Google Ads’ audience features have come a long way since its introduction into the ad platform. Affinity audiences were a great way to raise brand awareness, In-Market segments could increase the number of leads in the sales funnel, and remarketing could reengage previous website visitors to make a purchase.
Now though, advertisers can leverage In-Market audiences for search, Life Events and Custom Intent Audiences to improve lead volumes and conversion rates.
In-Market Audience for Search
Similar to In-Market Audiences for Display, In-Market audiences target users who are actively looking to purchase products or services that are similar to what your business is offering. These audience lists are updated by Google based on various signals users are sending through:
- Google search
- Google Chrome
- The Play app store
- YouTube
- Google Maps
- Gmail
As a benefit to the advertiser, these audiences only hold users temporarily and are updated as soon as (within 2 seconds) the signals sent by the user change.
How to leverage In-Market for Search
To start off, review your Google Analytics audiences and see which of your “In-Market” segments are generating the most conversions that are aligning with your client’s business goals. In South Africa, the largest In-Market Audience is usually “Employment”, but you can also look at other audiences that are driving value.
Once you’ve selected your audience, decide what targeting option will be the best for your specific campaign. Using an In-Market audience list with the “Targeting” option set will narrow the reach of your campaign, but could drastically improve your conversion rate and quality of leads. Selecting the “Observation” setting will enable you to get additional insights on the users clicking on your ads and will give you the option to set a bid adjustment on the audience that is driving the most conversions.
Life-Events Audiences
This audience is similar to In-Market audiences for search, but with an additional targeting option that gives marketers the opportunity to reach users just before or after big events that take place in their lives. These events are (at the time of writing):
- Graduating from college
- Graduating soon
- Recently graduated
- Getting married
- Getting married soon
- Recently married
- Moving house
- Moving soon
- Recently moved
These audiences aren’t numerous, but the industries surrounding these are massive. Consider the “Getting married” audience and the businesses that can assist with their various needs, such as dress makers, caterers, venues, lawyers and many more.
How to leverage life-events audiences
Life Events Audiences is currently only available on YouTube, so you would need to start with a video that has the right message for your ideal customer. To launch your video campaign (and get data from your YouTube channel) you need to link your Google Ads account with your YouTube channel. Once completed, create your campaign with the relevant audience and targeting methods and add the video as an ad in your campaign.
Custom Intent Audiences
Search Engine Land provided a full break down on Google’s latest released and covered Custom intent audiences. In short, custom intent audiences enable advertisers to target people who want to buy specific products you offer based on data from your campaigns, website and YouTube channel.
How to leverage Custom Intent audiences
Custom intent audiences have two options available for advertisers:
- You can either create your own audience by combining various keywords, URLs and topics that your potential customers may be interested in.
- Or you can let Google create your custom intent audience by means of machine learning that infers the traits your prospective customers possess. This audience is exclusively created by Google for your account.
Both these targeting methods have the ability to increase the top of your client’s sales funnel.
For more information on where to find custom intent audiences, you can read Allen Fin’s article that has a step by step guide on how to leverage these audiences for your own success.
