Dynamic Retargeting Ads 101: Pro Tips Not to Miss the Mark

A big portion – around 97% of your website’s first-time visitors exit the website without making a purchase. 

That’s too much traffic going to waste. So, how do you make them come back and make the purchase? 

You use or should start using dynamic retargeting ads, which helps boost conversion by 43%

Dynamic retargeting Google ads is the tactic of using paid ads to reach out to potential customers who have already visited your website and have shown interest in your products or services. 

As people usually need gradual exposure to a product or service before they decide to buy, retargeting ads help remind them of their previous interests and nudge them toward making the purchase.

This guide, carefully curated by Camel Digital’s SaaS PPC agency based on 5+ years of experience and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on testing PPC strategies, will navigate you through…

  • the basics of Google dynamic retargeting ads
  • difference between static and dynamic retargeting ad types
  • pro tips to craft a working dynamic retargeting ads strategy for your business

What is Dynamic Retargeting Advertising and Why Should You Care About It?

Dynamic retargeting ads deliver personalized ads to potential customers who have already interacted with your business online. The content of those ads is intent-based, relying on actions your potential customer has already taken on your website. 

For example, you set a retargeting ad based on the most recent product or service page a user has viewed on your website. In contrast to the standard retargeting ads, which will include general messaging about your brand and usually aim to increase brand awareness, Google dynamic retargeting ads will show the user the exact product they have previously viewed, with the custom messaging and CTA for that particular product.

So, the key goal of dynamic retargeting ads is to drive users through the sales funnel from consideration to decision. The key benefits of using these ads include the following. 

Static Retargeting vs Dynamic Retargeting

At its core, static and dynamic retargeting Google ads are a diversified approach to re-engaging with your audience. But the main difference lies in the personalization level and the narrowness of targeting. 

  • Static retargeting usually chases certain groups of the target audience and sets a group of ads for them based on which page they have previously visited. For example, there may be 3 to 4 ads that activate based on some key triggers – users read an article on your website, visited the pricing page of your product, or have bounced off specific high-value pages. The content of static retargeting ads remains the same for the group of users and doesn’t change based on their exact previous actions. 
  • Dynamic retargeting is a more personalized type of approach where the ads target each individual, not the group of people. For dynamic retargeting ads, you need to use a more sophisticated technology of machine learning because tiny details of user behaviors should be analyzed to show them tailored ads. The more data you have on your users, the more personalized ads your ad platform can produce. This, in turn, maximizes the likelihood of conversions. 

4 Types of Dynamic Retargeting Google Ads

Dynamic remarketing ad types work differently based on their ability to react to your user’s micro-behavior on your website. Talking in a non-technical way, you can set up ads for as many small triggers as you want. 

For example, you can decide to show the ad to those who have added items to the cart, summing up to more than $200; meanwhile, specify that from those $200, half should be the items of one category and the other half, the items of a different category. 

Let’s discuss the four most common dynamic remarketing ads to use today. 

Search Remarketing Campaigns

These dynamic retargeting ads, also known as a remarketing list for search ads (RLSA), use the first-party data of website visitors to show them relevant ads when they search for similar products or services on Google

When using RLSA, opt for broad match keywords to capture a wider range of searches from your already interested audience. This approach helps maximize visibility and conversions in your narrower audience pool, though active campaign management is essential to maintain relevance and cost-effectiveness.

That’s one of the most popular dynamic retargeting Google ads because you show ads only to those who demonstrate clear intent and interest in your business through their search behavior. To set up an RLSA, you need to define criteria in Google Analytics that will add users to your remarketing lists. Further, Google will associate sessions on your website with advertising cookies on users’ browsers to show them personalized ads. 

Display Remarketing Ad Campaigns

Requiring you to create more images, static banners, and videos, meanwhile freeing you from extensive keyword research, these Google dynamic retargeting ads use Google Display Network (GDN) to show personalized ads when your visitors browse websites other than yours. 

The potential for creating more impressions is higher, but the conversion rate can be lower. That’s because you may show ads to people who are less interested in your products or services at the moment (they can just browse a news site that has nothing to do with your business; they don’t search for anything specific). 

Display remarketing ad campaigns are a good weapon to boost brand awareness and remind your users about you, but they don’t guarantee immediate conversions. 

Creating an ad feed is your first step to start a display remarketing campaign. Further, you need to upload ad creatives to Google Ads in different formats, sizes, and designs to make it easier for Google Ads to adapt them to the context of your targeted GDN websites.

App Remarketing Campaigns

This type of dynamic retargeting ad allows you to boost the LTV of your app users or bring back those who have abandoned the app. App remarketing campaigns show your app-related ads to those who interacted with your app in the Play Store, Google Display Network, Google Discover, YouTube, etc. 

Working with this type of Google dynamic retargeting ads is one of the least resource-consuming efforts. You need to provide the ad text and daily budget to Google Ads and start bidding to the ad algorithm. The latter itself will experiment with your provided ad materials to determine the combinations that work the best for your app users. 

Since mobile apps have become a crucial touchpoint in your users’ journeys, app remarketing campaigns are a proven way to engage and retain your users. Yes, your target here is narrower, but so is the competition.

Video Remarketing Ad Campaigns

Finally, videos! The type of content that’s highly effective for today’s users who have short attention spans and love visual consumption of as much information as possible in the shortest time. 

Video dynamic remarketing ads use personalized video ads to reactivate your website visitors or app users by showing them product reviews, testimonials, how-to videos, etc. These ads are displayed on YouTube or other Google video partners. 

From skippable and non-skippable in-stream ads to outseam ads that appear only on mobile devices and tablets outside YouTube, these dynamic retargeting ads allow you to convey maximum value to your target audience. 

Even the most conversion-optimized landing pages can fail to properly engage your visitors and show them the real value your product can bring to their lives. That’s where video ads come in handy, as they allow a more detailed and condensed presentation of your product or service. 

We recommend this type of dynamic retargeting Google ads, especially for businesses with a strong visual component or products and services that require visual demonstration to create a better understanding among your target audience. 

Crafting a Unique Dynamic Retargeting Ad Strategy

Your key to success with any paid ad strategy is identifying your right target and optimizing the landing pages, where you direct your clicks. Dynamic retargeting ads don’t start with the ad itself but everything that happens before and after a user sees it. 

So, let’s recap the main points of crafting a successful dynamic retargeting ad strategy.

Maximizing Your Dynamic Retargeting Ads with Smart Segmentation

Retargeting and audience segmentation are very powerful pillars for growth marketing. They solve the main problem of generic display ads: the lack of personalization, which leads to low CTR and conversion rates. 

Audience segmentation is another deeper level of dividing your target audience besides the usual demographic, behavioral, and psychographic divisions. It allows you to categorize your audience based on insights you get from them from different channels. 

For example, let’s say you’re promoting your SaaS product focused on project management. Based on your initial plan, you mainly target project managers, project coordinators, and team leads. 

However, after analyzing the data from your dynamic retargeting ads campaign, you find out that many sign-ups come from freelance web designers who are not interested in project management features but use your tool for wireframing. 

By using audience segmentation, you can create a specific ad campaign targeting this specific group of users with personalized ad messages and creatives that focus on the wireframing capabilities of your tool. This will not only increase your chances of converting this audience but also better optimize your ad spend.

Leveraging Data Analysis to Improve Results

Whether you need to improve your conversion rate or increase the ROI of your dynamic retargeting ads, data analysis is crucial. It can also greatly help those companies whose strategies used to work well but stopped bringing the expected results after some time (even the most carefully chosen leads dry up sometimes!). 

In the marketing world, deeply analyzing behavioral or intent data can make a big difference in your approach to retargeting. Meanwhile, gathering data from as many channels as possible will enable you to extract the most actionable insights. 

Other than Google Analytics, your CRM platform can be one of the best sources of data for your dynamic retargeting campaigns. It’s where your customer journey information is stored and managed extensively, allowing you to track user behavior patterns and tailor your ad campaigns accordingly.

As one of the examples, if you see the flow of users going through your website landing pages and then dropping off after being redirected to the app store, you can direct your dynamic retargeting ads towards reminding them about your app’s launch and encourage them to install it. 

Predictive analytics is another powerful data analysis tool that helps you understand and anticipate your customers’ behavior, helping you optimize your dynamic retargeting ads based on their browsing history.

Using predictive analytics, you combine user and product data sets together and implement big data tools like Tableau, Marketo and similar to derive predictions about your user’s purchase behavior. 

Predictions are based on historical data on your user’s previous purchases and behavior, which allows you to calculate the probability of conversions in case of certain triggers. 

Further, these triggers can be used to run tailored dynamic retargeting ads more effectively. 

For example, if predictive analytics tells you your user base is more likely to positively respond to a 25% discount on certain products rather than bundle deals or free trials, use this information to adjust your ad creatives and messaging accordingly. 

Get a Dedicated PPC Expert to Analyze Your Business 

Your marketing budget should be spent wisely. That’s why at Camel Digital’s PPC agency, each client has a dedicated PPC specialist who focuses specifically on their business and campaigns. 

We get in touch, analyze your business data, and run an ad account audit for you. You are then provided with personalized recommendations on optimizing your dynamic retargeting strategy to maximize the impact on your target audience and ROI. 

Otherwise, we set up your customized dynamic retargeting ad campaign from scratch based on your business data, target audience characteristics, and budget. 

Testing and Optimizing for Maximum Impact

In case your dynamic retargeting ads don’t work, or if they don’t work as well as you’d like them to, the problem can lie in the other end of your campaign – the ad content or landing pages. 

Once you leverage the power of data segmentation and analysis to understand what should be promoted and to whom, implementing it into your ad creatives and landing pages becomes the next crucial step. 

Muddled messaging? You lose potential customers. Inconsistent display quality? You lose potential customers. 

That’s why constant testing and optimization of your Google dynamic retargeting ads is necessary to achieve maximum impact. 

A/B testing, or split testing, involves creating two versions of an ad (A and B) with minor differences and then running them simultaneously to see which version performs better. This process can be done with ad messaging, visuals, and landing pages. 

See, you plan to run a dynamic retargeting ad campaign for your SaaS product’s new feature update. You have a data-based target audience and a clear message you want to deliver – the new feature is more likely to attract CMOs who currently face the issue of managing their team’s overall productivity. 

To optimize your ad campaign, you decide to run two versions of an ad:

  • Version A: Headline – “Introducing Our New Productivity Feature”; Description – “Boost Your Team’s Performance with Ease”
  • Version B: Headline – “Streamlined Productivity Management for Busy CMOs”; Description – “Simplify Your Team’s Workflow with Our New Feature” 

After running both versions for a week, you notice that Version B has a higher click-through rate and conversion rate. This shows that your target audience responds better to a more specific and personalized ad message rather than a general one. 

So, you move further with Version B and continue testing and optimizing for better results. 

Get a Landing Page CRO Optimization

Refer to Camel Digital PPC Agency for concise and highly converting landing pages that are proven to decrease cost per acquisition while boosting conversions. 

Let’s see what your current landing pages are like and how relevant they are to your retargeting campaign. 

  • Are they clearly promoting the same product or feature that you are retargeting for? 
  • Are they visually appealing and easy to navigate? 
  • Does the messaging match the ad creatives and target audience?

A dedicated landing page CRO optimization can help improve all of these aspects, leading to a higher conversion rate for your dynamic retargeting campaign. 

Pros and Cons of Dynamic Retargeting Ads

Dynamic retargeting Google ads are effective – that’s a fact. You have an opportunity to immediately target high-intent audiences instead of blind broad targeting. 

Stats show retargeting campaigns perform, on average 10 times better than regular display ads, increasing customer acquisition and revenues by 33% and boosting brand awareness by 12%

Meanwhile, we need to be fair when judging the practice, also showing you some potential cons of this ad strategy.

You Need to Set Dynamic Retargeting Ads Right

Not even need but must – retargeting ads should be technically structured in a correct way. 

Otherwise, the chances of wasted ad budget increase quickly. And for beginner advertisers, just learning the ropes of Google Ads can be a challenge. 

Every nuance can cost you money. For example, if you don’t exclude all conversions from the “all users list”, you may end up spending ad budget to target those who have already purchased or converted on your site, thus losing money on already gained customers. 

So, a specific level of expertise is needed to set up and manage your retargeting ads effectively. 

You Should Continuously Refresh Your Ad Visuals to Avoid Ad Fatigue

There is a thin line between “reminding users about the product they were previously interested in” and “spamming users with the same ad over and over again.” 

Those who see the same ad 6-10 times are 4.1% less likely to purchase those who see the ad 2-5 times. And those who see the same ad 11+ times are 4.2% less likely to buy than those who see it under 10 times. 

So, you need to pour your creativity into creating fresh, visually appealing ad creatives regularly, which itself is an added advertising cost and effort. 

However, this doesn’t mean you should stop retargeting. Just ensure you have a fair balance between your spent ad budget and the potential return on investment.

Final Thoughts

Summing things up, dynamic retargeting ads are golden opportunities for SaaS businesses to re-engage with potential customers and close sales. 

Meanwhile, relying solely on this ad strategy means you are stuck in a loop, as you constantly deal with the same limited audience that has visited your website. 

So, the best practice is also expanding your paid ads strategy with multi-layered approaches, using different ad formats and channels to reach out to new potential customers as well. 

At Camel Digital PPC agency for SaaS businesses, we have a year-earned expertise in setting up and managing effective dynamic retargeting ad campaigns, as well as other PPC for SaaS advertising strategies.

It took millions of ad budgets spent and the analysis of large amounts of data to understand how to set up ads that convert with A/B tested ad creatives for maximum impact. 

And if you want a readily-seen return on your ad budget, contact us for a detailed proposal.

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