The Only Google Ads Targeting Guide You Will Ever Need

TLDR:

• The higher intent is, the less you need to sell with creatives and landing page. Highest intent traffic (keywords) is almost always most competitive one.
• Google is the only advertising platform where you can start at the bottom of the funnel and go up
• Going up the funnel is hard, requires strategy, creatives, buyer persona analysis, customer journey mapping.
• AI is leveling the playing field for everyone. To keep winning in the future you will need great USP, creatives and rock solid data.

Targeting Methods

Keywords

Keywords are a unique targeting method for the search engines. There are few search engines out there and Google is the largest one.Keywords are highly competitive, keyword supply is limited.

You can encode several things in a keyword, such as:

• Language: Keyword already contains language intent.
• Buying intent: Words like buy, around me, get
• Location: Planet name, country name, city name, area name
• Evaluation intent: x vs u, product review
• Exploration intent: words like what, why, how

Match types

[Exact Match]: Searches that have the same meaning as your keyword. You will see matches that might not match your keyword letter by letter, but they should have the same meaning. 

”Phrase Match”: Searches that include the meaning of your keyword

Broad Match: Broad match is contextual match type, to have success with it you need:

• Reliable conversion action
• Smart Bidding
• Enough Conversions
• Themed ad group
• Unique themed landing page

Remarketing / Retargeting

Remarketing is an audience segment of the users who took some actions on your website. Think about actions the client takes to express interest in your product/service.

• You should do remarketing because it’s way cheaper to get a client back rather than find a new one. You get clients back by adjusting the message and making an irresistible offer.
• Or you can use remarketing audiences to upsell or cross-sell if you maxed out email.
• Search RemarketingRemarketing lists for search automatically guide AI bidding for all search campaignsYou can target remarketing lists with search and DSA with more advanced remarketing strategies.
• Video & YouTube RemarketingRemarket your audience with a video of the customer testimonial or product review.Combine your YouTube audiences with Google Ads audiences
• Display RemarketingRemarket your users all over the internet
• Demand Gen RemarketingRemarket your audience across all google properties: Discover, Gmail, YouTube

Customer Match

• Customer match list is email list uploaded to Google to match against Google signed users
• Needs to have at least 1000+ matched users to be used
• Use to remarket, cross or up-sell, generate loyalty or reactivate lapsed users.
• Cannot target corporate accounts
• Can be used as an exclusion list for the New Customer Acquisition goal if you want to target cold traffic.
• Works amazingly well with improved optimizing targeting.
• Your first choice for a lookalike audience seed list in demand gen.

We are entering middle funnel territory now.

Here you will need to generate demand before collecting it, your competitors can also collect demand generated by you. Lazy marketing doesn’t work here, so before you start:

• Bottom of the funnel conversion might still work, might not work, almost certainly will become more expensive.
• Ensure that you have enough budget for 100 conversions per month. If not, switch to a cheaper conversion action
• Moving up, you will have to analyze Google Ads holistically. Because last click might end up in your other campaigns.
• Prepare customer value journey map before moving up
• Prepare at least 1 customer avatar before moving up
• Prepare a couple of ad angles/ideas based on customer avatar before moving up

Custom Audiences

Custom audiences let you define your ideal audience for Google by entering

• Keywords that they were searching for with a look back window of 10 days
• Website URL’s that they’ve visited. Google will treat it as your URL + Similar websites
• Apps that they are using
• These audiences are combined using OR logic. OR logic is when an audience fulfills any set of criteria. 
• Use separate ad group for custom audiences

In-Market

An In-market audience represents a segment of users who are actively looking to buy certain products or services in the near future, or have a high propensity to buy if they find the right product or offer. But how are they created?

• Signals. Signals from Search, Shopping, Travel, Maps, Play and YouTube to identify repeated patterns of behavior to differentiate interest from intent in real time
• Then it gets validated using surveys
• After that, ML models find other people who belong to this audience based on shared behaviors and characteristics.
• Can match search CPA, but usually is more expensive.

Life Events

Customers who are in the midst of important milestones are most likely to change their brand preferences. By understanding when these moments are taking place, you can tailor your marketing efforts to reach the right people with the right message. 

• There are different pre-event and post event covering time frames ranging from 3 to 6 months
• Be empathetic, message is the king here. 
• Use a softer conversion action, exchange value for an email address and use email to warm up and convert.

Examples:

About to graduate college

A job search engine wants to reach university students who will be on the search for a job when graduating. 

Recently graduated college

A telecom company wants to reach recent university grads with a promotion as they move off their family plan.

About to move

An insurance company wants to reach users who are about to move and convince them to sign up for homeowner’s insurance.

Recently moved

A home goods company wants to reach users who recently moved to sell furniture and home decor.

About to get married

A big box retailer wants to reach women who are about to get married and prompt them to create a registry.

Recently got married

An auto company wants to reach newlyweds to encourage them to buy a family vehicle.  

Affinity

Audiences based on a holistic picture of their lifestyles, passions across All Google properties, with  an algorithm distinguishing those users who are truly passionate about a topic versus those who are merely interested.

• Affinity is associated with a user based on the types of web pages he is looking at and how often he does it
• YouTube, Google Maps and Google.com searches are taken into the account
• Includes users who demonstrated past interest in subjects and who are likely to view related content in the future
• You can observe affinities in search campaigns

How are affinity audiences created?

• Signals. Search, shopping, travel, Google Maps, Google Play, YouTube
• Signals are validated via survey
• And then scaled via Machine Learning
• Use affinities for awareness and engagement
• Don’t mix affinities with other audience types

Bonus

Optimized Targeting

Optimized Targeting algorithms take the manually targeted audience as a signal on which user profile might convert. From there, our machine learning algorithms are able to use this signal as well as many other signals to find additional users very likely to convert.

• For tCPA bidding: the algorithm will try to look for additional conversions, while respecting the target bid and budget.
• For Max Conversion bidding: the algorithm will look for additional conversions, while respecting the budget but with no limit on maximum CP

• For the new campaigns. Wait 2 weeks or 50 conversions before measuring
• For the ongoing campaigns. Keep activated for a minimum of 2 weeks, start comparing after the end of week 2