Precisely reach your target audience with Google Ads and learn how to optimise your campaigns to increase visibility, click-through rate, and conversions.
Thomas Haurum
If you want to reach your target audience with Google Ads and maximise your potential, it’s essential to focus on your audience in your advertising.
It may sound obvious, but we often see that people are too eager to launch their Google Ads campaigns and almost forget to consider their target audience. Just like with traditional marketing, one of the main ingredients of a successful campaign is focusing on your audience. Here, I’ll show you some of the aspects you can use to ensure your Google Ads are relevant to your target audience.
Most people know their target audience, whether it’s documented or just a gut feeling. The more specific you can be, the more effectively you can target your ads. A scattergun approach rarely pays off. Occasionally, it may yield a few but expensive conversions. If you’ve learnt this the hard way, consider it a valuable lesson.
That said, some of the data you’ve collected can still be used effectively. For example, some keywords may need to be added as negative keywords, or there may be search terms that generally do not convert, but do in your case. Don’t feel that the money is entirely wasted.
When it comes to keywords, it’s important to be thorough with your keyword analysis. We often see scattergun strategies that generate lots of clicks but result in few or no conversions. Conversely, we also see niches where the chosen search terms are so specific that there is no traffic. If you want an idea of the typical keywords used, you can use Google Suggestions, which you can read about here.
TIP: Remember to trust your instincts – for example, “your-product prices” or “cheap your-product” can be a waste of money if your prices are at the higher end. Similarly, “your-product online” is not relevant if you only have a physical shop.
When setting up a Google Ads campaign, you need to complete a number of settings to get started. Within these settings, you have several options to target your Google Ads campaign to your audience based on various parameters. By doing this groundwork properly, you can easily bid differently for various segments within the same campaign. This way, you can spend your advertising budget where it is most effective.
If you’re a local business selling to local customers, it makes sense to geographically target your Google Ads campaigns. This way, you avoid paying for clicks from people who are unlikely to buy your products – for example, why would someone in Cornwall choose a tradesperson from Manchester?
TIP: Whether you sell goods/services locally, nationally, or internationally, it’s a good idea to split your geographical areas into smaller segments. This allows you to increase or decrease bids in areas that are performing well or poorly. Your ad budget should deliver the highest possible return. Instead of having a single geographical group called “UK”, you could, for example, split it as in the example below (“North West England”, “Midlands”, “South East”, “London”, and so on).
If you know that your audience is mainly active at certain times of the day, you can target your Google Ads campaigns accordingly. This helps avoid traffic at other times that doesn’t convert. You can, of course, update or change these settings at any time, so if you notice periods with lots of clicks but no conversions, you can exclude these times to save costs.
Ad scheduling can also be used for specific days. For example, if your business is closed on certain days of the week, you can exclude those days as well.
TIP: Be careful when using ad scheduling. Before excluding too many time slots, consider whether there are times when your customer is in the research phase and might convert later. You don’t want them to find your competitor instead if that means they ultimately choose to buy from them.
The best approach depends on your specific situation. For example, a tradesperson offering 24-hour emergency service is relevant around the clock, while a business that only serves customers by phone during regular office hours is only relevant during opening times.
If your audience mainly uses smartphones, it’s advisable to target your ads to mobile devices. By default, Google Ads targets all devices, which is often fine. However, if you don’t yet have a responsive website (a site that adapts to the visitor’s screen) but have an adaptive design (a separate site for mobiles, e.g. m.domain.co.uk), you could create a specific ad for mobiles that directs users to this address. This helps avoid a high bounce rate on mobile devices and ensures your budget is not wasted.
If you have a mobile-friendly (responsive) website and find it converts well, or you suspect (even better, have data to show) that a higher ranking on mobile devices would improve conversion, make use of this. You can adjust your bids depending on whether the user is on a desktop or a mobile. The right bid adjustments vary from account to account, but in the screenshot below, you can see an example of bids that are 25% higher on mobile devices. You can also see where to set this, and you can increase or decrease the bid by a percentage of your standard keyword/ad group bid.
TIP: Try running ads for mobile devices where the customer can call you directly from the ad. If you have difficulty getting valid data on whether this works for you, use call tracking on your website instead.
With RLSA (Remarketing Lists for Search Ads), you have the opportunity to bid differently for previous visitors.
In practice, you can use your remarketing lists to, for example, increase your bids by 50% for users who have previously visited your site but have not made a purchase and are searching on Google again. This allows you to capture people who have already shown interest, but may have just been checking out the market. If they return to buy, the first click is well invested in their customer journey, compared to if they buy from a competitor instead.
Besides bidding differently, you can also choose to target ads only to previous visitors. This can be useful for broader keywords, which might be more likely to convert since users have already been through the research phase and are now looking to buy, but may not remember brand names. Of course, this will limit your reach compared to advertising more broadly. Therefore, it can make sense to use this option for your broadest keywords.
Finally, you have the opportunity to create special ads for those on your remarketing list. For example, if you have a particular message for previous visitors, you can deliver it here, while others see a different message. You might also offer access to free content – such as a sample from an e-book, a demo, or other soft conversions. For these visitors, you can now create new ads that focus on turning them into “real customers” – for example, getting them to buy the full e-book or take out a subscription, following the earlier examples.
If you want to reach your audience even more specifically, you can use display advertising in Google Ads, allowing you to target your audience with even greater precision. Display ads are text or banner ads shown on a multitude of websites. With display ads in Google Ads, you can choose to advertise very specifically:
Select which gender your ads should be shown to, and which age groups. If you know your audience has particular interests, you can target these as well. Advertise to users with a specific mobile device, a particular operating system, or to those who are (or are not) on wi-fi.
TIP: Learn much more about display ads on Google here.
It’s not useful to have the world’s smallest budget, but when your campaigns are targeted as specifically as possible, you’ll generally get more for your money. So don’t be surprised if your Google Ads budget drops and/or your conversion rate rises. Is your shop ready for growth?
TIP: Save on your Google Ads budget by following these simple steps.
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