Master Guide To Setup Google Display Remarketing Campaign

Remarketing is one of the effective Digital Marketing tactics used to increase conversions, as per Google, remarketing can help you achieve 2 to 4% of conversion rates through effective remarketing campaigns. In this article, we will look at creating high ROI display marketing campaign through Google Ads.

As we know that remarketing is a concept where we follow users on different publishing websites, once they have interacted with our website. We are following them because we want them to transact/convert on our website.

To know more about What is Remarketing & Different Types of Remarketing – Refer Article – Ultimate Guide to Remarketing in Digital Marketing  

So How To Create Display Remarketing campaign in Google Ads

Let’s start step by step

Step 1:

Login to your Google Ads account – Login

Step 2:

The important part in remarketing is to first generate a remarketing code and then create a remarketing list to market. The remarketing code is now part of the conversion code, in order to setup the remarketing code – Refer Article Google Adwords Conversion Tracking Guide (the code which we add in the header acts as a remarketing code, refer article)

So once you login, click on tools on the right and then click on audience manager option under shared library. Follow the screenshot below

Google Ads Audience Manager

Step 3:

Once you click on audience manager, you will come across below screen, now click on the plus blue button.

Create Display Remarketing Campaign

Step 4:

We are trying to create a remarketing list here, which is also called as audience lists, which we will use to remarket audiences.

So let’s move ahead! Once you click on the plus blue button, you will see 5 options as below.

Remarketing Lists Options

Let’s understand each of them

Website Visitors

Website visitors remarketing list is a list which can be used to remarket users who have visited your website. This list can be used for lead generation campaigns or websites which have purchase option to transact. Eg. Ecommerce websites, Real Estate Websites, SAAS product websites etc

App Users

App Users option is to create a remarketing lists for users who have used your mobile app or who have transacted on your mobile application. Businesses whose focus is to re-engage with the users, increase repeat purchases etc can use app users option for creating remarketing list. Eg: Uber, Ola, Myntra App, Swiggy app etc can use this option for mobile app remarketing

YouTube Users

YouTube users option can be used by YouTube channel’s whose objective is to re-engage users with the new content published on their channel. Youtube remarketing lists can increase views of your videos and it can increase engagement on your channel. Any business who have YouTube channel can use YouTube users remarketing list

Customer List

Customer list option can be used if you have email database of customers, you can upload the database in customer list and remarket users on gmail ads and youtube ads. This is an effective way to target prospects who had shown interest in your brand, it’s personalised and effective

Custom Combination

Custom combination option allows you to use different combination of URL and remarket users who have visited your website. If you are new to remarketing, would recommend to leave custom combination. Once you have hands on experience on remarketing campaigns, post that you can move towards custom combination of remarketing lists.

Let’s take an example to setup the remarketing list and then create a campaign. I am taking an example of a real estate brand for which I want to create a remarketing list of visitors who have visited the website and who didn’t filled up the form on the website. Let’s go!

Step 5:

I am selecting website visitors from the 5 options. Once I click on website visitors, I can see this screen as below, where I need to define the audience name. So I have defined the name as below. The name is for your reference, so that if you create multiple lists, you would be able to easily identify the list.

Create Remarketing List

Step 6:

The next step is to define the list members. List members means, who you want to add in the list. There are 5 lists members to choose from

  • Visitors of a page
  • Visitors of a page who also visited another page
  • Visitors of a page who did not visit another page
  • Visitors of a page during specific dates
  • Visitors of a page with specific tags

Create Remarketing Display Ad

Let’s understand each one of them

Visitors Of A Page

In this list member type, you can add all the visitors who have visited your web page. You can use the landing page you are marketing. But this will include all the people who have visited that page. In an ideal scenario, you would like to exclude people who have transaction on your site or exclude people who have signed up on your site. So you need to define what visitors you want to market before using visitors of a page list.

Visitors of A Page Who Also Visited Another Page

In this list member type, you can add users who have viewed multiple products. You can use this list member type while remarketing for ecommerce products or blogs remarketing under similar topic or for real estate, if there are multiple projects by the same developer in the same location.This is only available only on the display network.

Visitors of A Page Who Did Not Visit Another Page

In this list member type, you can add visitors who have visited your website but have not transacted on your site or you can add visitors who have visited your site but haven’t filled up form on your site. Ideal for every business, when you want to remarket users who have not converted on your site.

Visitors of A Page During Specific Dates

In this list member type, you can add visitors who have visited during specific dates. For eg: You can create a list of users who visited your site during Christmas, Diwali, New Year etc and then remarket them in future.

Visitors of A Page With A Specific Tag

This is for people who ran remarketing campaigns sometime back and used different remarketing tags for different web pages on the site.

So from all the 5 list member types, the one which is relevant to my real estate campaign is the third one which is “Visitors of A Page Who Did Not Visit Another Page”, so here’s how I have defined the URL’s after selection.

Creating Remarketing Lists

Step 7:

The next step is to define initial list size. Here Google will try to add visitors from past 30 days to your list. Ideal option to go with is include people form the past 30 days

Remarketing List Size

Step 8:

The next step is to define membership duration. Membership duration is the no of days for which you would like to remarket the users

Remarketing List Membership Duration

I am keeping 60 Days because buying a property is a high involvement product and it takes time for a user to book an apartment.

Step 9:

The next step is defining the description, in the description you can add notes so that you know what the list is about or if your account is managed by multiple users, the other team members can also understand what the list is about. Description is optional, so I am keeping it blank, you can add if you may wish to. Now move ahead and say create audience

Remarketing List Description

Step 10:

Once I click create audience, I can see the list which I created (refer below screenshot) and I can see populating mentioned on the right under Search, YouTube, Display & Gmail.

Remarketing List in Google Ads
When the populating option shows numbers, then the actual visitors are added to the list. Have a look at the below screenshot from another ad account (for reference), where you can see no of visitors in the list under Search, Youtube, Display and Gmail!

Requirement for Remarketing Lists

In order to start display remarketing, your list should at least have 100 visitors.

Step 11:

Once the list is created and you have at least 100 members under that list, you can create a campaign and start remarketing. So let’s create a fresh display remarketing campaign and add the list to the same. My objective of the campaign is to generate leads, so I am selecting leads as my objective while selecting the campaign.

Create Display Remarketing Campaign in Google

Step 12:

Next step is to select the campaign type, which in our case is display as we are doing display remarketing

Creating Display Remarketing Ads

Step 13:

Next step is to select the standard display campaign as we are not looking to do a gmail campaign.

Standard Display Campaign

Step 14:

Next step is to define the name of the campaign, I have defined the campaign name as below, here Propsera is the name of the real estate project

Remarketing Display Campaign Name

Step 15:

The next step is the location option, here you don’t need to actually define location because it’s remarketing, if the users are in different cities, it won’t matter as we are only targeting users who have visited our site, hence I am keeping India as the location.

Display Remarketings Ads Location Settings

Step 16:

The next step is to select the language, I am keeping English as the language, as the users I am targeting are English speaking users who are in the remarketing list

Remarketing Ads Language Setting
Step 17:

The next step is to select your bidding strategy for display remarketing campaign, there are different bidding strategies to choose from in Google Ads including

  • Target CPA
  • Target ROAS
  • Maximize Clicks
  • Maximise Conversions
  • Viewable CPM
  • Manual CPC

To know more about different bidding strategies and which to select – Refer article An Ultimate Guide to Google Ads Bidding Strategies

For our campaign, I am selecting Manual CPC, considering my objective is leads. I am selecting manual CPC because, in this scenario, I would like to remarket users aggressively, so I am going to keep my manual CPC bid high, which will allow me to win maximum bids in the auction and Google will show my ad more often than the other competitors in the auction.

Step 18:

The next step is to select budget, I am keeping a budget of Rs. 500 per day, you can start with Rs. 500 or with $10 per day

Remarketing Ads Budget

You should keep delivery method as standard method because you want to spend your budget evenly throughout the day.

If you go with accelerated delivery method, your budget might exhaust as soon as possible.

Step 19:

The next step is to define Ad Rotation. There are two types of ad rotation as below

  • Optimize best performing ads and
  • Do not optimize: Rotate ads indefinitely

Google Ads Ad Rotation

Always go with the first option which is Optimize Best Performing Ads. Here Google will show that ads to users which is getting maximum interaction.

If you go with Rotate Ads Indefinitely option, Google will give equal opportunity to ads which are not performing, this will impact your performance of the campaign. Hence recommended ad rotation option is to go with Optimize best performing ads.

Step 20:

Next step in the campaign setting is to define Ad Scheduling, you can schedule you ads as per active users.

Google Ads Scheduling Option

I am not defining ad scheduling because I want to remarket users whenever they are online.

Step 21:

The next step is to define start date and end date for your campaign, this you can define basis your requirement, for how long you want to keep the campaign live.

Start Date & End Date in Google Ads

Step 22:

The next step is to define devices. You don’t need to define any devices for remarketing campaign because you are reaching out to users who have visited your site, so it dosen’t matter which device they are active on.

Google Ads Devices Option

Step 23:

The next step is to define frequency capping for your display remarketing campaign. Frequency should be high as you are remarketing to users who have visited your site. I am keeping a frequency capping of 10, which means, one user will see my ad at least 10 times in a day, which is good enough to increase brand recall and brand consideration.

Remarketing Campaign Frequency Capping

Step 24:

The next step is to define content exclusions. I have selected the below content exclusions as I don’t want my ad to show on the below content topics/categories. You can select content exclusions basis your requirement

Content Exclusions in Google Ads

Step 25:

The next step is to define Ad Group name. I have defined it as below as the brand I am going to remarketing is called Prospera

Ad Group in Google Ads

Step 26:

The next step is to select audiences, this is an important step, where we are going to actually define the audience to which we want to remarket to. So select remarketing option, which is the third option

How To Create Display Remarketing Campaign

Step 27:

The next step is to select the audience list which we are going to use in the campaign for remarketing. So I have selected list name as Prospera – Website Visitors, this is the one which I had created (refer step 5 above).

The nos of members is the list can also been seen here itself. We have just created the list so we are not able to see the no of members in the list.

Google Ads Remarketing Campaign

If you have created multiple lists, you will be able to see all the lists here and accordingly use for your campaigns. As I have created only one list in the account, I am able to see only 1 list.

Step 28:

The next step is to define Demographics & Content Targeting. As our campaign is about remarketing, you should completely skip this.

Content Targeting in Google Ads

Step 29:

The next option is to select target expansion. As our campaign is remarketing, you can skip this step.

Google Remarketing Ads Target Expansion

Step 30:

The next step is to define the bid, so you can define a higher bid so that the chances of your ad participating in the auction increases, thus the viewability of your ad increases. I have kept Rs. 30 as my bid, if you are in US spending in dollars, in that case you can see the actual CPC of your display campaign and increase it by at least 50%

Remarketing Ads Bid Setting

Step 31:

The next option in settings is dynamic ads, as we are doing standard display remarketing, so you can skip this option as well! This is used for Dynamic Remarketing & Dynamic Display Ads.

Google Dynamic Ads Setting

Step 32:

The next step is setting up a display ad copy. I am uploading an ad copy because it helps me to define the design layout as per my requirement compared to responsive ads.

Won’t recommend responsive ads because Google will auto create ads with specific design layouts using your landing page images & logo. You can then define the headline and description in the responsive ad copies.  

Google Remarketing Display Ad

So I have uploaded an ad copy as below and yes, my remarketing campaign is now ready to go live.

Google Display Remarketing Ad Creation

Google will now review my ad copy, which will take a few hours and post that my Google display remarketing campaign will be live!

Conclusion:

Google Display Remarketing Campaigns are one of the most effective types of display campaigns in Google Ads. The success of the remarketing campaign will depend on what communication you are showing to the users in the remarketing journey which will entice them to come back and consider your brand! Create your display remarketing campaign today and let me know how it performs!