With the sheer number of more advertisers using PPC platforms present today, advertising costs per click are skyrocketing. This makes it tough for advertisers working with limited budgets to achieve satisfactory outcomes. The era of easily securing affordable clicks and leads through Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads has coming to a close. In certain sectors, the rate of change in SEO is so swift and drastic that a new PPC strategy might be the only way forward.

For marketing managers and small business owners striving to expand their reach on last year’s budget, a significant obstacle stands in their way. Year-on-year increases in CPCs make it more challenging to deliver the expected results.

Image via Search Engine Land.

While this might seem like a hopeless situation, there’s no need to panic. I’m about to share a relatively secure, focused, and budget-friendly strategy for achieving growth amidst the increasingly competitive terrain of search marketing: combining audiences and keywords. Let’s dive in.

Understanding Audiences

At their heart, audiences are simply groups of website visitors or users grouped together based on specific characteristics. Google Ads offers numerous audience types that can be leveraged to boost your targeting effectiveness and overall campaign success. Let’s explore a few:

• Remarketing Lists: These lists comprise users who have previously interacted with your website in a particular way. This could include visitors who explored your site but didn’t reach a specific page, those who visited a combination of pages, or users who landed on a confirmation page.
• In-Market Audiences: This category encompasses users actively engaged in researching, comparing, and potentially purchasing specific goods and services.
• Affinity Audiences: This group includes individuals who align with a comprehensive picture of particular lifestyles, passions, and habits.
• Detailed Demographics: This segment consists of users who share specific traits, such as being a student, homeowner, engaged individual, and more.
• Similar Audiences: These lists are automatically generated based on existing remarketing lists or customer lists.
• Customer Lists: This category involves lists of email addresses, physical addresses, or phone numbers obtained from external data sources like CRM systems or marketing platforms like Hubspot, Salesforce, or Marketo.
• Life Events: This segment targets users who have experienced or are currently undergoing significant life events such as marriage, engagement, recent home purchase, and others.
• Custom Intent & Custom Affinity: These lists comprise audiences categorized by intent or potential intent, often derived from keywords (more on this later).

Each type of audience plays a unique role in a digital marketing strategy, and many can be utilized in both search and display campaigns. However, some are exclusive to one or the other. Nevertheless, all these Google Ads audiences offer valuable insights into the individuals visiting your website, those converting (and those who aren’t), and frequently provide information about conversion rates and costs.

It’s important to note that not all audiences are created equal when it comes to maximizing targeting effectiveness, which leads us to our next point.

The Power of Combining Audiences and Keywords

You’re probably already incorporating audiences into your remarketing efforts or leveraging them for insights within Google Analytics. That’s fantastic! However, there’s much more you can achieve. More specifically, you can significantly enhance your targeting and achieve superior results by layering audiences on top of your existing keywords. This method effectively identifies individuals actively seeking a specific product or service who are also further along in their buying journey compared to others.

Let’s illustrate this with an example. Imagine you’re an orthodontist specializing in Invisalign, the clear retainer system. Your target market is limited to a 20-mile radius around your practice, not the entire state of Massachusetts. You create a campaign aptly named “Invisalign,” allocate a budget, and populate it with relevant keywords like “Invisalign cost,” “Invisalign near me,” “Invisalign,” and others.

However, you discover that the average cost per click for this localized targeting is a hefty $10. Examining your Auction Insights reveals that you’re competing against a wide range of advertisers, including large dental chains with significantly larger budgets, fellow digitally savvy orthodontists with dedicated marketing teams, and numerous dentists and orthodontists within your 20-mile radius—all vying for the coveted “Invisalign” keyword with varying bids.

You’re up against stiff competition, and despite your significant investment, it’s proving challenging to stand out and attract qualified leads to your practice. So how do you secure qualified leads without breaking the bank? There’s a subtle yet crucial difference between bidding on the broad term “Invisalign” and targeting the keyword “Invisalign” within a campaign specifically focused on dating services.

In the former scenario, your ad is displayed to anyone searching for “Invisalign.” This could be someone genuinely interested in the treatment, an individual with no intention of choosing a provider, or even someone who accidentally clicked on your ad. The point is, you’ve paid at least $10 per click regardless of the user’s intent or subsequent action.

However, by layering the keyword “Invisalign” onto a campaign targeting a dating services audience, your ads for that keyword are exclusively shown to individuals already part of your targeted audience.

Think of this approach as a Venn diagram, with audience on one side and keywords on the other:

The sweet spot lies at the intersection of these two circles—this is the group of users who will see your ads. While this represents a smaller portion of potential users compared to simply bidding on the keyword alone, it comprises significantly more qualified leads. Now, you might wonder, why choose dating services as the target audience? Why not opt for something like business services or an affinity audience focused on home decor?

The beauty of this technique is that you can experiment with any audience. The fundamental principle is to identify which audience segments are most likely to be actively searching for your chosen keyword. In the case of dating services, the logic is that individuals preparing to re-enter the dating scene might be more inclined to prioritize improving their smiles.

Business services, for instance, could be another suitable In-Market Audience to layer with “Invisalign,” and you might experience success with this pairing as well. Ultimately, the effectiveness of this strategy depends on the answer to this question: How many individuals actively seeking business services are also interested in Invisalign?

Regardless of the chosen audience, layering keywords with audience targeting is likely to reduce those costly clicks.

Implementing Audience and Keyword Targeting

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to set this up within your Google Ads account:

1. Begin by creating a new campaign. If you’re structuring a campaign around a specific audience, it’s helpful to name the campaign accordingly:

2. Ad groups and keywords can be organized in various ways. I recommend sticking to a familiar structure, similar to how you would arrange any other campaign or new ad group with a cohesive theme. For instance, if your keywords revolve around Invisalign, group your Invisalign-themed keywords within the Invisalign ad group. Ultimately, the key differentiator between this campaign and one without direct audience targeting lies in the audience targeting itself.

3. Navigate to the “Audiences” tab within your campaign and start exploring the available options. Begin with choices that make logical sense. For example, if you’re a lighting fixture company, explore the availability of a dedicated “lighting and fixtures” audience. If you’re a travel agency, look for audiences related to trips originating from or destined for specific locations. Remember, your keywords act as the primary filter here. While individuals in-market for dating services might conduct various searches, your focus is on capturing those specifically searching for your chosen keywords!

4. Ad creation might require a slightly different approach in this case. Since you’re targeting a specific audience, rather than the entire population potentially searching for “Invisalign,” there’s room for tailoring your ads accordingly. In our example, you can craft ad copy that resonates with individuals interested in both Invisalign and dating services. Here’s a possible approach:

However, it’s also worth A/B testing a more generic ad alongside this tailored message. Sometimes, overly specific messaging can be off-putting and negatively impact click-through rates. Consider testing a more general ad that highlights your expertise and accolades:

Exploring Automated Bidding

In our previous example, we established that our goal is to display ads solely to individuals who meet both of these criteria:

1. They are actively searching for something related to “Invisalign.”
2. They are currently in-market for dating services.

This approach significantly narrows down potential traffic and acts as a robust filter, setting the stage for improved traffic quality. But can we take it a step further? Absolutely! Experiment with an automated bidding strategy.

Target CPA, by design, aims to weed out low-quality clicks and prioritize high-quality clicks with a higher likelihood of conversion. By implementing an automated bidding strategy, we’re essentially filtering the filter’s output. We’ve narrowed down Invisalign-related searches to those at the intersection of our chosen keyword and audience, and now we’re further refining those clicks to prioritize those most likely to convert.

The result? Fewer clicks overall and lower costs compared to bidding on a keyword alone, but in exchange, you gain higher-quality clicks with an increased probability of conversion.

Embrace Targeted Marketing!

Putting this strategy into practice is remarkably straightforward. All you need is your Google Ads or Microsoft Ads account and a designated budget. The specific amount will vary depending on your industry. For instance, targeting “Invisalign” searches layered with a dating services audience within a 20-mile radius might be significantly cheaper per click and yield a higher click volume compared to a campaign targeting variations of “HR software” layered with a business services audience across the entire U.S.

Regardless of your industry, start conservatively with a smaller budget, and don’t be discouraged if you encounter the “Limited by Budget” flag during testing. Your goal is to validate the effectiveness of layering keywords and audiences before allocating a significant ad spend behind this strategy!