HOW TO CREATE REMARKETING LISTS IN GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Intro to How to Create Remarketing Lists

If you’ve been studying this weblog for a while, you’ll understand that we’re huge fanatics of remarketing. In the only terms, remarketing permits manufacturers to reconnect with beyond site visitors to their site.

When a person visits that site, they’ll be cooked (tracked) the usage of a code. This way, after they go to different websites – suppose Google, Facebook, LinkedIn. – you could promote it to the one’s site visitors even supposing they’re now no longer actively considering your brand.

The advantage is that if a tourist fails to do so after studying a weblog or searching at a few pieces of merchandise on your catalog, it’s not a misplaced cause. Brands can now run commercials focused on human beings who’ve expressed hobby withinside the beyond, however, for anything reason, didn’t observe via with the conversion.

Pretty cool, right? That’s now no longer even 1/2 of it.

The exceptional element is how properly it works. According to a look at via way of means of Wishpond, click-via rates (CTRs) for retargeted show commercials are as much as 10x greater powerful than non-retargeted commercials. Another look on SoftwareAdvice determined that internet site site visitors who had been retargeted with show commercials had been 70% much more likely to convert. The factor is, this approach pays off huge-time and skipping out in this method approach leaves conversions and clicks at the table.

If you’re now no longer already embracing remarketing on your current marketing and marketing method, it’s time to hop on board. Let’s test the way it works and apply it.

In the hands of Google, the power of remarketing is stronger than ever. Generally speaking, you have four options of retargeting when it comes to Google Ads:

Standard – shows your static image ads to people who’ve previously visited your website via the display network
Dynamic – shows dynamic image ads for specific products and services that a visitor has previously looked at
Remarketing lists for Search Ads (RLSA) – retargets people who’ve visited your site and left to make a Google search.
Video – targets people who have watched your YouTube videos

In this article, we’re focusing primarily on the third option: remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA).

As Google explains it, RSLA is a “feature that lets you customize your search ads campaign for people who have previously visited your site, and tailor your bids and ads to these visitors when they’re searching on Google and search partner sites.”

So for example, if someone visits your site and leaves without completing a purchase, you can show them ads for the products they were looking at, as they search on Google or access sites in the partner network – regardless of if their search is related to your product.

Creating Remarketing Audiences in Google Analytics vs. Google Ads

Where things get confusing for many marketers is knowing when to create a list in Google Analytics versus Google Ads. This makes sense—as you can connect your accounts and set up lists from either location.

So, what is remarketing in Google Analytics? Is it different than in Google Ads?

To help you out, here’s a quick overview of when to use one over the other.

In Google Ads, you can create a list based on the following rules.

Visitors of a web page
Visitors that looked at a page during a specific date range
Visitors of a certain page with a specific tag
Visitors that visited one page, then another
Visitors of one page that did not visit another page

Google Ads remarketing lists are native to the Google Ads platform and can be used in both Display and Search. You’ll use tags inside Google Ads to set the advertising cookie—so when visitors that haven’t encountered the cookie visit a site with a tag, they’ll be added to your list.

With Google Analytics, the benefit is, you can use existing Analytics tracking codes and enable remarketing from your property settings.

Here’s a quick rundown of the benefits of using Google Analytics as the basis of your next campaign:

You can build audiences based on all default analytics data.
Use imported data from Google Ads or other channels (think your CSV file from Facebook, customer lists, etc.)
Import data from other Google Marketing accounts, GMB, Google Search Console, etc.

Like the lists in Google Ads, you can use remarketing audiences to inform your Search and Display ad campaigns. Unlike Google Ads, users without the advertising cookie will not automatically be added to the list when they visit a tagged site. In other words, Analytics audiences are pulled from other data sources—you’ll need to manually update them if you’d like to reach more users with your ads.

What to Know Before You Get Started with Google Analytics Remarketing

But to target those people specifically, you need to create a set of requirements to be met before an ad is shown.

Keep in mind, your remarketing list is only one aspect of your campaign. And before you begin to build, you need to have a few things nailed down.

The first is your campaign goal. To identify the proper audience, you need a goal in mind. This works great for plenty of objectives, including:

Retarget those with abandoned shopping carts in order to complete the purchase
Up-sell or cross-sell existing customers with related items in ads
Stay in mind while customers shop for other options
Advertise new products or features to old customers
And the list goes on. Whatever your end goal is, make sure you’re not targeting those who visit your website simply for the sake of running ads. Know the action you desire from them – it will inform your ad creative and overall strategy.

You can identify these goals and set them up in Google Analytics. That way, all goals (conversions) met will be included in your reports.

Next up, you’ll need to identify the audience you’re trying to target. This will be based on the goal you identified, and how well each visitor meets certain criteria.

A few questions to think about as you put together your ads:

Have they made a purchase in the past?
Which page did they visit?
How many pages did they visit?
How long were they on the site?
Are they in your target demographic?
For example, if your goal is to cross-sell existing customers, you’d probably get the best results by building ads around related products—not products these visitors have purchased in the past.

On the technical side, you’ll want to feature Google’s remarketing tag for your internet site pages. This is a small snippet of code that permits Google to music the site visitors that come for your page. Without this step, this idea certainly can’t work.

For extra statistics at the tag and the way to defloration to your site, click here.

Once you’ve determined a purpose and which target market will maximum probable meet that purpose, you could circulate directly to the real listing setup.

Google Analytics Remarketing Code

I suggest including this code for your website because it lets you apply behavioral records to install your lists, while the Google Ads code model doesn’t.

Keep in mind, in case you need to feature the Google Analytics code for your site (again, recommended), you’ll want to replace your privateness coverage. Check out Google’s privateness coverage tips to make certain that you’re on the proper track, here.

How to Create Remarketing Lists in Google Ads

When it involves developing those lists in Google, there are options:

Create a segment, and then use the segment as an audience list.
Create an audience list inside the admin section of Google Analytics, then use that audience to inform your next Google Ads campaign. Both options, as mentioned above, allow you to target past visitors across Search and Display networks.

Here’s a quick look at how to approach this in Google Ads AND Google Analytics:

How to Create Remarketing Lists Option 1: Create a Segment in Analytics

Let’s start with option one.

In Google lingo, a segment is a subset of your Analytics data:

“For example, of your complete set of customers, one phase is probably customers from specific united states or city. Another phase is probably customers who buy a specific line of merchandise or who go to a selected part of your site…Segments will let you isolate and examine the one’s subsets of statistics so that you can look at and reply to the thing tendencies for your business.”

To install a phase in your listing, head for your Google Analytics web page and navigate to the Audience Overview segment withinside the left-hand column.

Once there, click on Add Segment. The subsequent display screen will pull up a listing of default segments to be had for each person to apply and may be beneficial for the ones simply beginning with remarketing lists. You’ll see lists such as:

Non-converters
Multi-session users
New users
Non-bounces
Organic traffic
Paid traffic
Of course, you also have the option to create your own segment. To do so, click the +New Segment button.

The subsequent display will spark off you to create the parameters of your phase. You can goal customers through demographics, technology, behavior, site visitors sources, etc., in addition to superior options: situations and sequences.

A circumstance helps you to consist of classes from customers primarily based totally on your very own necessities and a chain helps you to consist of specific movements in a specific order.

For example, the use of a circumstance we will create a phase to goal customers who visited a sure web page but didn’t convert. This ought to then goal human beings who have visited a webinar registration land web page, however, didn’t emerge as registering, people who visited a product web page, however, didn’t buy, etc.

Once you click on Conditions, you’ll be taken to a brand new display. Start through getting into a call on your phase on the top.

Under Filters, choose customers. Then, withinside the upload content material drop-down, choose “web page” and input the info for the web page you’re targeting.

On the proper aspect of the web page, you’ll see the choice to click on AND. Click it to feature an extra parameter. In this case, to goal commercials to customers who haven’t transformed you’ll input in “aim classes according to user = 0.”

Now you’re geared up to keep your phase. Afterward, you’ll be taken to a top-level view web page.

From the drop-down on the top, choose Build Audience. You’ll be taken to the Audience phase of Google Ads, in which you could call and keep your phase as an Audience. The greater granular you could get here, the better.

How to Create Audiences in Google Analytics

This route is a little more direct.

You’ll begin, again, in your Google Analytics dashboard. Here, click Admin and navigate to the property (account) you’re creating the audience for.

Locate the Property column and click Audience Definitions > Audience. Click New Audience.

On the next screen, you will see that Google suggests some of your new audience data. Your pre-configured options are:

Smart List – a remarketing list created by Google designed to generate the highest conversions (this a good place for beginners to start)
All users – all users on your site
New users – users who have conducted only one session on your site
Returning users – users who have conducted more than one session on your site
Users who have visited a specific section of your site – to enable, click the edit button and enter the URL of the page you would like to track
Users who completed a goal conversion – to enable, click edit and select a goal from the dropdown menu (you will have had to previously configured Analytics Goals)
Users who completed a transaction – included users with more than zero transactions

Google Ads Remarketing – Select an Audience

You can also choose to create a new audience without the aid of Google’s preconfigured lists. To do so, select Create New. You’ll be taken a screen identical to the one you used to create a new segment.

Applying Your List to Your Ads Campaign

Once you’ve created the list, it’s time to make it part of your campaign. If you’re using the list for a Display campaign, navigate to that campaign and click +Add Group.

Then, locate the targeting section and click the “Interests & remarketing” bubble. Click the drop-down and select remarketing lists to locate the list you just created.

For a search campaign, navigate to the campaign of choice and select the Audiences tab. Click +Targeting to add the list and adjust your campaign bids.

Optimising Your List

That wasn’t so bad, right? Creating remarketing lists itself is pretty intuitive, once you know the parameters, pages, and behaviors you’re targeting.

That said, creating an entire strategy requires knowledge of bids and keywords.

Google recommends the following strategies when creating your lists:

You can optimize bids for your existing keywords for visitors on your lists. For example, you can increase your bid by 25% for those who previously visited your website in the last 30 days. Or, you could show a different ad to site visitors who have placed items in a shopping cart but have not purchased them.
You can bid on keywords that you don’t normally bid on just for people who have recently visited your site, or have converted on your site in the past. This can help you increase your sales. For example, you could bid on more broad keywords only for people who have previously purchased from your site.
Beyond bidding and general setup, you’ll want to continuously test and optimize your ad for best results.

To do so, keep the following in mind:

Test your creative – test your call-to-action (CTA), images, text, and headlines to see which version earns the most click-throughs
Use frequency capping – this will limit the number of times a user sees your ads each day. This will also need to be tested – you don’t want to fall into the annoying category, but you do want to maximize exposure. A low cap could severely limit the number of interested customers who see your ad
Combine different interest categories – Google allows you a lot of leeways when it comes to the categories you can target. For example, you can try different cookie lengths. Try showing ads to people that visited between 7 and 30 days ago and people that visited 30 to 60 days ago.
Set up conversion tracking in Google Analytics to track how well your ads are converting

How to Create Remarketing Audiences: Create Your Own

These days, remarketing is one of those tactics you can’t afford to not use. Make a list of the goals that you want users to complete and target those who were “this close” to meeting them.

I promise you, you’ll be glad you did. For something a bit more advanced, I recommend checking out this piece on how to layer Google audiences for more specific targeting.

Google Analytics Remarketing FAQs

1. What are the benefits of using Google Analytics for remarketing?

By using Google Analytics for remarketing, you not only collect data on website visitors, but you’ll be collect all other metric data needed to segment and analyze website visitors.

2. What is remarketing in Google Analytics?

Remarketing with Google Analytics is a way to help you increase your website conversions by collecting data on your website visitors, and offering you ways to segment them so that you can build a remarketing list. With Google Analytics you can segment unique and specific lists that will help you create high-touch messaging for your remarketing.

HOW TO CREATE REMARKETING LISTS IN GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Intro to How to Create Remarketing Lists