Google Adwords is a marketer’s dream! You can create strategic ads and have them put right in front of the eyes of the perfect audience for your business. Adwords audience targeting is an especially important topic for marketers because it can make all the difference in ensuring that your ads are worth the investment.
Adwords audience targeting allows you to select exactly who you want to see your ads. This means your budget is only spent on those who are most likely to make a purchase from you. No budget wasted!
Tactics for Better Adwords Audience Targeting
Selecting your audience targeting options sounds pretty straight forward, but there are actually some options available to you that you might not be aware of. In this article, we will run through some of the advanced Adwords audience targeting tactics you can use to take your budget further and drive even more results.
Display Audiences
The first advanced Adwords tactic we’ll discuss is display audiences. While there are plenty of dollars invested into Google search ads, much more time is actually spent using the web, rather than searching on it.
For example, a user likely spends a few minutes, if that, searching for whatever it is they’re looking for. From there they will spend much more time reading an article, or browsing a selection of options on a website.
If more time is spent on actual web pages, then it only makes sense to target those audiences with display ads. You can learn more about display ads and how they work here, however as a quick explanation, display ads are the ads that appear as banners, videos and text ads on web pages through the Google Display Network.
To use targeting, choose your placements wisely for where your ad will show up. You can also use keyword targeting.
Keyword targeting is based on the text of the webpages which you may want to appear for.
Layering your demographic targeting can also help you to take your Adwords audience targeting to the next level. You might use sex, age, location and something very specific like parental status to really hone in on your target audience.
Search Adwords Audience Targeting
Now that we’ve looked a bit further into display audiences, we can shift to the more commonly talked about method of online advertising – search ads.
You’re likely aware that search ads allow you to bid on any given keyword. You can easily look at location, time and location to help set your budget and bids.
In order to take this to an advanced level you should ask yourself some questions, such as if your target audience who uses mobile is more valuable than someone who uses a desktop. Or if the location of where a search is made could have an effect on the likeliness of a conversion.
Asking these deeper questions can help you to really think about where you should spend your ad investment. For example, if someone is searching for you in a location that is very close to your business location, then this is likely a demographic you will want to bid more on.
Affinity Audiences
An affinity audience is a type of audience you can reach based on a look at their habits and general lifestyle. They are the type of audience that proves to have a very focused passion towards a certain topic.
This type of audience can be beneficial to marketers as it helps them to reach the most relevant people for their product or service offerings. We develop a better understanding of their identity and can use that information to target them directly.
You can create custom affinity audiences in Google Adwords by providing a list of keywords that gives details about your affinity audience’s interests. You can also include websites this audience commonly visits.
Google Adwords will then create a theme for you.
Remarketing Adwords Audience Targeting
Once you have established your ads and have selected the proper targeting options, it’s true some of that audience will still be unsure about what they are meant to do.
One of the best ways to tackle this issue is through retargeting ads. These types of ads use remarketing to bring back visitors who have already been to your site. Your display ads will appear on a number of the other sites they visit across the internet.
In order to best take advantage of retargeting ads it’s important to think about the messaging behind the ad. If you had already talked to someone about a certain topic, you probably wouldn’t talk about it a second time with the same approach. You would probably have new ideas on the topic and would speak about it differently.
The same goes for remarketing. Think about what you would say differently to someone who purchased something from you or already knows about your products or services.
Similar Audiences
Similar audiences is a great way to search for new audiences. Google Ads will automatically find new customers who are similar to your existing customers. This can be great for those who have established a list of customers who commonly convert and are looking to grow that list.
You can then show ads to people who have similar characteristics to the people on your existing list, and are also likely to convert.
Similar audiences are available for both search and display networks. It is actually quite a simple way to increase the size of your remarketing list. You don’t have to worry about updating this list as the process is automatic.
When someone clicks on an ad and is taken to your website, they instantly become a remarketing list member, and will no longer be a part of your similar audience list.
If you want to learn even more about Google Adwords with information on detailed terms and Google ad bids, we have this Simple Step-by-Step Guide for you to check out!
Get the Ball Rolling
With these advanced Adwords audience targeting tactics, you’ll be well on your way to taking your budget further and driving even better results.
Always be sure to reference your strategy and think from the perspective of the buyer. Who are the people that make purchases from your business and what will ultimately help them to convert?
If you’re looking for help with developing or evaluating your strategy for Google Adwords, Blue Water Marketing is your go-to expert! We can provide recommendations on which advanced tactic to apply to your campaign, or help you with it from the planning stages to going live. Give us a call today!
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