Goal:
To create a simple Google Display Network campaign that targets those who are closest to purchase.
Ideal Outcome:
You start generating more sales by marketing to your most qualified leads by investing under 30 minutes of your time in setting up a paid campaign.
Prerequisites or requirements:
- You need to have a Google Ads account. If you don’t have one yet you can follow the procedure covered in SOP 014 (web version).
- You need to have the remarketing pixel or the global site tag on your site. If you haven’t done so yet, you can follow the procedure covered in SOP 013 (web version).
Why this is important:
Remarketing campaigns are perhaps the first type of paid campaign you should start running if you already have consistent website traffic. Cart abandonment is an easy-to-capture revenue opportunity.
Where this is done:
In your Google Ads account.
When is this done:
Every time you want to start a new abandoned-cart campaign.
Who does this:
The person responsible for paid advertising.
Make sure you have conversion tracking in place
If you are not tracking your AdWords conversions yet, it is recommended that you do so before starting any Google Ads campaign. If you are using Google Tag Manager you can follow SOP 025 (web version)
Set up a remarketing audience for abandoned carts
- Log in to your Google Ads account by heading over to https://ads.google.com . Click Tools & Settings (wrench icon) in the top navigation → “Audience Manager”
4. In the “Segment members” section, select “Visitors of web pages”.
5. Now you will have to configure the rules that will identify a user as having abandoned a checkout:
Include people who have taken the following actions.
Key in the the number of days since the “Web page visit”. Then click “Refine action” button on the left.
Enter the correct parameter which meets your rules. Eg: [Page URL] [contains] [Insert the URL slug of your checkout page here]
Note: This will usually be your checkout page (or the first page of your checkout if you have multiple steps).
Note 2: There might be cases where you might want to select a different match type such as [equals] [starts with] or other.
Key in the the number of days since the “Web page visit”. Then click “Refine action” button on the left.
Enter the correct parameter which meets your rules. Eg: [Page URL] [contains] [Insert the URL slug of your checkout page here]
Include people from the past 30 days (recommended): If you already had the remarketing pixel or the global site tag implemented in the past 30 days you will already be able to start straight away by selecting this option.
Start with an empty list: If for some reason you want to start a brand new audience (e.g: you might have repurposed an URL slug that had an entirely different product on it before) you can select this option.
Note: It may take a few hours for the list to be ready to be used in your targeting.
Prepare your campaign assets
If this is your first cart-abandonment campaign, we recommend that you start with the most simple ad format: single image. However, it’s best practice to test different ads on each campaign you run.
Note: Click here to see the full requirements for your particular case.
- Prepare 2 (or more) variations to use for the campaign, with the following specifications:
- Dimensions:
- 1200 x 1200
- 1200 x 628
- File Size: Each file must be under 150KB.
- Animations: If your ad is animated the maximum animation time is 30 seconds. The animations can be looped, but they still must stop at 30 seconds.
- Variations: There are several variations you can test in your ads, but you should only make 1 variation per ad at a time, pick one:
- Dimensions:
-
-
- CTA Copy
- CTA Color
- Ad Copy
- Graphics
Note: Remember that you will still need to re-create all the versions of your ads in multiple dimensions. Increasing the variations may increase the workload significantly. Example:
-
Version A (Red CTA)
Version A (Red CTA):
Version B (Orange CTA):
Creating your ad campaign
- In your Google Ads account click “Campaigns”.
- Click the blue “+” icon → “New campaign”
- Choose “Sales” as your objective
5. Select “Display”.
- Note: Whenever possible you should standardize the naming process and adopt a naming convention, if you don’t have one yet you can use: Remarketing - [Product name] - Abandoned Cart
Note: If you only ship to certain countries you might want to take that into consideration in this option.
10. Click “Next”.
- Note: Take into consideration that there might be a slight fluctuation on your daily spend and it is possible that in some days your campaign might overspend a little bit more than the daily budget you have selected.
- Note 2: The daily budget you set should be based on the number of users on the remarketing list. The larger the list, the higher the budget you should set.
- Note 3: If you’re just getting started you can select a budget between $20-50/day, you can edit and adjust this later on.
13. Search and select the segment created in step 4 of the first section of this SOP by looking up the name created for this segment.
15. Click “Next”.
Final URL — Make sure the URL is correct and loads as intended.
Business Name — The name of your business.
Images — Upload high quality Square (1200x1200) and landscape image (1200 x 628). Add at least 2 images.
Headlines — Write headlines within 30 characters. You can write up to 15 headlines. Note: All your headlines won’t show at the same time, rather, Google will rotate your headlines based on the user’s device or search query.
Long headline: The long headline (90 characters) is the first line of your ad, and appears instead of your short headline in larger ads.
Description — Write a description within 90 characters. You can write up to 4 descriptions.
You can see a preview of your ad on the right.
17. Once done, click “Create Ad”.
