Google Ads is a great way for your business to attract valuable potential customers. Make sure to take the time to set up Google Ads targeting so that you can attract users who are looking for your products or services.

What types of targeting methods are available for Google Ads?

When you look at Google Ads, you will find that there are many types of Google Ads targeting methods that can be used to attract more valuable potential customers. Positioning is mainly divided into two categories (Audience targeting and Content targeting).

Audience targeting

Audience targeting for Google Ads focuses on targeting people in different ways that you think are interested in your business. You want to attract potential customers who want your product or service. By better targeting your audience, you are more likely to acquire valuable leads.

Let ’s take a look at several targeting methods available for Google Ads as below.

Demographic targeting

The most common form of Google Ads targeting is demographic targeting. The focus of this method is to determine the target population based on demographic information.

Demographic information includes:

• Location
• Age
• Gender
• Device type

This is all information for every member of your audience. Companies are often targeted by demographics to cover specific groups of people, because certain types of people are interested in their products or services. By using demographic targeting, you can target more effectively and attract potential customers who are interested in your business.

Interest targeting

Through interest positioning, Google can divide users into several categories based on their network behavior. Many people interact differently on the web. Some people may take action to show that they are more likely to buy your products or use your services.

There are two types of interest targeting that you’ll come across.

• In-marketing targeting: This targeting condition displays ads to users who have been searching for your products or services. These users are closer to conversion, so you can target them and let them choose your business and convert.
• Affinity targeting: Every user collects data as they browse pages, applications, channels, videos and content on YouTube. Google will create the person ’s profile and allow you to target them based on their affiliation.

Interest positioning is a convenient way for companies to easily locate people who are interested in your products or services and to use contextual positioning.

Remarketing

Remarketing is one of the most popular forms of advertising. These Google Ads target users who have previously interacted with your content. Remarketing ads are designed to enable potential customers to reconsider your business and consider buying from you.

You can retarget users at any stage of the digital marketing buying channel, as long as they have visited your webpage or clicked on your ad. The goal is to get users back to your business and complete the purchase.

Content targeting

Aside from audience targeting, you can also target by content. With content targeting, you can attract users who are looking for specific types of content. Here are some examples of targeting content that your business can use.

Keyword targeting

Google serves ads alongside content that matches the keywords. You can target specific keywords to help your ads appear in front of relevant potential customers who use those keywords to search. For example, you might target the keyword “Winter Women’s Fashion.” By targeting this keyword, Google can place your ads on the same page of articles related to winter fashion clothing.

Targeting topics

As you figure out your targeting strategy for Google’s Display Network, you have the option to target multiple pages about a specific topic. This lets you reach a broad range of pages. Google analyzes web content to determine the central theme of each webpage. They target ads based on your topic selections. This means you can reach people on websites that fall into the selected topic.

Placement targeting

The point of placement targeting is to allow your business to choose the website you want your ads to show. Your placement may be on the entire site or a subset of the site. You choose the domain that best suits your business.

This means you can focus on placing ads on the sites your audience is most likely to browse. For example, if you sell women ’s clothing, you can target the domain names of fashion bloggers so that your ads appear on their websites. However, this does not guarantee that you will appear in these domains. Your bid must match the amount they charge for advertising on their website.

3 best practices for doing Google Ads targeting

1. Know your target audience and segment them

If you want to succeed in any advertising campaign, you must understand your target audience. You want to attract the people who are most interested in your business. By understanding your target audience, you will gain more relevant potential customers.

Understanding demographic information such as socioeconomic status, interests, hobbies, and occupations will help you locate individuals interested in your business. Once you know who’s interested in your business, you can segment your audience.

You will have people who are interested in the different products or services provided by your business. You can create a more personalized experience for your audience by segmenting them.

2. Utilize display targeting exclusions

When running a Google display campaign, you may encounter certain aspects to be excluded from the campaign. You can exclude keywords, placements, interests, audiences, topics, and demographics.

Exclusions are added to prevent poor performance or to filter out irrelevant leads. This is beneficial to your business because it prevents you from targeting keywords or people that drive high costs but earn your business few to no conversions.

3. Focus on location targeting

Specifying a region is one of the easiest ways to establish a target audience. When setting up a Google Display Network targeting strategy, you need to double your geographic targeting.

When you target local customers, you want to target location-based keywords and the radius around the physical store. This means that you will be targeting keywords such as “Hairsburg, Pennsylvania”.

Focusing on local positioning will help you locate more relevant leads. You will drive more people to your location and create new customers for your business.

When you look in your location targeting settings, you’ll see three different options:

• Target people in, or who show interest in your target locations
• Target only people in your locations
• Target only people searching for your locations

If you want to get the most effective results from your campaign, please focus on targeting only users in your location or searching for your location. Doing so will ensure that you only target local users searching your company.

The first option is to target people who show interest in your target location, which may waste advertising spend. People who are 1,000 miles away may be searching and finding your company, but they are far away, and they rarely choose it. If you focus on the other two options, you can bring more valuable results.

Using Google Ads targeting is a great way to create more effective campaigns on Google. You will attract more leads that are of interest to your business, which will bring better results to your campaign.

If you need help using Google Ads targeting, contact us to see how we can help you get started.