Remarketing in Google Ads: A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners

I'm a bitter salesperson today. Bad mood. No deals the whole of March.

So I will teach you something bad.

For instance, how to make Google stalk your leads for months or so.

You pay, and they will have to. It's annoying, but it works.

It all starts with setting up a remarketing tag.

A remarketing tag, or Google tag, is a special piece of code added to website pages to track user actions.

To set up a remarketing tag:

1. Sign in to your Google Ads account.
2. Go to Your data sources: Tools > Shared library > Audience manager > Your data sources.
3. Click the three-dot menu on the Google Ads tag card and select Edit data source.

This will display blocks of information that the tag should collect. For standard remarketing, it's enough to select the first one. If it's not an active option, as shown in the screenshot, leave the second one selected.  

The User ID block is available if the ad account meets Google's requirements for working with email lists. Key requirements include:

• Compliance with the platform rules.
• Use of the advertiser account for more than 90 days.
• Total spend of $50,000 USD or more.

If this option applies to you, select it. Otherwise, skip it and click Save and continue.

This will take you to the Tag setup section, where you have three options for setting up the tag: 

1. Set the tag manually. 
2. Send the tag via email. 
3. Use Google Tag Manager (GTM).

If you have the skills to work with website code, you can choose to set the tag manually.

The Email the tag option is for those who work with a website developer. To send the tag to the specialist, enter their email address and click Save and continue. 

To set a remarketing tag using GTM, you need a conversion ID and detailed instructions on setting it up. These are displayed on the tab of the corresponding option.

Keep this page open — you'll need it for the next steps.

How to add a remarketing tag with GTM

To install the tag on your website:

1. Open the Google Tag Manager container connected to your site in the next tab. 

If you don't have GTM, here's the Google support page on creating an account and a container.

1. Create the Conversion Linker tag. Go to Tags > Google Ads > Conversion Linker in the Google Tag Manager container to do this.

This tag requires no additional settings. Go to Triggering, select All Pages, and click Save.

You are now ready to create a remarketing tag. 

1. Go to Tags. 
2. Click New in the right corner and select Google Ads and Google Ads Remarketing. 

1. Go back to your ad account and go to the tag setup page. Copy it and paste the conversion ID from your account.

1. Change the tag name and add the All Pages trigger to track users regardless of which pages they visit. 

1. Click Save. 

Use the preview to verify that the remarketing tag is set on all pages of the site. To do this:

1. Go to the Tags menu and select Preview.

1. Your site will automatically open in preview mode. Preview a few pages of your site and return to the Tag Assistant tab. 

If the tag works, you have done everything correctly and can submit the container. 

In the workspace, click Submit for all your settings to go through. 

To finish setting the tag, go back to the Tag setup of your Ads account and click Continue.

A message on the screen will ask you to verify that the tag is working correctly. Click Done. 

Next, go to the page to review your preliminary settings: Tools > Shared Library > Audience Manager > Your data sources. 

To check that the data is being transferred to your ad account:

1. Go to Audience manager > Your data sources. 
2. Go to Google Ads tag > click Details.

This section displays statistics for data source visits or traffic to the website. Select Data source hits to view the statistics.

Setting up remarketing audiences

Now, you can move on to creating a list of remarketing audiences to target with your ads. To do this, you'll need to create an audience segment that includes visitors to a specific section of your website. 

In your Google Ads account, go to Tools > Shared library > Audience manager > Your data segments. 

Click on the + sign to create a new audience.

Select Website visitors to create a remarketing audience based on users who visit your website. 

On the Segment setup page, follow these steps:

1. Give the audience a name and specify the characteristics or conditions that the audience must meet. This can include visiting specific pages or other criteria.
2. Set the membership duration, which determines how long the user remains in the audience after completing the specified actions.
3. To specify which audience to include in this list, click Refine action and add a web page URL. This could be a page with a promotional offer, a specific product category, or information about an upcoming event.

By default, you can add site visitors from the last 30 days, with a maximum of 540 days available.

If you want this list to include visitors to the specified page, select Pre-fill options.

And if you want to start from scratch, select Start with an empty segment. 

Click Create segment and complete the audience creation process. 

If the list status is Open, the audience is being collected according to the configured criteria.

This audience list can be used in Demand Gen and video campaigns.

Next, I'll show you how to set up a standard display ad campaign for remarketing. 

Setting up a classic display campaign for remarketing

Follow these steps to create a standard remarketing campaign:

1. Go to your Google Ads account and click the "+" sign in the upper left corner.

1. Select the goal that best fits your ad campaign.   

1. Select Display as the campaign type.

1. Select a conversion goal that matches the campaign's purpose. If the list of conversion goals includes any that do not match the purpose of the campaign, click the three-dot menu to the right of the conversion goal name and delete it.

1. Enter the URL of the page you want the user to go to when they click your ad.

1. Enter a name for the ad campaign and click Continue.

1. Set up geotargeting and the browser language of your target audience.

1. Select a bidding strategy and set a budget. The budget determines how often your ads are shown and how visible they are. The bidding strategy you choose decides how the campaign will spend the budget you set.

1. In the Targeting section, type the name of the remarketing audience you want to use in the search box. Then select it. This way, the campaign will only target the user segment you specify. 

1. In the Ads step, add headlines, descriptions, and creatives to encourage users to return to your site and perform the desired action.
2. In the Review step, review your campaign settings. If you need to change anything, click Edit.
3. Click the Publish campaign button.

Done.