Do you have a limited AdWords budget? Are you searching for ways of driving more leads and sales for your website from Google search text ads? Then, you need to set up AdWords remarketing lists for search ads.What is RLSA in AdWords?Remarketing lists for search ads or RLSA enables those who use AdWords target the past visitors with the help of search network text ads. Besides, being a more sophisticated targeting method, RLSAs allows driving more leads and sales from users who have already visited your website but didn’t complete what you want them to (we mean conversion, of course).Do you think that Google AdWords search remarketing works just the same as display remarketing? The techniques are different. Indeed, both of them share the same core functionality.
They place cookies on the previously visited website to target paid advertising better. However, here the similarities come to an end. To see your display remarketing ad, previous visitors need to enter the websites that are part of Google’s display network. With RLSAs, users need to search for your target keywords actively on Google to see your ad.Why is RLSA Google AdWords awesome?While allowing you to increase visibility among people that already know you, your brand and your products/services, RLSAs also let you drive better-qualified leads and sales through paid search.
Use them smart and very soon you will notice that you get more from your ad spend, higher conversion rates and better return on investment in general.How to create a remarketing list?Firstly, you need to have at least 1,000 previous visitors in a Remarketing list to start using RLSAs. Please don’t be scared by the number. These visitors can be from any traffic source and not just PPC. You can check your Google Analytics data to find out how long it will take you to build a list of 1,000 unique visitors.
RLSA best practices/features:1. Think well when bidding on competitor terms and try to be savvy. Bidding on your competitors’ brand and related terms can be a risky game to play.
Here’s how it happens with RLSAs: you can only bid on and display ads to users that have already visited your website. It’s quite understandable that these users already know who you are, but they left your site without converting because they’re considering some other options. Using RLSAs won’t let those users forget about you as they search Google. It will free you from vain efforts spent on new users that are not interested in your services/products.
2. You will be able to exclude the visitors who have already made a purchase. In lots of cases, once a visitor has bought from you, there is no more need to keep advertising your product or service to them. Let’s view an example: say a customer has just acquired a new smartphone and a two-year contract, so it makes no sense to continue bombarding them with ads promoting similar smartphone. RLSAs will help you to exclude previously converted visitors from your list. This means you will save on the unnecessary expenses on ads with irrelevant messages.
It’s much better to target them with ads including more appropriate messages, like up-selling, isn’t it?3. Use RLSAs to up-sell to previously converted visitors. How to create a remarketing list? Yes, you got it right, you can create a remarketing list of previously converted users and target them with text search ads with messages to trigger up-selling with RLSAs. Think about that: the users have already purchased from you, so you won their trust. RLSAs make this process even easier. Do you remember the customer who has purchased a smartphone from you? Maybe they are looking for a case or a pair of earphones for it.
Target ads to the users with messages promoting these relevant products with RLSAs. And don’t forget that you are targeting higher quality users who are more likely to generate a higher conversion rate.4. Do you have a limited budget? Make more with it. It is sometimes really difficult for a marketing manager to persuade a business to invest in AdWords advertising, especially when it’s a road you don’t have a map for. You may have a very small AdWords budget as well and be unable to generate a reasonable return on your advertising expenses.
RLSA Google AdWords can help here.When you are targeting only users who have already visited your website, you’re focusing on higher quality leads instead of investing ad spend to target a wider audience. This means that your ads will show up for longer periods during the day, which potentially means more clicks.How to create RLSA campaign & implement it?Make sure that you have the AdWords remarketing code on your website before sweeping away RLSAs.When the list is created, you need to match it with an existing search network campaign. Below you will find a quick step by step guide on how to add your remarketing list to Ad Groups and start running to RLSAs:Choose an Ad Group within an existing Search Network campaign and click the “Audiences” at the menu on top.2. Select +Remarketing and then select your newly created remarketing list.
3. Select Ad Targeting in the drop down under Targeting, then select Interests & Remarketing at the next window.5.
Now you can click the arrow next to your bank of remarketing lists to add them to your current Ad Group.6. Please note that you have the option to set as Target & Bid or Bid Only before clicking Save at the bottom. If you want your ads to show only to those who are on your list, select Target & Bid. If you select Bid Only, the system will be targeting your ads to the wider audience together with the ones on your remarketing list. If you choose this option, I advise setting bid adjustments on your remarketing audience to set a higher bid for better ads visibility to those who have already visited your site before.
We hope now you know much more about remarketing strategies and will consider using them for boosting the efficiency of your marketing campaigns. Have any more Google AdWords search remarketing tips/thoughts/questions/suggestions? Please leave them in the comments.
