Targeting Tips for Google Ads

Marketers can no longer hope for sufficient organic traffic. Advertising is required to ensure your ad is seen by audiences - and importantly, seen first. For this, we create ads for Google, the world’s biggest search engine by a mile. In this article, we’ll be sharing the tips you need to know to ensure maximized rewards.

Targeting Audiences

When it comes down to targeting, there are a myriad of ways you can hone in on your audience. This requires detailed information about who your buyers and potential buyers are. From demographic to behavioral attributes, the more specific you can be, the better for ad performance. While targeting was once focused on being in the same vicinity as your audience, today, it is much more nuanced. Advertisers have data that speaks to the interests of audiences and the types of devices they use, for example. This all factors into their pain points and motivations. 

For successful advertising, you need to gain a true understanding of your audience. That is why it is imperative that information is collected and analyzed, as it leads to critical insights being drawn. Essentially, knowledge is power. Utilizing this information can improve search results and ad performance, especially when the ads are optimized. It also helps your business in terms of the bigger picture, as you can improve your offering. 

Online searches are driven by intent. When you combine this with the information above used to target efficiently, you have a powerful and winning combination. So, how do you collect and manage this information? Marketers will have access to this and often rely on CRM technology for the most efficient and centralized information tracking. This can be combined with the insights you gain from Google Ads. 

Once the information has been collected and organized, you can segment your audience into ad groups. Google Ads has many helpful tools, whether you want to set your own categories or select from their suggestions. The ads are then shown to relevant audiences through marketing lists. These can include:

• Google remarking lists
• In-market audiences
• HubSpot website and contact audience lists 

You can also create target audiences in HubSpot, which will sync with your ad platforms. With this, you can utilize the wealth of information provided by HubSpot and target visitors who visited your site. It is easy to make adjustments where necessary, automates the process for you, and allows you to create specific ads based on your buyer personas.

Oftentimes, users can appear the same in one regard but have a variety of different individual needs. For example, various visitors to your website may have used the same keyword to find a specific product, but each of them have different reasons for searching for it. You’ll be able to provide more relevant workflows and ads once you can differentiate and understand these visitors. Let’s look at intent as an example: website visitors searching for something specific may be new leads, returning visitors with abandoned carts, or returning customers. 

Therefore, it is clear to see that targeted ads mean you can position your ads to better suit each of these needs and close more deals since you can personalize the experience for each of them (some may need a reminder, others need more information, and some may be encouraged to make the purchase if they are offered a promotion, for example). It also allows for the improved utilization of ad bidding budgets, since you can allocate more money where it matters. 

Remember, targeting is also important when it comes to retargeting ads (which help new potential customers to understand your business better) and remarketing ads (which serve as a reminder to potential customers who have shown interest). Based on the latter, we can see it is important to market to audiences who have already begun their buyer's journey. 

Google Ad Tips

Google Ads has a tag container solution that allows for easy updates to be made and applied to all campaigns. It is able to combine the search history with the intent, which takes us back to the powerful combination we spoke of earlier. This can babe tested at scale on your ad campaigns, and ongoing observations - and adjustments - can be made in real-time for optimal performance.

In these instances, you can use in-market audiences, which use machine learning information based on a person’s browsing history to determine the relevance of ads, along with their intent when searching. Google derives this information from mass data. It can be pivotal to reach qualified leads in the nick of time. Once someone has shown their intent and interest, you’ve got to ensure your marketing is delivered to them so that the deal can be closed. This is made possible with real-time data and minimizes wasted advertising resources on those who have exited the buyer's journey. 

Google’s 3-step guide to in-market audiences:

• Create a separate campaign or ad group 
• Implement an automated bid strategy to drive conversions
• Works with a conversion optimizer that tailors ad creatives

Ready, Set, Target

Google Ads can help businesses reach their audiences in meaningful ways. The importance of accurate and precise targeting cannot be understated. With this, you can improve ad performance, ultimately leading to increased ROI. 

Improve your business’s advertising and audience connections with us at Nexa. Get in touch to begin your journey to having award-winning campaigns.