The Man From Google's Secrets To Audience Targeting: Part 1

Our resident search expert and former Google employee, David Zammitt, has been temporarily freed from his Adwords bunker.

In a 2-part epic, he will divulge his secrets on how to target audiences with Google and get the most return for your business. Today, we will be covering Remarketing and Similar Audiences. 

With so many product releases around display, video and programmatic, it can be forgotten that a significant degree of innovation continues to happen underneath the hood of Google’s oldest platform: Search. While other channels are excellent choices for advertisers looking to grow their brand, Search still provides the best option for direct response advertisers who are focused on driving sales and leads.

In recent months, Google has added several audience-targeting options within Search so that, more than ever, you can avoid wasting money on visitors who are unlikely to convert. Used correctly, these features can allow advertisers who don’t have the luxury of unlimited budgets to compete with larger businesses. Put simply, in the vast world of Search, which now gets over 40,000 queries per second, you can cast your net that bit narrower and only target the audience which is right for your business.

These features, however, are often buried deep within the Google Ads interface, and many advertisers spend money without being aware that they exist. Here are our top tips for maximising your return on search via smart audience targeting:

1. Remarketing

The most basic but also the most powerful audience tool. Many potential customers will visit your website more than once before converting, and the path to purchase can take weeks or even months for certain products. With uncertainty in the economy, there is also a greater tendency to shop around. By implementing the Google remarketing tag on your website, you can build up lists of visitors who have been to your site, and you can segment these by the pages they’ve visited, whether they’ve converted or not, and the recency of their last visit. These people are warm leads, and targeting them more aggressively via Google Search by implementing higher bids for these users - or even serving them ad copy with bespoke offers - will ensure that you are first in line to bring them back to your website next time they’re researching.

2. Similar Audiences

Similar Audiences for Search is a new product which is ideal for prospecting. SAS, as it’s referred to, uses your remarketing lists to automatically create lists of potential new customers. These Google users haven’t yet been to your site, but Google uses the wealth of data at its disposal to find people who exhibit recent search behaviour (the queries they have entered, their demographics, their interests, etc.) similar to the existing users on your remarketing lists. If Google finds that a large portion of your website visitors are females aged between 25 and 34 and have been searching for financial products, for example, Google will find more people like this and add these to your similar audiences. These potential customers should convert at a higher rate than the population average and are therefore worth targeting.

There you have it! Two top tips to targeting with Google with two more ways to maximise returns coming next week.

If you'd like help with your PPC, paid search or digital marketing drop us a line on 0141 357 4556 or hit the 'get in touch' button below. We're always happy to help.