For PPC campaigns to truly flourish, knowing your target audience is key—not just to get them to see your ads, but to actually inspire conversions! RLSA campaigns offer a powerful solution by combining detailed audience insights with keyword search intent, maximizing your return on investment.
A well-defined RLSA strategy lets you tailor your ad messaging, landing page experience, and bidding strategies to perfectly match where your target audience is in the conversion funnel. This leads to higher conversion rates and a more efficient use of your budget.
Don’t miss out on potential conversions! Your website analytics are a goldmine of information, revealing how users interact with your site. Leverage this valuable data across your PPC efforts.
First, what is the conversion funnel?
Every individual in your target audience takes a unique journey before reaching your desired outcome. This journey is best understood by analyzing their on-site behavior and the context behind their searches. While celebrating a completed conversion is great, growing your PPC program requires going beyond new customer acquisition. It’s crucial to cultivate loyalty and generate lifetime revenue from your existing customer base.
Audience targeting plays a vital role in PPC, particularly in how you segment and define your audience data and connect it with the intent behind every search. Imagine the possibilities of a more sophisticated search retargeting strategy by tailoring tactics based on how different audiences approach the same search query:
Ready to get started? Here are some essential remarketing audiences to set up for your PPC campaigns:
Remarketing Audiences in the Research Stage
These audiences are in the early stages of exploring what you have to offer:
Length of Time on Site
Delve into your analytics platform to understand how long users typically stay on your site before leaving. Do those who convert spend more than 5, 6, or 7 minutes browsing? Which pages attract their attention? Are there pages with higher bounce rates? If this audience conducts another non-branded search during this research phase, tailor your messaging to re-engage them and guide them back to your site, moving them further down the funnel.
Site Search Users
Google Analytics allows you to set up Site Search tracking, providing insights into how frequently site visitors utilize your site search and what they’re looking for. It’s a treasure trove of search term data, including revenue and orders generated by these specific searchers. This unlocks opportunities for behavioral audiences in RLSA and unveils new keyword ideas for your existing paid search campaigns.
Customer Match
Do you offer options for newsletter sign-ups, whitepaper or case study downloads, or email list subscriptions? If you collect this data directly, you can leverage it for search remarketing through Google’s Customer Match. This expands your targeting based on customer data beyond Google Ads (AdWords) and boasts a higher email match rate than platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
Remarketing Audiences in the Awareness Stage
These audiences are already familiar with your brand:
Blog Readers
Regular readers and followers of your blog are dedicated members of your brand community. Experiment with building audiences based on popular or highly-engaged blog pages. Adjust messaging or landing page experiences to offer incentives, loyalty program sign-ups, or early access to promotions, nurturing brand loyalty and encouraging further content engagement, sharing, and ultimately, conversions.
YouTube Viewers
While YouTube might not be your top source of last-click attributed conversions, don’t underestimate its potential. Research indicates that YouTube has some of the stronger rates in product introduction during the first stage of the conversion funnel compared to other social platforms, along with higher sales closure rates. Audiences engaging with your videos or subscribing to your channel express interest in your content. Remarketing to this group when they make searches related to your brand can be a strategic way to nudge potential customers closer to making a purchase.
Your different business groups/domains
Don’t let your website operate in isolation! If your company has other business units, product lines, or entities with their own domains, consider data sharing. Depending on how your analytics code or audience platforms collect data, sharing this first-party information across groups can unlock new revenue opportunities through remarketing, particularly if users frequently interact with these different domains during their awareness phase.
Remarketing Audiences in the Intent Stage
These audiences clearly demonstrate their intention to buy:
Abandoned Carts
This audience is a prime target for e-commerce advertisers using both Search and Display Network remarketing. Why not aggressively target those who added items to their shopping cart but didn’t complete the purchase? When they return to the search results page through your branded terms, test offering incentives like discounted shipping or coupons to entice them back and encourage them to finalize their order.
Sales Page Visitors
Engagement with your sales page, regardless of whether it resulted in a conversion, indicates interest in and awareness of your discounts and promotions. This translates to an audience with a high purchase intent! Ensure your ad copy for this group is up-to-date, emphasizing current offers and the biggest discounts to attract them back to your site.
Product Page Visitors
Identify your best-selling products or those with the highest conversion rates. Analyze which products attract visitors but have low conversion rates. By digging deeper into this data in your analytics platform, you can refine your targeting and optimize your campaign structure. Segment out and bid up on product page defined audiences that exceed the 1,000 audience minimum and display tailored product-based copy to re-engage potential customers.
Action + Loyalty Audiences
Even after customers take action and exhibit brand loyalty, there are still opportunities to re-engage them.
Repeat Purchases
If you sell products that require refills, restocking, or repurchase within a shorter timeframe (e.g., 60-90 days), create an audience of customers who previously purchased those products. Set up remarketing campaigns that target them shortly before they are likely to need more. By reminding them of their positive experience with your brand, you can leverage their loyalty to drive higher conversion rates and returns when you layer this audience onto your branded campaigns.
Past Converters
While it might seem counterintuitive, don’t neglect past customers in your marketing efforts. Repeat buyers and loyal customers are valuable assets who are likely to return to your brand. Ensure you maintain a presence through remarketing ads when they’re searching for your brand or browsing related products.
Loyalty/Rewards Program Participants
For those seeking new revenue streams in paid search, look no further than your most loyal customers—those who actively participate in your loyalty or rewards program. Reward their dedication by providing exclusive offers and a premium experience. When possible, direct them to special landing pages or personalize their on-site experience by greeting them by name, prompting them to log in for exclusive features, or showcasing their purchase history and recently viewed items.
The Power of Audience Targeting in PPC
While keyword intent remains crucial for paid search, combining it with high-quality audience data unlocks even greater potential. PPC will continue to adopt audience-focused strategies pioneered by channels like Display and Social, with platforms like Google and Bing introducing more sophisticated audience targeting methods. Instead of neglecting your remarketing audience strategy, delve into the insights revealed by your website visitor data and adapt your paid search retargeting tactics accordingly.
What successful remarketing audiences have you worked with? Share your experiences in the comments below or on Twitter!