In order to execute a successful digital marketing campaign, your audience needs to be granularly defined. The more defined your audience is, the better you can target your client avatar. In this particular blog we will dive into the development of your perfect client and how to effectively target them utilizing the multiple facets of the Google Ads platform.

There are a plethora of questions you should ask yourself when defining your target audience for your digital marketing campaigns. Some immediate questions you can ask yourself are: How old are they?, What is their annual income?, What is their profession? What are their interests?, etc. All of these questions are very important because they help you granulate the formulation of your client avatar. The more accuracy that you create within your client avatar, the more success your digital marketing campaigns will have. The reasoning behind this methodology all boils down to putting the right product or service in front of the right person at the right time. When this is successfully completed, consider your customer acquisitions optimized. 

The Google Ads platform has a vast amount of targeting options. When it comes to meticulosity, Google has truly outdone themselves. Google categorizes their targeting options into audience segments and there is a particular audience segment per campaign type. The 4 main campaign types are Search, Display, Video & Hotel. Within this article we will explain the campaign types and dissect the audience segments. 

Let’s start with Search. Before we define the Google Search Ad Campaign audience segment, let’s define a Google Ad Search Campaign. We will take the same approach when defining the other campaign types as well. A Google Search Ad Campaign is essentially a text ad on search results that will lead people to your business when they are using the Google search engine to look for a product or service a business has to offer. The Google Search Ad Campaign is a great tool to drive sales, leads or traffic to your website. This method produces qualified leads by putting your ad in front of people who are actively searching for the product or service you offer. Now let’s dive into the audience segment targeting options for Google Ad Search Campaigns. 

Please see below for the Google Search Ad Campaign audience segmentation:

• Affinity: Reach users based on what they’re passionate about and their habits and interests.
• Detailed Demographics: Reach users based on long term life facts.
• In-market: Reach users based on their recent purchase intent.
• Your data segments: Reach users that have interacted with your business.
  • Website and app visitors: Reach people who have visited your website and/or apps.
  • Customer Match: Reach your existing customers based on your CRM data.
  • Similar segments: Reach new users with similar interests to your website visitors and existing users.

Once your Google Search Ad Campaign is set up, this is what it will look like:

Now let’s dive into Display ads. I’m sure we have all seen them. You were just scrolling on Nike’s website looking for shoes. You decide you’re not going to buy immediately so leave the site and continue browsing the web. As you continue to browse the web, you notice that there is a picture of the exact shoe you were looking at on Nike’s website to the left part of the screen on the website. Almost seems that the shoes you would like to buy are following you. This my friends is a Google Display Ad. Google Display Ad Campaigns allow you to use ads that entice users visually as they browse millions of websites, apps, and Google owned properties such as Youtube to supplement the obtainment of your marketing goals. Google Display Ad Campaigns can also be the secret weapon for retargeting campaigns within the prestigious search engine. Google Display Ad Campaigns can be great to drive sales, generate leads, create awareness and encourage consideration all with the utilization of the optimal data segments collected. 

Please see below for the Google Display Ad Campaign audience segmentation:

• Affinity:  Reach users based on what they’re passionate about and their habits and interests.
• Custom segments: Depending on your campaign goal, reach users based on what they’re passionate about, their habits and interests. Also reach users based on their recent purchase intent.
• Detailed Demographics: Reach users based on long-term life facts.
• Life Events: Reach users when they are in the midst of important life milestones.
• In-market: Reach users based on their recent purchase intent.
• Your data segments: Reach users that have interacted with your business.
  • Website and app visitors: Reach people who have visited your website and/or apps.
  • Customer Match: Reach your existing customers based on your CRM data.
  • Similar segments: Reach new users with similar interests to your website visitors and existing users.

Here is a great visual example of a Google Display Ad:

The next type of Google Ad Campaign we will discuss is Video. Google Video Ad Campaigns provide immense value through video advertisements on Youtube and other websites. Google Video Ads are available in the following formats: skippable in-stream ads, non-skippable in-stream ads, in-feed video ads, bumper ads, outstream ads & masthead ads. As you can see, due to the diversification of the ad formats, Google Video Ad campaigns are very agile. This creates great opportunities for increasing brand awareness and for client acquisition. While using Google Video Ads to create brand awareness, this will directly correlate to an increase in consumer consideration when they are in the market for your product or service. Ultimately, this is the whole purpose of creating brand awareness.

Please see below for the Google Video Ad Campaign audience segmentation:

• Affinity: Reach users based on what they’re passionate about and their habits and interests.
• Custom segments: Depending on your campaign goal, reach users based on what they’re passionate about and their habits and interests. Also each users based on their recent purchase intent.
• Detailed Demographics: Reach users based on long-term life facts.
• In-market: Reach users based on their recent purchase intent.
• Your data segments: Reach users that have interacted with your business.
  • Website and app visitors: Reach people who have visited your website and/or apps.
  • Customer Match: Reach your existing customers based on your CRM data.
  • Similar segments: Reach new users with similar interests to your website visitors or existing customers.

Below is an example of a common Google Video Ad:

Last but not least, we will discuss Google Hotel Ad Campaigns. Google Hotel Ad Campaigns are specifically targeted to travelers who are in the market for hotels within a specific area. As you can see from the name, this is a highly specified campaign type. If you are looking to drive traffic and conversions for the hotel industry, this is definitely a highly effective method. By choosing to utilize  a Google Ad Hotel Campaign, the advantages below will be given to you:

1. Set a CPC bid on a group of hotels or a specific hotel ID
2. Exclude certain hotels in a hotel group from a particular ad group
3. Customize your particular reporting particular hotels

Google also provides you the option to subdivide hotel groups, this allows for hyper targeting for premium optimization which increases the conversion rate. Ways to subdivide categories are: hotel country/region, state, city, hotel class and the hotel ID. 

Please below for a Google Hotel Ad Campaign example:

Now for the audience segmentation. Google Hotel Ad Campaigns take a different approach to the segmenting of audiences than the other campaign types. Google Ads will use your data to reach users that have interacted with your business. A pixel may be used to extract this data. The extracted data includes website visitors, similar audiences, custom combinations & customer segments. 

At the end of the day, Google Ads can be quite complicated and require a high level technical expertise to properly utilize. If you are an operations manager, marketing coordinator, or someone who  just needs help advertising with Google Ads, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Imperium Marketing Solutions is a Certified Google Partner and  would love to help your entity. With our expertise, we can help your business  digitally generate leads and acquire clients through Google Ads. 

Sources: 

1. https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1704368?hl=en
2. https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2497941?hl=en
3. https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2567043?hl=en