Google Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA)

Remarketing Lists For Search Ads: 

I recently attended a Google Engage for Agencies session about Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA). Here is a quick overview of what it's all about, how to implement it and most importantly why you would want to.

Here's Google's definition of RLSA:

RLSA helps you optimise your search campaigns by tailoring your ads towards previous website visitors, increasing the chance of serving the right ad to the right user at exactly the right moment. RLSA is the first time you can use your audience data in Google Search campaigns, meaning you can adjust your bids to reconnect and re-engage your most valuable prospects as they continue searching on Google.

In other words, you use RLSA to display a different ad to someone that has already been on your website when they search again on Google. You could serve one ad to people that have never been to your site, another to people that have been to your site but not converted and another to people who have been to your site and converted. You could also bid on more generic keywords just for people that had been to your site.

Let's use Google’s example of promoting a shoe shop. Normally, having 'shoes' on Broad match is going to waste a lot of money and accrue a lot of irrelevant clicks and impressions. However, having 'shoes' on Broad match only eligible to trigger to people that have already been to your site will just encourage them to convert in your cart rather than in your competitor's. Having 'shoes' on Broad match showing to people that have previously bought from you - that's almost guaranteeing repeat business!

It's set up using your All Visitors Remarketing list set up in Adwords - currently RLSA does not support Analytics-based Remarketing. Once you have collected the minimum list size (1000 visitors) you can then start using the Audience.

Try duplicating your existing campaign in its entirety - use one to target new visitors (New Acquisition Campaign) and one to target returning visitors (Returning Visitors Campaign). This will allow you to see how many people come back to your site via Adwords and allow you to separate your budget to weight it towards gaining first time visits or towards attracting returning visitors.

Using the shoe shop example from above, here is how you might run your two campaigns:

New Acquisition

Shoe shop brand name - 50p Max CPC

'Shoe shop' + specific location keywords - 75p Max CPC

Product specific keywords - £1 - £3 Max CPC

Advert displaying USP's

  

Returning Visitors

Shoe shop brand name - 75p Max CPC

'Shoe shop' + specific location keywords - 75p Max CPC

'Shoe shop' keywords - 75p Max CPC

'Shoes' on Broad match - 75p Max CPC

Product specific keywords - £2 - £4 Max CPC

Advert displaying 10% discount code

You could take this one step further and create a list of people that have converted - a great cross-selling or loyalty promotion opportunity. You could create a third campaign for Returning Converted Visitors and have the Audiences set up like this:

New Acquisition

- All Visitors

Returning Visitors

+ All Visitors

- Converted Visitors

Converted Visitors

+ All Visitors

+ Converted Visitors

So why use this? Based on a Google study, Advertisers that used RLSA have on average seen these results:

·         48% lower CPA compared to the rest of their search spend

·         An increase in Return on Ad Spend of up to 250%

·         An increased CTR of up to 145% comparing tailored ad messaging versus the original campaigns

·         An average of 12% incremental conversions

Being able to identify previous visitors and to segment them out from new business acquisition is a revolutionary step forward – the example given above is very basic and does not showcase the full potential of RLSA. I believe this will allow advertisers to spend their budget more effectively, and is just one of many audience-based targeting options we will see released over the coming months.