Google Analytics Remarketing Lists Beta: Quick Start Guide

Google AdWords (AW) Remarketing has been a brilliant tool from the outset, but let’s not kid ourselves – it’s a bit of a chore to set up.

You have to generate yet another tracking code, tag various pages on your site with it and wait for those pixels to gather precious user cookies.

Google – knowing we all hate continually adding new tracking pixels to our webpages and waiting for things – created a better way to do Remarketing: tapping into your Google Analytics (GA) cookie base!

The code’s already on your site, so why not use that?!

What is the Remarketing Lists Beta?

I will try to do as little re-hashing as possible, as our friends at PPC Hero have already given us a nice little look at how to enable it from the GA side.

But there are a few features in this Beta that are particularly awesome. Plus, I’ll show you where to find the Lists you create in AW – for those of you who don’t necessarily spend your days obsessing over your PPC campaigns.

Where do I create the Remarketing Lists?

Hit up the Admin tab in the upper right-hand corner of your GA interface.

The Remarketing Lists tab can be found on the far right.

Types of Remarketing Lists

You can create three types of lists. All of which are awesome, only some of which might be useful depending on your – or the user’s – intent.

Lists that target all your visitors:

Lists that target specific page visits:

Lists that target visitors who took a certain action:

Estimating Remarketing List Sizes

This, though, is my favorite feature of the beta – determining roughly how many people your list will stalk around the internet reach before you even make it.

With AdWords Remarketing, you can’t understand the potential reach of the tags you generate until you’re already gathering cookies.

But with Google Analytics Remarketing Lists, you’ll know before you start!

Play around with the membership duration to realize just how many more people you can grab over time:

Finalizing your Remarketing List

To wrap everything up, choose the AdWords account you’d like to be the recipient of this new list:

Accessing your Remarketing Lists from AdWords

But that’s only one half of the puzzle. To find and access this list once you port it to AW, click on the Campaigns tab:

Then start a new Campaign for Display Network Only:

Name your campaign something to distinguish it from your other Display network campaigns (Pro Tip: Put ” – Remarketing” at the end of it.)

Then, finally, you can choose your GA Remarketing List to target in the ad group creation screen:

Click add to the list and you’ll see it in your Selected audiences:

Lastly, create your ads. I’m making one for Sexy Timepieces, but you can make ones for whatever product you sell:

Phew! Now that’s behind you and you can access performance data from your Remarketing List via the Display Network tab under Interests & Remarketing.

Enjoy this new feature, guys! Use it, abuse it.

And not just because I say so, but because it works. Our clients typically see between a 300-400% boost in Conversion Rate using Remarketing on the Google Display Network compared to just Standard Ads there.