If you’ve already got the basics of Google AdWords down, it’s time to take it to the next level. In the digital marketing world, resting on one’s laurels means deferring to the competition, which will only innovate new, better ways to reach their clients’ audiences. To be the best, you need to keep elevating your game.
Google AdWords is a versatile tool that can be used in a vast array of ways. Don’t be content to simply incorporate AdWords into your strategy; master the tool to deliver next-level digital marketing results. Here are three advanced targeting techniques for Google AdWords to get you started. [Note: If you haven’t yet mastered the art of Google AdWords, check out our list of the top underrated AdWords tools to up your game!]
Boost Remarketing Lists For Search Ads (RLSAs) With Social Audiences
As of the end of 2017, Facebook alone boasted 2.2 billion monthly active users. That’s a massive (and growing!) pool of users all in one place. Couple those numbers with the ability to drill down into their likes, group affiliations, and other identifying data, and Facebook becomes a digital marketers dream.
Of course, that’s not news to anyone. What could ramp your search campaigns up to the next level, however, is coupling those campaigns with parallel social campaigns.
One study demonstrated that users that were shown the same search ads and social ads on Facebook resulted in a significantly higher click-through rates and generated a higher return on ad spend. The bottom line? You can improve the quality of both your search campaigns and your social campaigns simply by aligning their purpose.
You can achieve this unification of purpose by:
- Target new users on Facebook with a social campaign
- Create an audience list of these users in Google Analytics
- Create a search campaign on AdWords using high funnel keywords
- Apply the remarketing list to your search campaign
This will allow you to show your paid search ads only to the users who have already seen it on Facebook, thereby expanding your reach to the new leads you’ve generated through the social media platform.
Employ Dynamic Search Ads
Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs) are a perfect opportunity for an e-commerce site that experiences a lot of inventory turnover. E-commerce marketers understand how difficult it can be to continuously update new ads and new keywords for a regularly changing slate of products, and that’s where DSAs come in.
A DSA will help users find items they’re searching for even if you don’t have a relevant keyword attached to that product. Google can recognize that a user is searching for a product you sell regardless.
To set up a new DSA:
- Create a new campaign
- Create an ad group to hold your DSAs
- Create two different DSA ads for split-testing purposes
- Choose the target
- Incorporate ad extensions as you would for a regular campaign
That’s it! DSAs will start directing users to your website even if you haven’t incorporated keywords for new products. This tool can augment your existing campaigns and help drive more traffic toward products you might not have known you’d been missing interest on.
One final note on DSAs: keep an eye on the data as it starts pouring in. You can add in negative keywords that you don’t want your ad to be shown as a result for. If users searching for unrelated things are landing on your ad, those are good candidates for negative keywords.
Use Custom Affinity Audiences
Google’s custom affinity audiences launched in 2014 to grant advertisers more latitude over targeting audiences on the display network. It allows marketers to essentially create their own affinity audience if they find that there isn’t one that is suitable for their client.
Here’s how it works: custom affinity audiences allows marketers to leverage keywords and URLs in a bid to target the interests of a specific audience.
Custom affinity audiences, then, works to cultivate audiences that are already highly interested in the topics your business is built around. Instead of casting a wide net, you’ll be attracting a community that already has a vested interest in your products or services, thereby generating qualified leads that will enter the funnel midway through the conversion process.
Remember, you can always layer custom affinity audiences with other types of targeting to boost the effectiveness of any campaign. Like the other tactics described above, learning to use custom affinity audiences as just one component of a larger strategy is the key to graduating to the level of advanced Google AdWords user!
