9 Benefits of Remarketing List For Search Ads (RLSA) [With Examples]

There are a lot of ways you can advertise your products with Google ads.

Most of those strategies are implemented with their default settings. 

Likewise, advertisers usually retarget the previous visitors to their website in the display network.

But, they rarely do it in the search network.

In this article, we are going to list the benefits of Remarketing list for search ads (RLSA). Also, give reasons why it is the best practice to base your campaigns around this remarketing method.

RLSA in short

RLSA – remarketing list for search ads – was created in 2013.

Although it has been around for a while, it is one of the most underutilized tools of Google ads.

How does it work?

1) You need to install the remarketing tag on every page of your website.

2) If someone visits your website by clicking your ad on the search engine results page (SERP), the tag adds them to your remarketing list and adds a cookie in their browser.

3) If in the future a visitor from your remarketing list, makes a search query with a keyword that you are targeting, your ads can show up on the Google search results page.

Now, let’s see why it can be one of the most effective or even the best methods you can use to increase your campaign’s performance.

1. High searcher intent

Unlike other remarketing strategies in Google ads, RLSA targets customers who are actively looking for the products or services you sell.

That means your ads can show up at the right time when the previous visitors of your website are looking for products using the keywords that you are targeting. Let’s give an example.

Imagine, you sell shoes in your online store.

Someone made a search query as “Men’s shoes” and your ad showed up on the Google search result page. And he clicked your ad and visited your website. After browsing for some time, he left and decided to check other competitors’ products as well.

Now, this time he searched as “Men’s footwear”, and again with the help of RLSA, your ad retargets this client by offering him a 20 percent discount from his first purchase.     

Because this client knows your brand already and you are offering a great price, he decides to buy from you.

Note: In this example, you should be targeting “Men’s shoes” and “Men’s footwear” keywords in your ads. Otherwise, if the client used other keywords, your ads wouldn’t show up. The reason for that, search ads should be relevant and should meet the searcher’s intent.       

2. Higher Quality Score

Google rewards ad clicks if they are intelligently targeted.

What does it mean?

With remarketing list for search ads, you are retargeting a limited number of people who have only visited your website. And those people are very qualified.

As a result, you are going to have a higher CTR (click-through-rate), which directly impacts your quality score. 

The higher the quality score, the higher your Ad Rank. So, it means you are going to be in a higher position on the search engine results page (SERP).  

3. Cheaper cost

One of the main goals of running your ad campaigns is to keep the costs low. 

This is quite possible if you re-engage your past visitors with RLSA.

There are several ways how it can reduce your costs.

One of them is because of a higher quality score. 

A higher quality score means you can rank at the same position for a given keyword on the SERP with less ad spend than before. So, a lower CPC (cost per click) could be enough, to achieve the same ad rank.

Another reason for cheaper CPC is your cost per acquisition (CPA) drops. Because you are targeting a limited number of clients and converting them doesn’t take many clicks because they are already qualified.

A great example would be Etihad Airways. By using Remarketing list for search ads, they dropped their cost per acquisition (CPA) by 60 percent.

4. Higher ROI and ROAS

Now, comes the next part of the chain.

Higher CTR leads to higher CVR (conversion rate) and combined with lower CPA, it results in a higher ROI.

But, it might not be so exciting, because higher ROI and ROAS doesn’t mean your revenues are increasing, it means they are more than your expenses.  

 To increase your overall revenue, you also need to increase your remarketing list size by bringing new visitors to your website. That means you need to use other strategies as well other than RLSA (More about that in the coming sections).

An example of that would be Virgin Experience Days and Icrossing boost their ROI by 34 percent when implementing Dynamic Search Ads with RLSA.  

5. Targeting specific keywords

If someone visited your site using certain keywords the first time, you can create customized remarketing ads for those who are in your remarketing list with the same or related keywords. As a result, it would increase the relevancy of your ads and overall campaign performance.  

For example, a visitor made a search query with the keyword “Black sports shoes” and clicked your ad. He then can be retargeted with the same “Black sports shoes” or other more specific keywords like, “Black sports shoes for men “or “Black running sneakers for men”. Hence, he can be sent to the appropriate landing pages depending on the keyword type.

Similarly, you can also divide the audiences in your remarketing list even if they used the same keyword before and retarget them with different ads.

For example, 2 people who came to your website with the “Black sports shoes for men” keyword can be retargeted according to their interactions with your website. One of them could reach the Add to cart section and the other one might just browse your website and leave without doing anything.

You wouldn’t want to run the same type of remarketing campaign to both of them, of course. For the one who is more likely to convert, you can offer discounts and create a landing page with cheaper prices. For the second one, you may send it to the general landing page without any discounts.   

That’s why creating separate remarketing ads for different types of keywords or sometimes separate ads for the same keywords, would increase your ad quality.   

6. Targeting more broad keywords

Since you have a limited number of people in your remarketing list, you can bid on more broad keywords. 

At this time, you don’t have to worry about paying a high cost per click because the visitors are already qualified. Additionally, the CPC would be less compared to non-remarketing campaigns, because of the higher quality score.

If you are targeting generic keywords for your remarketing list, then this is how it would look like.

First, visitors come to your website with specific keywords like “PPC marketing agency” and the remarketing tag immediately adds them to your remarketing list.

And later when they make another search on the SERP with generic keywords like “PPC marketing”, your ad can show up again (Providing, you bid high enough for that keyword. Besides, winning the auction can be easier this time).  

This method can also be used by many small businesses, as it doesn’t require a lot of budgets and has a lower risk. 

7. Adjusting the bids

Another benefit of RLSA campaigns is adjusting the bids depending on how likely the customer is close to the purchase.

You can adjust the bids for ads by considering different factors like demographic, pages visited, time on site, keyword type.

While simple customer interactions can be measured with Google ads, to create more advanced remarketing audience segments, it is advisable to use Google analytics.  

Once you have created audience segments with specific rules, you need to exclude them from other audiences as well for not to target them twice.

Let’s see some examples in practice.

Adjusting bids according to pages visited

• For visitors that visited your website 5 times or left the checkout page, you can increase the bids by 20 percent
• For visitors who have visited 1 page without doing any important interaction, you may not change the bids.

Adjusting bids according to Time on side

This type of remarketing audiences can be created using Google analytics.

• If anyone spends more than 5 minutes on your site, you can increase bids by 15 percent
• If anyone spends less than 20 seconds, you can reduce bids by 15 percent (because this ad click might be by chance or your landing page might not be relevant)

Adjusting bids according to demographics

For an e-commerce store, which sells sportswear, the highest demand can come from age groups of 18 – 45. 

• For anyone within 18 – 45, you can increase bids to 15 percent
• For age group between 45 – 65, you can keep the same bidding  
• For people above 65, you can reduce bids by 15 percent 

Again, make sure you exclude these audiences from your main remarketing list.

For example, people who visited your website 5 times should be excluded from All website visitors. In this way, you are going to show a unique ad for every visitor.

These kinds of combinations can also be created by using Custom combination inside the Google ads audience manager.

8. Get the best results from RLSA when combined with Social media

As we know already, Remarketing list for search ads is a great way to increase your conversion rate and ultimately ROI.

But, relying solely on this method of advertising after reaching a certain audience size, would be wrong. Because it stops the flow of new traffic coming into your website and even the number of traffic coming from your existing remarketing list decreases overtime.

Yes, you might get good returns on what you spent. However, your total revenue is going to be very small.  

To run a healthy business, you need to achieve a higher ROI from a growing number of audiences. Therefore, you need to increase your cookie pools constantly by increasing the size of your remarketing list.

There are a lot of ways to bring new visitors to your website. Bringing them through Google ads most of the time can be very expensive.

As your strategy would be converting visitors by using RLSA, you need to find a cheaper way of bringing them to your website. So, bringing new visitors to your website is mainly to increase your remarketing list size rather than convert them.   

What is the cheaper way to feed your remarketing list constantly?

I think one of the best ways to send traffic to your site to feed your remarketing list is using social media ads.

Especially, running Facebook ads can cost you 5 to 10 times less compared to what you spend on Google ads. 

You can run ads to your target audience on Facebook, drive traffic to your website and after capturing new visitors, you can remarket to them on the Google search results. 

Why use RLSA with social media? Because RLSA is a better choice from among other remarketing methods that Google ads offer.

9. Other benefits of Using RLSA

Now, we are going to see some of the benefits of RLSA that are the same as other remarketing methods.

Upselling to converted customers

RLSA can be a great method to upsell to converted customers. Especially, after selling your main product, you can advertise your chipper products through remarketing campaigns.

For example, after selling a laptop, you can remarket products that go with it. Such as protective cases, and special cables, which on their own would be costly to run with standard advertising.       

RLSAs can work in holiday seasons

This feature is enabled using Visitors of a page during specific dates of Google ads when creating Remarketing audience.

You can use this if you have products that are sold well in holiday seasons and remarket them every year. But, you need to set the membership duration to more than 366 to store the cookies of visitors for more than one year.    

For example, if a store sold most of its flowers this year from 8^th to 15^th march in the holiday season, it can retarget those visors the next year again. 

Build stronger connections with your customers

And of course, remarketing helps build stronger connections with your previous customers by constantly reminding them about your brand.

There are some businesses who tried and had success with this approach.

Conclusion

Whether you are a big business or small, Remarketing list for search ads can ease your job by reducing your expenses and increasing profitability.

Combine it with other strategies like social media ads or any other method to attract a constant flow of new traffic, and that would put a step towards skyrocketing your ROI and revenue growth.

What other benefits of RLSA you know?

Let me know in the comments section below…

For any help in your Ads Management, you can contact me through the Contact page.