For many companies, remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA) can represent a significant stream of revenue. Since their debut in 2012 they’ve grown steadily in popularity, in no small part due to their ability to connect with prospects already aware of their brand. Online buyers take notice of retargeted ads, and are more likely to buy. While the format raises questions surrounding incremental value, its benefits can’t be ignored.
Only about half of all brands have a dedicated budget for remarketing campaigns. If you’re only using RLSA to adjust your bids, keywords, and text ads—there is a good chance that you are falling short of your potential.
Most eCommerce companies that use RLSA see positive results. However, they’re often forced to keep it just a small part of their overall budget. Why, exactly? Because they can’t consistently produce the impressions needed to dedicate more resources to those campaigns. For RLSA ads to become a significant piece of your search marketing operations, you have to find a reliable way to grow your remarketing lists…and generate impressions through those campaigns.
How Do Remarketing Lists for Search Ads Work?
RLSA ads give eCommerce companies the ability to target customers that have already visited their website and are aware of their brand. These are typically extremely profitable ads. After all, you don’t have to spend the time building awareness. What’s more, the users may already be aware of specific products that they offer. Typically, this leads to dramatic spikes in click-through and conversion rates for ads using RLSA. In fact, many RLSA ads see results that are two to three times higher than traditional ads. Click-through rates can be as much as 10 times higher than a typical display ad.
Combine RLSA With Audience-Driving Campaigns
Since RLSA ads are more profitable than standard search ads, they lend themselves well to companies that have lower budgets. In fact — provided they have big enough remarketing lists—some eCommerce companies may be able to get by using RLSA ads alone.
But companies that lean heavily on RLSA will find that they run into a very common problem—they just aren’t able to drive the impressions required to facilitate the results that they were hoping for. To remedy this problem, try creating campaigns in broad search or display that only have the goal of growing your RLSA lists. You can use social media ads to grow those lists as well.
The idea is to use these cheap ads to grow your RLSA audience. They come to your website, a cookie is placed, and your RLSA list grows. Some of those visitors may even purchase a product, but that’s an added side benefit of the campaign.
Using these feeder campaigns to grow your RLSA lists isn’t just a one-time strategy. You can consistently use them to keep your RLSA stocked with new users to drive your campaigns. While it does add another wrinkle to measuring your campaigns’ ROI, RLSA ads are generally cheap enough to make the extra feeder campaign worth it.
Combine RLSA With Demographic & Keyword Bidding
Another very powerful strategy used to bolster RLSA campaigns is to combine RLSA with demographic bidding. Google’s demographic bidding options are highly detailed. They provide you with lots of ways to launch creative campaigns, and allow you to adjust your bids when you want to target by gender or age groups. When combined with keyword bidding, you can laser-target qualified buyers…and avoid wasting your budget on customers unlikely to be interested in your products.
Consumers on your RLSA lists are further down the purchase funnel. Combining demographic and keyword bidding to hit your target market gives you laser-targeted impressions with extremely high conversion rates.
Try fusing this strategy with our earlier tip (to create “feeder” campaigns to fill out your RLSA lists). It can help you grow your impressions for these campaigns.
A Highly Profitable Strategy
By their nature, RLSA provide higher conversion rates and returns for eCommerce companies. The biggest question is whether you can generate enough traffic to make it a bigger part of your strategy.
