Solved: Setting Up Retargeting Ads on Google Ads

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

I’ve had a look over your situation and I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance based on my experience. It sounds like a classic startup challenge – great product, but a small budget to get it in front of the right people. Getting traction in B2B with paid ads can be tough, especially when you're selling high-value contracts for something like workwear. But it's definately doable if you approach it the right way. Your targeting the heads of companies and not the end-user is the right call, and that's going to shape the entire strategy.

Let's break down your questions and map out a path forward. It's not just about turning on ads; it's about building a machine that generates qualified leads for your sales process.

I'd say you need to prioritise your campaigns correctly...

You asked where to start: brand name ads, retargeting, or product ads. This is a really common question, and with a small budget, the answer is critical. You can't afford to waste a penny.

My straightforward advice is to start with what I'd call 'product ads' first, then retargeting. Let's be more specific though. By 'product ads', I mean Google Search and Google Shopping campaigns that target people who are actively looking for what you sell right now. This is the lowest-hanging fruit. Think about it: if the head of procurement at a construction firm is searching for "bulk order safety boots" or "custom branded hi-vis vests," you absolutely need to be there in that moment. That's pure, active demand.

Retargeting is incredibly powerful, but it has one major requirement: you need people to retarget. You can't show ads to past website visitors if you don't have any website visitors to begin with. So, your first job is to use those Search and Shopping ads to get that initial, highly relevant traffic to your site. Once you have a steady stream of people landing on your pages, then you unleash your retargeting ads to bring them back and stay top of mind.

What about brand name ads? They have their place, mainly for defending your brand name if competitors start bidding on it. But with a tiny budget, every click needs to count towards generating a new lead. I’d argue that focusing on capturing new, non-brand searchers is a much better use of your limited funds at this early stage. You can always add a small brand campaign later once you have more budget to play with.

So, the sequence should be:

1. Search & Shopping Campaigns: To capture active searchers and drive initial traffic.
2. Retargeting Campaigns: To re-engage that traffic and guide them towards a conversion.

This approach makes sure you're spending your money on the people most likely to become a customer first, which is exactly what you need to do to prove the value of ads to your boss and get more budget.

We'll need to look at your sales process first...

Before we even get into the nuts and bolts of Google Ads, we have to talk about your website and what you want people to do there. You're not selling a £20 t-shirt; you're selling large workwear contracts. This is a considered purchase. Nobody is going to land on your website and click "Add 500 pairs of trousers to cart" and check out with a credit card. It's just not how B2B works.

Your sales cycle is longer. It involves quotes, conversations, negotiations, and relationship building. Therefore, your website's job isn't to make a sale; it's to generate a qualified lead for your sales team.

You mentioned you're tracking landing page views, phone calls, and lead form fills. That's a great start. The lead form and phone call are your primary 'macro-conversions'. These are the actions that signal someone is properly interested. Everything your ads and website do should be geared towards making it as easy and compelling as possible for a decision-maker to take one of those steps.

Think about your website's main page. Does it speak directly to that head of procurement? Does it immediately show the value you provide (e.g., durability, bulk pricing, custom branding, compliance with safety standards)? Is there a clear, unmissable call-to-action on the page, like "Request a Custom Quote" or "Download Our 2024 Catalogue"?

From my experience with B2B clients, especially those selling physical products, a professional-looking site with really persuasive copy makes a world of difference. I remember one client selling B2B leads for high-ticket industrial products. We saw a huge jump in lead quality once they rewrote their landing page copy to focus on solving the specific problems their ideal customers faced. It moved from just listing features to showing tangible benefits.

So, before you spend a single pound on ads, make sure the destination is ready to convert. Your website is your 24/7 salesperson. If it looks untrustworthy or is confusing to navigate, you'll just be throwing your ad spend away, no matter how good your campaigns are.

You'll need a solid Google Ads foundation...

Okay, so you've prioritised Search/Shopping first, and your website is primed to capture leads. Now let's build the campaigns in Google Ads. With your B2B model and product, here’s how I’d structure things:

1. Standard Search Campaigns

This is your bread and butter. You'll be targeting keywords that your ideal customer types into Google. Your whole game here is keyword research. You need to get inside the head of a buyer. They won't search for "cool workwear." They'll search for solutions to their problems. Your keyword list should be broken down into themes, for example:

• -> Product-Specific (High Intent): "bulk buy steel toe cap boots", "flame retardant coveralls supplier", "branded hi-vis jackets uk"
• -> Problem/Solution (Medium Intent): "workwear for construction sites", "ppe for manufacturing company", "durable uniforms for logistics staff"
• -> Supplier-Type (High Intent): "corporate workwear supplier", "b2b ppe provider", "work uniform contracts"

Notice how specific these are. Avoid broad, single-word keywords like "workwear" or "boots." They'll eat your budget and bring in loads of irrelevant traffic from individual consumers. You want to be as niche as possible.

2. Shopping Campaigns

If your products are listed on your website with individual prices (even if it's just a 'from £X' price), you should absolutely run a Shopping campaign. These are the ads with an image, title, and price that appear at the top of the search results. They are incredibly effective for physical products because they are so visual. A buyer can see the exact jacket or pair of trousers they're looking for before they even click.

You can't target keywords directly with standard Shopping ads. Instead, Google matches your products to search queries based on the information in your product feed (titles, descriptions, etc.). This means you need a really well-optimised product feed. Don't just put "Work Jacket." Be descriptive: "Men's Waterproof Hi-Vis Bomber Jacket - Yellow/Navy - EN ISO 20471 Compliant." This will help you show up for the right searches.

3. Performance Max (PMax) - Maybe Later

PMax is Google's all-in-one campaign type that runs ads across all of its channels (Search, Display, YouTube, etc.). It can be very powerful but it requires a lot of trust in Google's automation and a decent amount of conversion data to learn from. For a startup with a small budget, I'd say stick to Search and Shopping first. It gives you more control and you can see exactly what's working and what isn't. Once you have a steady flow of leads and more budget, then you can test out PMax.

The key here is control. With a small budget, you need to be able to pull every lever yourself. Starting with Search and Shopping gives you that direct control over your keywords, bids, and budget allocation.

You probably should focus on retargeting done right...

Now for the second part of your strategy: retargeting. You asked for a step-by-step, so here’s a simple breakdown of how to set it up and how to think about your audiences. This is where you convert the 'maybes' into leads.

Step 1: Get Your Tagging in Place (Non-negotiable)

Before you can do anything, you need to be collecting data. You do this with the Google Ads tag (sometimes called a pixel). The easiest way to manage this is with Google Tag Manager. You install one piece of code (the Tag Manager container) on every page of your website, and then you can add other tags (like the Google Ads tag and conversion tracking tags) through the Tag Manager interface without having to mess with your website's code again. This is fundamental. Without this tag, Google has no idea who has visited your site, and you have no audiences to retarget.

Step 2: Build Your Audience Lists

Once your tag is firing, you can go into Google Ads under 'Audience manager' and start creating your audience lists. You don't just want one big list of "all visitors." You need to segment people based on how interested they were. Think of it like a funnel. Here are the audiences I would create, in order of priority:

• -> Lead Funnel Abandoners: This is your most valuable audience. Create a list of people who visited your "Request a Quote" page or "Contact Us" page but did NOT reach the "Thank You" page. These people were seconds away from converting. You need to hit them hard with retargeting.
• -> Product Page Viewers: People who viewed specific product or category pages. They've shown interest in a particular type of workwear. You can retarget them with ads showing those exact products.
• -> Catalogue Downloaders: If you have a PDF catalogue, you can track who clicks the download button. This is a very strong signal of buying intent for a B2B customer.
• -> All Website Visitors (Last 30 Days): This is your broadest audience. It's good for general brand awareness and staying top of mind, but it's less targeted than the others.

Step 3: Upload Your Own Data with Customer Match

This is a massively underused tactic in B2B. You can take a list of email addresses or phone numbers (e.g., from past enquiries, lost deals, or your CRM) and upload it to Google Ads. Google will then try to match those emails to Google accounts and let you show ads directly to them. Imagine being able to run a special offer ad campaign that is only seen by decision-makers you failed to close a deal with six months ago. It's incredibly powerful for re-igniting cold leads. You need to make sure you have the correct permissions to use this data for advertising, of course.

Step 4: Create the Retargeting Campaigns

Now you have your audiences, you need campaigns to target them. You have two main options:

• -> Standard Display Retargeting: This is what most people think of as retargeting. You create banner ads (image ads) that follow your past visitors around the internet as they browse other websites in the Google Display Network. This is great for visual products like yours. You can show off your workwear in action.
• -> Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA): This is more subtle but just as powerful. With RLSA, you can tailor your Search campaigns for people in your audience lists. For example, you could bid 25% higher on the keyword "bulk workwear supplier" if the person searching has already visited your website in the past 30 days. Or you could show them a different ad, like "Still Looking? Get a Free Quote Today." This lets you be much more aggressive and specific with your most valuable searchers.

Getting this structure in place will put you miles ahead of many competitors who just use a single "all visitors" list for their retargeting.

I'd say you need to track what actually matters...

Let's circle back to conversions. Your setup of tracking calls and form fills is the right focus for your main goal. But to really understand what's working and what's not, especially with a small budget, you need to track 'micro-conversions' too.

A micro-conversion is a smaller action a user takes that indicates they are moving in the right direction, even if they don't fill out a form. Think of them as steps on the ladder towards becoming a lead. Tracking these helps you diagnose problems. For example, if you see lots of people are clicking the 'download catalogue' button but very few are filling out the lead form, it might tell you that your catalogue is great but your lead form is too long or asks for too much information. Without tracking that micro-conversion, you'd have no idea.

Here are some micro-conversions you should absolutely set up tracking for:

• -> 'Request a Quote' Button Clicks: Even if they don't complete the form, knowing how many people started the process is valuable.
• -> 'Download Catalogue' Clicks: A strong indicator of a potential B2B buyer doing their research.
• -> Time on Site / Pages per Visit: You can set up goals in Google Analytics for users who spend more than, say, 3 minutes on the site, or view more than 4 pages. This separates the engaged visitors from the tyre-kickers.
• -> Video Views: If you use any product videos, track how many people watch 50% or 75% of them. This can also be used to build a retargeting audience of engaged viewers.

Tracking these won't just help you optimise your ads, it'll give you incredible insight into how potential customers are using your website. This information is gold dust for improving your site's conversion rate, which in turn makes every pound you spend on advertising work harder.

This is the main advice I have for you:

It's a lot to take in, I know. Running succesful B2B ad campaigns isn't simple, and there are lots of moving parts. To make it clearer, I've put the key action points into a table for you. This is the roadmap I would follow if I were in your shoes.

You'll need to manage expectations...

One last piece of honest advice: be patient. B2B advertising is a marathon, not a sprint. You're dealing with long sales cycles. The person who clicks your ad today might not be ready to sign a contract for three or six months. The goal in the first few months isn't necessarily a massive, immediate return on investment. The goal is to gather data, prove the concept, fill the top of your sales funnel, and learn what works.

You need to show your boss a steady increase in qualified leads, not necessarily a 10x ROAS in the first month. We've managed to acheive incredible results for clients. For example, we reduced the cost per lead for an environmental controls company by 84% using a combination of LinkedIn and Meta Ads. Your initial cost per lead might seem high, but as you refine your targeting, ad copy, and landing page, you'll bring it down. Focus on lead quality over lead quantity. One great lead from the head of a 500-employee company is worth a hundred rubbish leads from people who can't make a buying decision.

This all might seem like a lot to handle, especially when you're already busy in a startup environment. It's not just about setting up a few ads and hoping for the best. It's about deep diving into strategy, constant analysis of the data, and continuous optimisation of every part of the funnel.

That's where a professional consultancy like us can make a huge difference. With years of experience and a deep understanding of the advertising landscape, especially in challenging B2B markets, we can help you avoid the common, costly mistakes and accelerate your path to getting real results. We can provide insights that you might not have thought of and take over the implementation of the entire optimisation process for you, ensuring that every pound you spend is working as hard as it possibly can to grow your business.

If you'd like to chat through this in more detail, we offer a free initial consultation where we can have a proper look at your specific situation and give you some more tailored advice.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh