Reach Valued Customers with Search Audiences

1. Identify the benefits of Google's Search Audience solutions

Google’s Audience solutions is a set of strategies and products that help you reach high-value
customers in the moments when they’re ready to buy the products you offer.
Audience solutions in practice
Hiroko is the digital marketing manager at Your Adventure, a bike and adventure-sports online
retail store. She’s currently running a Google Ads Search campaign and anticipates many people
searching for the term “bicycle sales online." These potential customers share various
behaviors, interests, and characteristics.
1. Some have already visited her website and are in the middle of researching bicycles.
2. Some are passionate about outdoor adventure.
3. Some are looking to purchase a new bicycle.
4. Some have signed up to her email list but haven’t made a purchase yet.

So, how can Hiroko tailor her campaign to suit her various customer groups?
Google’s Search Audience solutions allow Hiroko to create audience lists based on a multitude
of signals, then layer those audience lists onto her ad groups. This allows her to then condition
her bids, creatives, and keywords based on her various customer groups.

With Audience solutions, she can combine the intent exhibited from search keywords like
“bicycle sales online” with insights about those potential customer groups. This way, Hiroko
can make more informed decisions to reach customers at the right moment, with the right bid
and message.

Evolving to meet customer expectations

Think about how technology continues to shape people’s lives and shopping behavior. They
expect all digital experiences to be helpful, personal, and frictionless, providing a seamless
experience no matter what the channel may be.

Every time they turn to their devices for answers, they're expressing intent and reshaping the
traditional marketing funnel along the way.
Ads also need to evolve with these expectations. Successful advertisers work to close the gap
by creating different segments of customers and building personalized and relevant
experiences for each stage of the customer journey. Being useful and relevant is the only way
to get customers to tune in.
Meet your marketing goals
Now that you know how Google’s Audience solutions can help you reach specific groups of
customers, let’s examine how they can help you meet your marketing goals.

Awareness
Marketing goal: Create awareness
Each of the following solutions helps to create awareness among your potential customers.

Detailed Demographics

Detailed Demographics allows advertisers to reach people based on advanced demographic

criteria like marital status, education, parenting stage, and homeownership.

Affinity Audiences

Affinity Audiences aggregates people who have demonstrated a strong interest in a given topic.

Consideration
Marketing goal: Drive consideration
Each of the following solutions helps you drive consideration among potential customers and
people who have interacted with your brand in the past.

In-Market audiences

In-Market Audiences is a powerful way to drive consideration among people who are actively
researching the products or services you offer and who we've inferred are in-market to buy
them, including those thinking of buying from other places.

Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA)

RLSA helps you reach people who have engaged with your website or YouTube channel in the
past.

Similar Audiences for Search

Similar Audiences for Search helps you find new customers that share the behaviors and
characteristics of your remarketing audience segments.

Conversion and loyalty

Are you trying to reach these marketing objectives? If so, Audience solutions may be for you!
Marketing goal: Increase purchases and loyalty with your existing customers
Each of the following solutions helps you reach your existing customers.

Customer Match

Customer Match allows you to upload your own data into Google Ads and reach custom
segments across devices. Find your loyal customers, exclude your current customers, and
expand to reach those that resemble your customers.
Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA)

Remarketing Lists for Search Ads can help you reach those who were your customers in the past
(those who've gotten to your website’s thank-you page).

How Audience solutions can enhance your Search strategy

Here are three ways that Google’s Audience solutions can help you enhance your Search
strategy.
Variable bidding
What
Layer at least one audience group on top of your Search campaign, and bid differently for that
audience based on their value to your business.

How
Increase your bids on certain audiences:
If you bid higher for certain audiences, you’ll potentially have your ad shown at a better
position when people search for you. For example, using Affinity Audiences, Hiroko could bid
higher for customers searching for “mountain bikes” who are also passionate about outdoor
adventure sports.

Decrease your bids on certain audiences:

Certain audiences might not have as strong a performance as others do, so you can reduce your
bids when those audiences search for you. For example, using Remarketing Lists for Search Ads,
you may know that certain past visitors have a low shopping basket average value. Bidding
lower for lists that include such visitors may improve your overall campaign performance.

Why you should care

Ad auctions are competitive, and you want to make sure you’re making the right bids when
certain groups of people are searching for you.
Creative customization
How customers stay in control
It’s important for your customers to know that they’re always in control over the ads they see,
and they’ll always know why they’re seeing an ad. Google values transparency and always puts
the customer’s privacy first, which is why we offer a user control called My Activity.
Using My Activity, customers can see everything they’ve searched for, visited, or watched in a
single place. It’s their one-stop shop for ad controls, including the ability to update interest
preferences and opt out of ads personalization. We’re able to honor muting choices whenever
and wherever customers are signed in, across all devices and browsers.

How does ad muting work?

Let’s say a person isn’t into watching movies. If she wants to stop seeing movie ads on the web,
all she has to do is click or tap on the [x] in the upper righthand corner. Her preferences will
now be reflected across all of her devices.

2. Reach prospective customers with Google's Search Audience solutions

Google’s Audience solutions allow you to create audience lists based on a multitude of signals,
then layer those audience lists onto your ad groups. This allows you to then condition your bids,
creatives, and keywords based on different audience insights.

Affinity Audiences
Affinity Audiences aggregates users who’ve demonstrated a qualified interest in a given topic,
allowing you to access the people your product or service will most likely matter to.

Affinity Audiences use case

Say a person regularly views videos about camping, has recently searched for the best fishing
lures on Google.com, and has researched hiking trails on Google Maps. Our system would
recognize that this person is likely passionate about the outdoors and would place them in an
Outdoor Enthusiast affinity audience.

If you were an online adventure sporting goods shop, you might like to bid on broad terms like
“adventure sports,” but would want to to avoid potentially irrelevant traffic. By layering the
Outdoor Enthusiast affinity audience to your broad keyword targeting campaign, you’ll make
sure your ads are only seen by people who are truly passionate about the outdoors, increasing
the relevancy of your ad and the likelihood of conversion.
Example 1:
a. Searched for the best fishing lure
b. Regularly views videos about camping on YouTube
c. Installed rock climbing apps on mobile device
d. Searched for hiking trails on Google Maps

Example 2:
a. Searched for the best toys for their toddler on Google.com
b. Viewed the best recipes for kids on YouTube
c. Installed potty training apps on their mobile device
d. Looked for the Children’s Amusement Center on Google Maps

Detailed Demographics
Using Detailed Demographics, you can reach customers based on their activities on
Google.com. These activities may indicate certain things about their lives, including parental
status, parenting stage, homeownership status, marital status, and education status.
Parental status - Whether or not they’re a parent
Parenting stage - Ages of their children
Homeownership - Whether they own or rent their home
Marital status - Whether they’re married, in a relationship, or single
Education status - Level of education they’ve achieved or if they’re currently attending college

Detailed Demographics use case

Imagine that someone has searched for the best toys for their toddler on Google.com, recently
viewed the best recipes for kids on YouTube, looked for the Children’s Amusement Center on
Google Maps, and installed potty training apps on their mobile device. Our system would
recognize that this person is likely caring for a toddler, and would place them in a Parents of
Toddler audience.

An online business selling toys suitable for babies aged 1-3 can layer the Parents of Toddler
audience onto their Search campaign, so when they're targeting the broad keyword “toys,”
they know their ads will only be shown to a relevant segment of parents.

In-Market Audiences
Google’s Audience solutions can tell the difference between interest and intent. Being able to
identify groups that are in-market for your products and services is extremely valuable because
it allows you to reach people when they’re in the mindset to buy. This can result in a higher ROI
than reaching customers that are only generally interested.

In-Market Audiences use case

Imagine that someone watched a video review of a car, installed the AutoTrader app on their
mobile device, searched for auto financing help on Google.com and looked for local car
dealerships on Google Maps. Our system would recognize that this person is likely in the
market for a car, and would add him to an audience list of similar people.

A bank specializing in automobile financing and looking to increase loans for potential car
buyers might target the generic keyword “loans” and layer that campaign with an audience
that’s in-market for a car. This way, only people that are potentially interested in auto financing
will see their ad.

Example :
a. Searched for auto financing help on Google.com
b. Watched a video review of a car
c. Installed the AutoTrader app on their mobile device
 d. Looked for local car dealerships on Google Maps.

Note
Affinity Audiences, Detailed Demographics, and In-Market Audiences are auto-included and
automatically used as a signal for conversion-based search bidding strategies. Even so, it's
recommended that you apply these audiences to view list- and segment-specific performance
and implement creative customization.

How do these solutions work?

Signals

Google’s intelligent algorithms leverage behavior on Google.com, YouTube, Google Maps,

Google Shopping, and more to identify repeated patterns of behavior.

Surveys

Google validates this behavior using surveys and conversion data.

Scale

As users move between mobile and desktop, Google maintains a holistic picture of their
behaviors, helping brands to reach users across devices.

3. Harness the power of your own data to reach your marketing objectives

You know your customers best. Use your data on them to upsell and cross-sell, close the deal
with people who’ve engaged with your site but not converted, and reach people that are
similar to your customers. Remarketing Lists for Search Ads, Customer Match, and Similar
Audiences complement one another and help you cast a wider net to reach your most
important audiences.

Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA)

Search campaigns generate valuable traffic to your website and can help you achieve excellent
results. But not all user traffic is the same!
What do we mean?
Some people searching for your keywords may have already interacted with your site in the
past. For example:
 They may have visited your homepage.
 They may have added items to a shopping basket on your site, but then abandoned it.
 They may be entirely new to your site, and have not yet discovered your incredible
business
Remarketing Lists for Search Ads allows you to serve unique ad creatives and set your
ad group bids differently, based on past interactions with your site or app.
Improving campaign performance with RLSA
Let’s take a look at how you can improve your search campaign performance using RLSA.

Hiroko is the digital marketing manager at Your Adventure, a bike and adventure sports online
retail store. She’s happy with all the traffic her site is receiving via Google Search, but she’s
looking to improve the performance of her campaigns.

At this very moment, three different groups of people are using the search term “bicycle.”

1. The first group has never heard of Hiroko’s online site.

2. The second group has visited her site before, but is still researching different bicycle options.
3. The third group has reached her site's checkout page, but didn’t fill in their details.
How can Hiroko reach each group individually with RLSA?
First group
Create a text ad that includes a "new user offer" to reach the first group, as these people
haven't been to her site yet.
Second group
Bid higher for the second group, which has a greater chance of converting, since these people
already know about her site.
Third group
Create a a text ad that includes a special "return offer" to reach the third group. These people
might decide to return and make a purchase!

So how does this all work exactly?

Once Hiroko tags her site with the Google Ads remarketing tag, people who visit will be added
to her remarketing lists (in accordance with their privacy settings). Hiroko can then define
different audience lists based on the pages these people visited and the recency of their
interaction with her site.

What can Hiroko do after layering her Search campaigns with her remarketing lists?

 Increase her bids on certain audiences

 Decrease her bids on certain audiences
 Create ad groups targeting generic keywords and only show ads to those who’ve visited
her before
 Tailor her ad creatives based on the customer
 Exclude certain audience lists from her campaigns

What are some example remarketing lists?

 “Visited her site in past 28 days but didn’t convert”
 “Visited her site in past 7 days but didn’t convert”
 “Added an item to the shopping basket but didn’t convert”
 “Reached “Thank You” page (converted)”

Policies and requirements

Google only uses data to serve ads as specified by your campaign setup. We don’t share the
cookie lists with any advertisers, including you as the account owner. A remarketing list must
have at least 1,000 users on it before it can be used.

Customer Match
Every interaction you have with your customers is an opportunity to connect with them on their
path to purchase. These interactions are taking on new forms every day, providing you with
additional insights. But the evolving landscape complicates the once-simple approach to
reaching customers and moving them down the purchase path. There are now multiple
touchpoints and factors that can influence a consumer connection.
But you already have something that can help!
Your customer relationship management (CRM) data can help you understand the types of
people who have a relationship with your brand, and you can use insights from your data to
address your marketing challenges.

Customer Match allows you to leverage your online and offline customer data to reach your
customers and deliver the right message wherever they are, on any device, across Search,
YouTube, and Discovery.

How it works
Upload your customer data into Google Ads. We’ll match it against the people who search on
Google.com, and form it into audience lists. The upload can include various types of customer
data (for matching), such as email address, mailing address, and phone number. Let's take a
closer look at the steps below.
Segment

Segment a customer list based on desired marketing action (e.g., reactivation of lapsed
customers).
Upload

Upload the list to Google Ads.

Audience Lists

The list is translated into an audience list and made available for targeting on Search, YouTube,
and Discovery.
Customize Creative

Customize your creatives with special offers or incentives that are specific to this audience.

Why complement your Audience strategy with Customer Match?

 Diversify your audience strategy with a tagless strategy.
 Re-engage with customers you haven’t seen in awhile.
  Reach customers who may not have converted online and aren’t a part of your
remarketing lists (i.e, customers who converted off your app or in your store).
 Reach customers based on their purchase history (i.e, customers who’ve made at least
one purchase in the last month).
 Reach customers according to their lifetime value.
Similar Audiences
Similar Audiences leverages your remarketing lists to find new customers with similar
characteristics as your existing customers. It can help you expand the reach of your valuable
audiences, across all platforms.
How it works
Similar Audiences finds people that are similar to those on an original remarketing “seed” list.
The people are similar in profile based on the seed list members’ recent browsing interests,
search terms, and videos watched on YouTube.
Our system “scores” people based on how similar they are to those on the original seed list,
with similarity defined as interested in the same categories, topics, and products.
Once you have lists of similar audiences, you can layer these lists over your campaigns and bid
higher to reach valuable potential customers.
Note: Each similar audience has its seed list members removed to ensure that no one overlaps
between a similar list and its seed list. In the case of an All Visitors list, this would mean that the
Similar to All Visitors list is comprised of users who’ve not been to your site before.