If you’ve ever tried to target your audience through a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign on Google search, you know how important keywords have always been to this process. For a long time, paid search revolved around the creation of keyword lists, where ads were served to users typing in a specific search query. This was beneficial, as the ads matched the intent of the people searching for those terms.
While keywords are sort of the grandfather of paid search, they’re not the only way to get your brand in front of potential customers. Google offers a variety of ways to reach users who are likely to be interested in your products or services.
With this in mind, let’s dive into five things you should be doing to optimize and improve your paid search targeting:
Affinity audiences target users based on what they’re passionate about, as well as their habits and interests. However, these audiences are limited to a list of segments predefined by Google. Custom affinity audiences, on the other hand, let advertisers define who they want to reach by creating their own unique affinity audience. By factoring in consumers’ most recent passions and ongoing interests, your marketing efforts will reach the people most likely to pay attention to your brand.
Demographic targeting allows you to target users based on their genders, ages, locations, and incomes. Gathering this type of data is crucial because it helps you ensure you’re not wasting ad spend on the wrong audiences. For example, serving ads for a retirement home to an audience under 25 years old wouldn’t be an effective use of your budget. When you’re armed with demographic details, you’ll start to gain a better idea of who your audience actually is and how to reach them.
In-market audiences target users based on their recent searches and purchase intent, allowing you to capture consumers within the consideration phase of the marketing funnel. With this targeting option, you can serve ads to users currently researching the products and services you offer. In-market audience targeting helps you widen your reach with well-qualified leads while offering a practical customer acquisition strategy.
It’s always a good idea to connect with people who have visited your website or added your products to their carts. One of the best ways to do so is by running a remarketing campaign on paid search, which allows you to reach users who have interacted with your brand in the past. This type of marketing is particularly effective for capturing middle- and bottom-of-funnel audiences who are close to converting.
If you want to reach new people with similar interests and search behaviors to your email list, recent website visitors, or another audience, you can use Google’s “similar audiences” targeting option. In the marketing world, we call these people “lookalikes” because they closely resemble the behaviors and patterns of users who are already familiar with your brand. By targeting people who “look” (or act) like users that already display interest in your products or services, you’ll be able to focus your advertisers on people most likely to convert.
Need help getting your PPC strategies in order? Look to Zero Gravity Marketing for assistance. With a team of marketing gurus in your corner, you can reach your audience effectively and get the most out of your advertising budget.
Contact us today to learn more!