How To Set Up A Dynamic Remarketing Campaign? A Pro Guide For Retailers

Sidra Shah 
12 min read

Did you know online ads can reach over 90% of internet users? That’s a massive audience! Dynamic remarketing harnesses this power by showing personalized ads to people who already browsed your online store.

It acts like a gentle nudge, reminding them about those cool products they saw. It’s a fantastic way to turn window shoppers into happy customers!

Related Article: Avoid these 7 Remarketing Mistakes for Maximum Impact

Here’s the exciting part: setting up retargeting campaigns can revolutionize your retail business. Dynamic remarketing, a powerful technique within retargeting, specifically targets potential customers.

Jump to:

Personalized Ads for Your Retail Business

Why Dynamic Remarketing is a Win for Your Retail Business (and Your Budget)

Setting Up Dynamic Remarketing For Your Retail Business in Google Ads

Step 1: Sign Up for Google Ads (if you haven’t already)

Step 2: Adding Products to the Google Merchant Center

Step 3: Incorporating the Data Layer for Dynamic Remarketing

Step 4: Setting Up a Google Ads Remarketing Tag within GTM

Step 5: Customize Your Remarketing Tag Dynamically

Step 6: Set Up Trigger Events for Dynamic Remarketing

Wrap Up!

This guide dives into best practices for implementing dynamic remarketing in retail businesses. By following these guidelines, you’ll build a strong foundation for creating a dynamic remarketing campaign in Google Ads. This translates to reaching your target audience with personalized ads, boosting brand visibility, and ultimately driving conversions (sales!).

Personalized Ads for Your Retail Business

Let’s say a customer browses your online store and checks out some amazing products but gets sidetracked before making a purchase. They might forget all about those cool items they saw.

This is where dynamic remarketing for retail comes in. It’s a smart advertising technique that lets you reconnect with these potential customers by showing them personalized ads featuring the very products they browsed or even added to their cart.

Here’s how it works:

  • Tracking website behavior

When someone visits your online store, their browsing activity is tracked anonymously. This includes things like what products they looked at, what they added to their cart, and even how long they spent on each page.

  • Creating personalized ads

Based on this browsing data, Google Ads can create custom ads specifically for each user. These ads will showcase the products they showed interest in, making them highly relevant and more likely to grab their attention.

  • Reaching a massive audience

The beauty of dynamic remarketing is its reach. These personalized ads can be displayed across a huge network of websites and apps that partner with Google, including popular platforms like YouTube and Gmail. This means you can reconnect with potential customers wherever they go online, reminding them about the great products they found in your store.

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Now that you have fully grasped dynamic remarketing let’s explore what it means for your retail business and the perks it offers.

Why Dynamic Remarketing is a Win for Your Retail Business (and Your Budget)

Dynamic remarketing isn’t just a fancy term – it’s a powerful tool that can boost your retail business.

  • Recapturing lost interest

Let’s face it: online shopping can be full of distractions. Someone might browse your store, fill their cart with amazing finds, and then get pulled away before checking out. Dynamic remarketing swoops in to remind them about those cool products they were eyeing.

  • Personalization

Gone are the days of generic ads. Dynamic remarketing uses website behavior to create custom ads for each user. This means they’ll see the exact products they interacted with, making the ads super relevant and more likely to spark their interest again.

  • Boosting brand awareness

Even if someone doesn’t click on your ad right away, seeing your brand pop up on different websites reminds them you exist. This repeated exposure keeps your store top-of-mind, increasing brand recognition and potentially leading them back to your site later.

  • Cost-effective advertising

Dynamic remarketing offers a budget-friendly advantage. The average cost per click (CPC) for dynamic remarketing falls between $0.66 and $1.23, which is considerably lower than the typical $1 to $2 CPC for standard display and search ads. This allows you to reach a wider audience and stretch your advertising budget further.

Read also: 9 Tips to Run Google’s Local Service Ads Like An Expert

You can reconnect with potential customers, personalize their shopping experience, and potentially increase sales – all while keeping your advertising costs reasonable. It is a win-win campaign for both you and your potential customers!

Setting Up Dynamic Remarketing For Your Retail Business in Google Ads

Ready to harness the power of dynamic remarketing for your retail business? Here’s a straightforward breakdown to get you started:

Step 1: Sign Up for Google Ads (if you haven’t already)

To begin setting up dynamic remarketing through Google Tag Manager (GTM), the first step is to establish a Google Ads account. If you haven’t already, visit the Google Ads homepage and navigate through the prompts to create your account. You’ll be asked to fill in some details about your business, including your website URL and business location.

Creating a Google Ads account is straightforward, requiring basic business information. Once set up, you can proceed with implementing a remarketing campaign through GTM, leveraging the data collected from your website to deliver personalized ads to potential customers. This targeted approach enhances the likelihood of attracting users back to your site and encouraging them to complete a purchase.

Step 2: Adding Products to the Google Merchant Center

Setting up dynamic remarketing in Google Ads involves several key steps, and one of the initial ones is creating a product feed. A product feed acts as a comprehensive spreadsheet containing essential details about your products, such as prices, images, and descriptions. This data is crucial for Google Ads to understand which products customers are interested in and to deliver targeted ads effectively.

Read this article to create a product feed for your store: 2024 Latest Guide For Google Shopping Ads 

Creating a product feed is a manageable process. You can utilize a standard spreadsheet or CSV file to organize your product data, which you then upload to the Google Merchant Center. This ensures that Google Ads can access accurate product information, facilitating the creation of dynamic remarketing campaigns that resonate with your audience.

Although compiling a product feed might seem overwhelming, especially for businesses with extensive product catalogs, there are streamlined approaches available. E-commerce platforms like Shopify and WordPress (with WooCommerce) offer functionalities to simplify the process of adding products to the Merchant Center.

For example, Shopify offers an API method for seamless integration between your store and the Merchant Center, enabling automatic synchronization of product data. This eliminates the need for manual data entry and ensures that your product information is always up-to-date.

Similarly, with WooCommerce, you can leverage Schema.org structured data for rich results, allowing the Merchant Center to crawl your website and retrieve product details without the need for a traditional feed. This feature enhances efficiency and ease of setup for e-commerce businesses looking to implement dynamic remarketing with Google Ads.

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It’s imperative to note that linking your Merchant Center account to your Google Ads account is essential to ensure that Google Ads can utilize your product feed effectively in dynamic remarketing campaigns. This connection informs Google Ads of the availability of your product feed, enabling seamless integration into your remarketing strategy.

Step 3: Incorporating the Data Layer for Dynamic Remarketing

Integrating the Data Layer into your website is crucial for setting up dynamic remarketing. The Data Layer contains specific information about products viewed by users on your site, such as product IDs (aligned with those in your Merchant Center feed), values, and page categories. This data is then transmitted to your remarketing tag and subsequently to Google Ads.

To transmit this information to Google Ads, an event is triggered when a user interacts with your website. While the complete event snippet code doesn’t automatically appear in your tracking tools, you can install the Data Layer to push relevant product data from your website to it.

For example, if a user views multiple products on your site, the event snippet code captures the product IDs and values. The Data Layer then sends this data to Google Ads, enabling the creation of dynamic remarketing campaigns that target users with the products they’ve shown interest in.

Event names within your Data Layer code are essential as they denote the specific event being tracked. For instance, using the “add_to_cart” event tracks when a user adds a product to their cart. Choosing the appropriate event name is crucial as Google Ads utilizes it to categorize users into automatically generated user lists.

Assuming you’ve already installed Google Tag Manager, the next step is to implement the customized Data Layer code for your website.

Step 4: Setting Up a Google Ads Remarketing Tag within GTM

  • Log in to Google Tag Manager

Access your Google Tag Manager account.

  • Navigate to the Tags Section

Click on “Tags” in the left-hand menu.

  • Create a New Tag

Click on the red “New” button.

  • Name Your Tag

Assign a name to your new tag for easy identification.

  • Choose Tag Configuration

Click on the tag configuration section and select “Google Ads Remarketing” from the list of tag types.

  • Enter Google Ads Conversion ID

Retrieve your Google Ads conversion ID from your Google Ads account. In Google Ads, go to “Tools & Settings”> “Audience Manager” under Shared Library > “Your Data Sources”> “Google Ads Tag.” If you haven’t set up a tag already, you’ll be prompted to do so. Once on the Google Ads Tag page, scroll to the bottom, click “Tag setup,” and select “Use Google Tag Manager.” Copy the Conversion ID and paste it into the Conversion ID section of your Google Ads Remarketing Tag in GTM.

  • Enable Dynamic Remarketing

Check the “Send dynamic remarketing event data” option.

  • Save and Publish

Save your tag configuration and publish your changes in Google Tag Manager.

By following these steps, you’ll successfully set up a Google Ads Remarketing Tag in Google Tag Manager, enabling you to enhance your marketing efforts with dynamic remarketing.

Step 5: Customize Your Remarketing Tag Dynamically

  • Select the Event Variable

Within your Google Tag Manager (GTM) account, choose the predefined variable “Event,” which is represented by a gear icon.

  • Add Event Value

Click on the “+” icon next to the event value text box.

  • Create Data Layer Variable for Event Value:
    • Click on the plus sign located in the top right corner of the screen.
    • Name the variable.
    • Choose “Data Layer Variable” as the variable type.
    • Assign the appropriate name from your site’s code to the Data Layer Variable (e.g., “market” if that’s the name used in your Data Layer code).
  • Fill Event Items Field:
    • Locate the items array in the Data Layer.
    • Retrieve it using a Data Layer Variable similar to the process for the event value.
    • Click on the “Event Products” dropdown menu.
    • Choose the option labeled “New Variable” and name it.
    • Select “Data Layer Variable” as the variable type.
    • Assign the appropriate name from your site’s code to the Data Layer Variable (e.g., “products” if that’s the name used in your Data Layer code).

By following these steps, you’ll make your Google Ads Remarketing Tag dynamic. This will allow you to leverage custom parameters for dynamic remarketing events and enhance the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

Step 6: Set Up Trigger Events for Dynamic Remarketing

  • Define Trigger Events

Your objective is to activate the Remarketing Tag based on specific events like product views, searches, category list views, adding to cart, or purchases. Start by enabling the “Use regex matching” option, allowing for the use of an “or” function with a pipe symbol. Copy all predefined event names from Google’s documentation and separate them with the pipe symbol.

  • Create Custom Event Trigger

Develop a custom event trigger that will activate only when these predefined events occur. Name the trigger accordingly and save it.

  • Ensure Comprehensive Retargeting

Consider setting up a standard remarketing tag alongside the dynamic remarketing tag for maximum retargeting coverage and flexibility in audience creation.

  • Create a new Remarketing Tag in GTM using the same conversion ID as the dynamic Remarketing Tag but without adding any custom Data Layer events.
  • Set the trigger to fire on all pages except where the dynamic Remarketing Tag is triggered.
  • Add “custom – remarketing events” as an exception to the trigger.

By following these steps, you’ll effectively create a trigger in Google Tag Manager for your new dynamic Remarketing Tag, ensuring that it activates precisely when predefined events occur and maximizing retargeting coverage for your campaigns.

Wrap Up!

Congratulations! You’ve unlocked the potential of dynamic remarketing for your retail business. By now, you’ve laid the groundwork to reconnect with interested customers, showcase personalized product recommendations, and ultimately drive sales.

Remember, dynamic remarketing is an ongoing process. As you gain experience, you can fine-tune your campaigns to maximize their effectiveness. Need a hand navigating the exciting world of Google Ads and PPC (pay-per-click) advertising? Contact Ad Labz, your trusted Google Ads and PPC agency. We’ll help you leverage the power of dynamic remarketing and other advertising strategies to take your retail business to the next level!

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