Audience lists (PPC)

What Google Audiences data can’t tell you

When it comes to defining your ideal user persona, the demographics and interests reports look like a good starting point. But that’s just on the surface.

We already explained why audience reports are always going to be incomplete, given that Google uses third-party cookies to make assumptions about a user’s gender, age, and interests.

But let’s say you could rely on the data completely, and you know for sure that 27% of your goal conversions come from women aged 35-44 that use an iPhone… …now what? You still don’t know:

• Why they came to your site
• What they were looking for
• What really influences their buying decisions

You can make some general guesses about how to market to them or guide them through the funnel, but people’s behavior is not so easily generalized.

In other words, if you only rely on GA audience data, you’re probably making quite a few assumptions, and that will cost you money in the long term.

How to Set up a Website Remarketing List in Google Ads

Before you can create your first remarketing campaign in Google Ads, you’ll need to create a website remarketing list.

Step 1. Sign in to your Google Ads account

Head to Google Ads and log in. Simple stuff.

Step 2. Navigate to Google Ads Audiences

Click the “Tools & Settings” icon in the top menu bar and click on “Shared Library”. Alternatively, use the search bar to locate the shared library.

This section of Google Ads contains three core elements: “Audiences”, “Campaign Negative Keywords” and “Campaign Placement Exclusions”. Google Ads Audiences is where you can set up your remarketing lists. From here, you can view any previously created audiences and create new ones. You can also view the retargeting code and check that it is installed on all your relevant pages.

Step 3. Access the New Audience: Website Visitors List

Click on “Audience Manager” and then “Audience Lists”. To add a new user list of people who have visited your website, click the blue “+” button and select “website visitors”.

Step 4. Create a New Website Visitors List

The page that opens will look like this:

First of all, enter a name for your list in the “Audience Name” field. Some businesses create many different audiences, so make sure that the audience name clearly describes the users it includes. For example, you might create a “Homepage List” to include all users who have visited the homepage.

Next, click on the “List members” drop-down menu and select a template. You can choose to include any user who visited a specific page or you can set additional criteria, such as “Visitors of a page during specific dates” or “Visitors of a page who visited another page”.

In the “Visited Page” section, you can set rules that will dictate whether a user is added to the list or not. Choose “Match any rule group” or “Match every rule group” from the drop-down menu and set your rules. You might want to only include pages that contain a certain keyword, for example. Text, numbers or dates can be added to the free text field, and you can create additional and/or rules using the blue buttons.

In the “Initial List Size” section, choose to start with an empty list or include people from the last 30 days.

Finally, enter the number of days you want people to remain on this list. This is a free text field and you can keep people on each list for a maximum of 540 days.

If you expect to have a large number of different audiences or several similar audiences with minor differences for specific marketing objectives, it’s a good idea to add an audience description, although this is optional.

When you’re happy with the new audience list, click “Create Audience”.