Schedule your FREE growth strategy session

If your website generates over $15k per month, let’s chat. We’ll discuss your goals and figure out how we can help your business get to its next stage of revenue and growth. (Others charge for this level of consultation.)

Fix your GMC Suspension

We’ve gotten Merchant Center suspensions lifted for our clients with a 100% success rate. We know what we’re doing here.

Client feedback

Mac Steer
Mac SteerSims Direct Owner
Read More
“Almost $4 million in revenue from basically nothing.”
Matt Childs
Matt ChildsWine Stash
Read More
“[They] helped us to more than 10x our conversions while decreasing the amount we're spending on Adwords almost every day.”
Ellen McCaleb
Ellen McCalebHeadwaters Studio
Read More
"My conversion rate went from like 1.83 to over 9%."
Pat Langley
Pat LangleyVaikobi
Read More
“We've been using them for just over a year now and we've had incredible success. We've grown our online business 145% and achieved a ROAS of 4.9. Fantastic return on investment!”
Kristabel
KristabelVerso
Read More
"Our ROI's went from 88% to 275%, which is huge."

Over 1.4 million views and growing fast on YouTube

We’re proud to be helping thousands of ecommerce business owners by giving the most digestible, battle-tested advice to be found online about succeeding with Google Ads.

Be sure to follow our channel to stay in the loop.

Ecommerce

Increase the Reach of Your Ad Spend with RLSA Lists

Remarketing lists for search ads, or RLSA, is a feature in Google Ads that allows advertisers to customize search remarketing campaigns by targeting people who have engaged with their site in the past. The benefit for retailers is that it’s an opportunity to reconnect with qualified buyers using a relatively low-cost PPC strategy. RLSA lists also collect valuable insights and help you go after competitors, with behavior and intent-driven events used to grow your audience and drive conversions. In this article, we’ll look at a few ways that e-commerce brands can benefit by adding RLSA lists to their PPC stack. Let’s have a look:

How RLSA Ads Work

Before we get too deep into using RLSA ads, it’s essential to understand that there are some critical differences between this ad type and traditional remarketing ads. 

Conventional remarketing campaigns serve ads to users any time they’re online, no keyword triggers required. Instead, ads are displayed based on interests, behavior, and other factors. Additionally, these ads are shown to users when they visit YouTube or a Display Network.

As per Google, RLSA ads help you customize search campaigns for past visitors so that your ads will be tailored specifically for them when they’re using Google search or visiting a partner site. Typically, you’ll use them to target high-intent audiences, or past website visitors who have viewed specific product pages or completed a conversion goal.

RLSA lists
Source

There are two main strategies for running standard RLSA campaigns:

Increase Keyword Bids 

Because your RLSA campaigns target a smaller, more qualified group, you can optimize your bids on existing keywords to make sure you reach as many people on your list as possible. For example, you might try raising your bid 30% to target users who abandoned their shopping cart within the last 30 days. 

Go Broad to Boost Sales

You can also bid on keywords that you’d typically skip; because you’re working with a limited pool of users, this is a great opportunity to increase sales by taking a broad approach to your keyword strategy. Again, RLSA lists are made up of qualified audiences, people who have had some interaction with your site in the past. 

What’s great about this arrangement is that you don’t need to worry a whole lot about wasting money on broad search terms, as everyone on your list is already a qualified buyer.  Getting too specific may mean that no one sees your ads at all. Most PPC campaigns should not include bids on generic or broad terms because you’ll inevitably end up paying for irrelevant clicks, but RLSA lists are the exception to the rule. 

Why RLSA Benefits Ad Campaigns

RLSA lists are unique in that they allow advertisers to segment their search campaigns in a really specific way. Further, the smaller customer segments allow marketers to measure results more accurately, thus ensuring that you’re getting a decent ROI on your campaigns. Compared to other types of search marketing, RLSA lists have higher click-through rates and lower costs per acquisition—again, thanks to the familiarity factor. Additionally, those CTRs can lead to better quality scores and lower CPC rates across all campaigns.

You’ll Need 1,000 Members Before You Can Run RLSA Campaigns

What’s the catch? Well, one of the challenges associated with RLSA lists is that you’ll need at least 1,000 members on a remarketing list to get started. As is the case with other AI-based PPC tools like Google’s Smart Bidding strategies, newer advertisers don’t get as many benefits as seasoned PPC pros because they just don’t have enough data to work from. 

You might start with a different page or increase the duration of your marketing list. If you are taking this approach, set the duration of your campaign based on how long Google Analytics predicts it will take to collect enough visitors. Keep in mind that this means 1,000 unique visitors, not multiple sessions from repeat visitors. 

Targeting or Excluding Those Who Have Converted

E-commerce brands can benefit in a big way from using RLSAs to get back in touch with past shoppersCLICK TO TWEET

E-commerce brands can benefit in a big way from using RLSAs to get back in touch with past shoppers. This approach is ideal for advertising other items that this group might like, or subtly letting them know that you’ve got some new items on the site. 

You can also use RLSA ads to exclude past buyers from any ads that promote the items they’ve already purchased. We’ve all been followed around by products we’ve already bought. Regardless of how we felt about those products, it’s obvious that the ad is missing the mark. 

Combine RLSA Lists with Audience Data

Another benefit of RLSA campaigns is that you can layer them with other audience lists. This report from Think with Google looks at how Chrysler combined RLSA lists with Similar Audiences to reach more high-value buyers. Similar Audiences allow advertisers to target new users that share characteristics with your existing customers. 

RLSA lists
Source

You can add audiences by navigating to the Audiences tab in your Google Ads account, then selecting the desired targeting option. 

For more info, Google offers a guide to segmenting your audience with remarketing lists

Source

From there, you can build audiences based on behavior, demographics, and more. 

Keep in mind, you can also collect audience information by enabling the “Observation” option under the “Audiences” tab. This option allows you to collect more data about your users, without limiting the reach of your campaign.

RLSA lists
Source

Drive More Value By Using Social to Fuel Your RLSAs

If you’re only targeting those who have already visited your website, you’re not going to get a ton of new impressions or first-time traffic from running these ads. Although the clicks that you generate are likely to be of a higher quality than they would be with your average search campaign, low search volumes can stand in the way of meaningful growth. 

RLSA lists
Source

To work around the numbers problem, you can use social media ads to increase your audience size and compete for high CPC rates without breaking the bank. To get the ball rolling, you can promote content on channels like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter—if you’re in e-commerce, chances are pretty good that social ads are already “business as usual.”

Once you’ve gathered enough data from your social media reporting tools, you can export an audience list and upload it to Google for remarketing. Here’s some more info about exporting a list from Facebook

Wrapping Up

The bottom line: RLSA lists may be a bit more complex than your average PPC campaign, but they’re ideal for getting qualified leads to convert and for bringing valuable insights into your Google Ads dashboard.  

Thanks to the lack of competition for the super-specific segments that it facilitates, RLSA campaigns really shine when it comes to targeting previous visitors with high-intent keywords that would otherwise eat up your entire marketing budget.

With that said, if you’re overwhelmed just thinking about juggling various audience lists with Facebook data and intent-based segments that drill down to the page, you might want to outsource your PPC campaign management. Key PPC works exclusively with e-commerce stores, helping them scale using data-backed strategies. Contact us today to learn more about how we can set you up for growth.

Share this article:

Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Post Type Selectors
page
post

'How To Write Successful
Google Ads'

Google Ad Ebook Cover
    We are committed to protecting your privacy, as described in our Privacy policy.
    Sam single blog pages

    I hope you enjoy reading this article.

    If you want us to help you scale up your ecommerce business, book a free strategy call.

    Subscribe to Our Newsletter to Improve Your eCommerce Digital Marketing!

    Thank you for your interest in our newsletters. We will send you only the most important news and updates. No spam, we promise.

    We are committed to protecting your privacy, as described in our Privacy policy.

    What’s your goal today?

    1. Hire us to grow your ecommerce store

    We’ve generated millions for our clients, using the methods we’ve developed over years with a singular focus on Google Ads for ecommerce. To discover how we can help grow your business:

    Claim your FREE website strategy session with one of our renowned experts.

    2. Learn & develop your ecommerce skills

    Watch our highly regarded YouTube channel, followed by over 23,000 store owners and ecommerce learners from around the world.

    You can also subscribe to our weekly email newsletter to get real-world tested growth and optimization strategies, as well as notifications on anything you may need to know as an ecommerce store owner.

    Browse our blog, written and structured to be the best resource in the world for anyone starting and growing their online store. It includes strategy guides, setup instructions, checklists, and tools.

    Explore our KeyCompendium, which is a comprehensive wiki of digital marketing terms. Many readers have commented on the usefulness of this content.

    3. Join our team

    If you want to join our team—or discover why our team members love working with KeyCommerce—then see our “Careers” page.

    4. Contact us

    We help ecommerce store owners around the world, so get in touch!