Targeting on Google Ads (PPC Campaigns)

When you are looking at Google Ads, you have two basic ways of defining where your ads are going to go and the people who will see them.

Audience targeting – focus on the people.
Content targeting – focus on the people who consume defined content types.

These targeting methods are not exclusive as you can combine elements to shape your unique Google Ad campaign.

What is Audience Targeting on Google Ads?

Google has experience in sorting people into groups. When running an ad campaign with google targeting and considering your audience options, you can create a unique audience, combine audience types, or use a preset audience built by Google.

You can successfully build an audience by examining the following:

Demographics – life facts
Interests – attractions, hobbies, and habits
In-market – people who are already in the market to buy a product like yours.
Custom intent – what people are looking for and the keywords they use to find it
Similar audiences – these are people who regularly buy or look for products like yours
Remarketing – people with a history of interacting with you

Demographics

Life facts cover a vast range of possible items. More useful demographics in Google identify people at life stages – like graduating or moving to a new house. You get all the standard ways of grouping people by age, gender, and any other information they share through Google accounts, apps, and third-party cookies.

Interests

Interests cover those things you like (affinity), something you are considering buying (in-market), things you look for (custom intent), and things you've done or bought in the past (similar audience).
The volume of data collected and available for analysis gives sophisticated groupings of people by surprising characteristics. You can reach an audience of frequent fliers and not just dog lovers but fans a precise breed like Boston terriers. Or you can combine the two and get an audience of frequent fliers who probably own Boston terriers. Plus, you know the size of that potential audience with google targeting– no guesswork, scientific analysis.
As a means of placing ads, a focus on interests yields excellent results if your product or service is for a specific interest group. Sometimes it's about a product with features that appeal to different interest groups – like a travel mug. For commuters, a size that fits in the cupholder may be the best feature, and for targeting hikers, a tight seal keeping the contents inside may be better.
Defining the audience by interest help by targeting the best audience for unique product and shaping the message to appeal to different groups.

Remarketing: Is it the Same as Retargeting?

Your current and past customers or targeting audience are known to engage with your product or marketing materials. Targeting an audience that already knows and likes you is a quick win. Remarketing is the process of placing ads in front of people who have had an interaction with your business.
The term remarketing and retargeting is so close in method and outcome that you can consider them to be the same.
Remarketing involves identifying people that interact with your website and ads. You can narrow it down to remarketing only to people who click on your home page or leave it broad to all pages and ads. Tagged visitors get your ads at every available opportunity.

What is Content Marketing on Google Ads?

Content on the internet covers a range of combinations of images, words, and videos. Content marketing is the process of attracting an audience to content on the web by making it visible through keywords and phrases. The targeting audience increases organically and chooses to find the content and the business showing that content.

Content advertising is producing quality content and promoting it using paid ads rather than relying on search engine rankings.

Content marketing with Google Ads places your Google Ad in association with defined content. There are three broad types:

Keywords

Topics

Placement

These google targeting types can combine to give you a focused Google Ad campaign.

Depending on your instructions and type of ad, your google ads (formerly Google AdWords) appear on:

Search Engine results page – SERPs
Google display network – google websites (around 2 million and growing)

The visibility of your google ad depends on configuration and ranking.

Keyword Targeting: How does it work?

Keyword targeting or contextual targeting matches the Google ad automatically to relevant sites in the Google Display Network (GDN).

Your ad group needs a theme that describes the product or service – not the audience. Typically, you choose between 5 and 50 unique keywords around the theme. These are positive keywords that tell the ad where to sit in the GDN. You also need to use negative keywords to ensure that the ad does not end up on an irrelevant site. You optimize your ad by adding positive and negative keywords until you get the performance you need.

Keyword targeting suits businesses providing information to an interested audience. It is effective at producing a high rate of conversions because visitors already know the products or services.

Targeting at Relevant Topics

A topic is a theme. Remember being asked to write an essay? Discuss the fall of Rome – the topic is the ‘fall of Rome.’ A topic is a subject like ‘butterflies’ or ‘cars’ or ‘mountain biking.’

By using topics as your targeting focus, your ads place automatically on pages with content relating to that theme or subject. Targeting topics lets you increase traffic and access a broad audience linked by a topic. You can set negative topics – places where you don’t want your ad to be shown both for relevance to your product and protecting your brand reputation.

Placement Targeting on Websites

In Placement targeting, you choose the websites where your ad appears rather than automatic placement on the type of sites you prefer.

Placement targeting works best when you have some information about what ad campaigns have been successful and which websites gave the most engagement. Running small ad campaigns with other targeting methods lets you find the best performing websites for you.

When you identify the best performing websites for ad placements, you can then spend your budget in the most effective way to increase traffic and awareness.

Interested in partnering with an agency to get a Facebook Campaign started? Connect with a Varga Ads Expert regarding a custom strategy today.