product like a case.
Tailored Approach for existing users
Remarketing lists for search ads, or RLSA, are beneficial because you can change your ads based on whether the user has already visited your site versus those that have not. For users that have completed a purchase or downloaded marketing collateral on your website, you are able to create a campaign that targets only those customers. Your ad text would be specific to them; For example: offering a discount on their next order.
For example, we use RLSAs to show some of our ads only to users who have already downloaded a company brochure. This allows us to tailor the ad text specifically for them. By doing this, we can thank them and offer a free Google Ads audit as an enticing way for them to come back to your site and start a conversation with your:
If you want this strategy to be successful, copy your existing search campaigns and apply the audience settings so that only users on the audience list will see the ads. Then, change the ad text in that campaign’s ads to reflect the message you want to send your current users. Lastly, remove this audience list by excluding it from your old campaigns so there is no duplication of audiences between campaigns.
Try this change on a small, low-converting campaign first to see what effect it has before deciding whether to roll it out across your entire account. Remember to test tailoring your landing pages as well.
Exclude converted users from your campaign
Some businesses don’t want to show their ads to users who have already completed the desired action on their site because it would be a waste of resources. For example, let’s say you have submitted an inquiry to a digital marketing agency. The company is likely in talks with you about utilising their services, so they probably wouldn’t want to continue showing you ads for at least the next 30 days.
Say, for example, you’re an accounting software supplier. You might want to exclude users who have already paid for your software because they obviously won’t download it again. Using this strategy is easy–you just need to exclude an audience of people who saw your final conversion thank-you page from any future campaigns.
Bid on competitor terms for your past users
Bidding on your competitor names is most successful when done with a strategic approach. RLSA allow you to create campaigns in which you bid on your competitors’ brand names; however, the ads will only appear if the user conducting the search is already on your list of visitors who have previously been to your site.
By targeting users who have already shown an interest in your competitors, you can be sure that your brand stays at the forefront of their minds when they are in the process of buying. This way, you don’t waste ad spend on users who might search for your competitor but have no intention of considering your brand.
Make bid adjustments for your RLSA Audience
These strategies are a bit more straightforward to set up and focus on simply applying a bid adjustment to your existing search campaign ad groups for users who are on your remarketing lists.
Increase bids for most valuable users
You may not feel the need to go as in-depth as the ideas above when it comes to your RLSA strategies; however, there are times you’ll want to tailor your bids based on audience targeting, especially when a potential searcher is more valuable to you. For example, if someone had visited your contact page but didn’t submit the form, you might bid 30% higher the next time they search in an effort to bring them back into the site so they can complete their inquiry.
If you’re an eCommerce retailer, consider using positive bid adjustments for those who visited your shopping cart page but didn’t purchase anything. You can also create lists based on when somebody visits certain pages on your site. For instance, if after Valentine’s Day someone purchases a present from an online store, the advertiser may want to raise their bids around other holidays where that user could be searching to buy more presents.
This list would be created by choosing the ‘Visitors of a Specific Page During Certain Dates’ option. Note that, unlike regular remarketing, lists made for RLSAs can only last for 180 days at most.
Decrease bids for less valuable users
If an audience has a lower value to you but they might still convert, then reducing your bids for that group may be something to consider. As an example, let’s say a software provider wanted to target users who had downloaded their software but did not exclude them completely. They would use the observation targeting option as normal and adjust the bid by using a negative percentage.
Use RLSA data with automated bid strategies
Although you might not think that any of the strategies would work for your marketing campaigns, layering RLSAs still benefits your search campaign if you use conversion-based automated bid strategies. In June 2014, Google announced that conversion performance from audience lists would be predictive when an automated bidding strategy calculates bids on a search campaign. This means that using RLSA can positively impact your Search spending even if you’re using automation!
By giving Google Ads more information to use when it comes to setting your bids, you’re permitting the automatic bidding strategy to be even smarter. As a result, this could lead to an increase in conversions.
Bid Only Vs Target and Bid
Channels for Remarketing for Search
Advertisers can retarget past website visitors who search for terms related to your product or service on Google, as well as in shopping and DSA (Dynamic Search Ads). RLSA allows you to retarget all potential customers who visit your site regardless of the source.
Audience minimum size restrictions
- Google Display Remarketing lists must have 100+ unique past site users become active, and they can be active for up to 540 days.
- On Google search, audience sizes need to be 1000+ unique past site users and can stay active for a maximum of 180 days.
- By default, Google Ads’ audience duration is 30 days. However, for websites that get less than 1000 unique users per month, you need to create audiences with a longer duration than 30 days. On the other hand, sites that receive lots of traffic can have RLSA audiences whose duration is based on their last visit and be set for less than 30 days.
Display Remarketing Options
To learn more about Display remarketing, check out our Ultimate Guide to Google Display Remarketing
Dynamic Remarketing
Dynamic remarketing is not only for those who left your site without buying but also for people who have already bought from you. It can be used to upsell by targeting these individuals again. Plus, it works with your mobile app- which is important in this day and age where so many stores are using apps as their primary method of selling.
Standard Remarketing
As the name suggests, this is the standard type of remarketing offered by Google Ads. The targeted ads that are put out there are shown across the Google Display Network.
Video Remarketing
Video remarketing might not be for everyone, but if you’re trying to expand your YouTube channel, it’s definitely worth considering. When you use video remarketing, ads will target people who have already interacted with your YouTube channel.
How to set up remarketing audiences?
Here are the steps to set up RLSA:
1. Set up conversion tracking if you haven’t already. This is necessary in order to create audiences based on conversions.
2. Go to the Shared Library tab and click on ‘Audiences.’
3. Click ‘+ Remarketing list’ and select ‘Search.’
4. Configure your settings according to your preferences and click ‘Save and continue.’
5. Give your audience a name and description, then click ‘Create.’
6. Your audience is now ready to be used in your Search campaigns!
Summary
Google Ads Search remarketing is a powerful tool that can help you increase your conversion rate and ROI. By targeting users who have already visited your site, you’re more likely to convert them into customers. Additionally, using RLSA allows you to target these users on Google Search, shopping, and DSA. Finally, consider using dynamic remarketing to upsell past customers or video remarketing to grow your YouTube channel.
Google Ads search remarketing holds great potential for many advertisers and businesses, so you should definitely implement these ideas if you think you might benefit from them. If you’re looking to improve your marketing methods and the outcomes that flow from them, search remarketing could be one way to help you do that.
