How to enhance your paid search with audience targeting

To most marketers, paid search is all about capturing interest at the bottom of the marketing funnel.

Given most verticals have several to hundreds of valuable keywords that convert at a profitable rate, this is a fair assessment.

Many marketers don’t consider that they can use paid search a bit further up in the funnel by going after broader keywords with lower intent. For those who do, a common challenge is those people are not yet ready to convert.

One way to improve that balance is audience targeting – layering audiences on top of these broad-intent keywords. This will get in front of people whose demographic qualifiers indicate they might want what you’re selling.

Let’s look at why audience targeting is a tactic that deserves your attention. You’ll also learn how to implement it for search (and special considerations for shopping), and the limitations of which you should be aware.

The future of search and keywords: Why audience targeting is growing more relevant to PPC

Many marketers are not too excited about the eventuality of keywords going away. At this point, it really is a question of “when” not “if.”

Google continues to move away from keyword intent as it used to exist. They’re trying to predict or even pre-empt intent through audience signals which, while useful, are suggestions to help kick-start the system rather than specific targeting lists.

I don’t know that search intent can or will ever be removed, but keyword match types almost certainly will. Intent will diminish to the point where entire campaigns will eventually target search themes. We’re already seeing this in Performance Max.

You can already see the pieces moving with recent announcements of broad match campaigns with brand exclusions and inclusions. This is Google previewing where targeting is going to be in around five years (maybe less).

Audience targeting is a way to cope with that change. It allows advertisers to take advantage of the technologies Google has and is building for audiences: who the person is, what their history involves, how they behave on search, what kind of things they like and avoid.

Even if their query is not super close to what you’re selling, Google’s consumer data indicates that this is someone who is likely to buy from you. The “immediately relevant” nature of search is bartered away in exchange for the chance to put your message in front of them.

In other words, search is becoming more and more like social media.

The introduction of AI overviews and rich search results tells us that Google’s priority is no longer creating a directory of 10 blue links with ads above them. Instead it is to understand how people seek and consume information.

Whether this is the right move is irrelevant – it is happening. Paid search marketers will need to improve how we work with first-party data and creative assets to get attention based on people’s potential needs.

The opportunities available are too great to only show up only when people search specifically for what we’re advertising.

4 ways to use audience targeting for your search campaigns

Here are four examples to help you understand how to use audience targeting based on audience behavior and background, rather than the query they enter. All of these scenarios require that your targeting choices be backed by research and deep understanding of your consumer.

1. Targeting based on brand intent

One way an advertiser can employ audience targeting is based on remarketing parameters.

This is known in Google’s platform as Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA) and can be used in two modes:

Observation mode, which still targets anyone who searches

Targeting mode, which restricts it to people from your audiences

For this example, we’ll use the keyword “landscaping services” and assume it is:

Getting several million hits per month

Is not directly related to a brand’s primary offer

Still has some business, demographic, or interest-based overlap

Instead of showing your ads every time someone searches for “landscaping services” or some variant thereof, you tell Google to only show for the searches made by people who fit a given set of criteria.

So you layer on your own customer list and only target people who have:

Visited your website

Signed up for your email list

Watched your YouTube videos

Are otherwise familiar with your brand

2. Targeting based on consumer background

Consider the keyword “sparkling water.” This is a simple product with different intent depending on whether B2B or B2C audiences are searching for it.

If you only want your ads to target B2B audiences buying large quantities of sparkling water for office consumption, you can layer in even more targeted keywords and demographics:

Also search for “bulk” or “wholesale” searches

Searched for an unrelated keyword that indicates that they are your target customer (e.g. “office snack suppliers”)

Work in companies with a minimum headcount

Work in specific industries

Are in-market for a purchase

So now you should theoretically get more queries from B2B customers than B2C.

If you wanted to flip that around and only show up for the consumer segment, you would instead layer in audiences based on interests. This could be something as simple as people who’ve shown an interest in household appliances or interior decorating.

3. Targeting based on order value

A small office typically buys a less expensive copy machine. That’s all they need. Meanwhile, large enterprises often buy or lease premium copy machines with additional features, toner subscriptions, and monthly service plans.

These two intents can overlap for the same searches. However you only want to advertise your full-service bundle to the largest of the larger companies.

In this situation, layer on what Google knows about the detailed demographics around company size (e.g. 10,000+ employees) along with industries that you know have significant copier use (e.g. law firms, real estate).

Recently painting your living room doesn’t immediately qualify you as being interested in sparkling water, but it is a way of excluding people making searches in a professional capacity.

Tactics like this boil down to how broad you’re willing to go with your audiences.

4. Targeting based on LinkedIn data in Microsoft Ads

When we talk about paid search, Google tends to be the default. For good reason.

That doesn’t mean Bing isn’t worth considering, especially since it means that you’ll have the ability to target people based on the information in their LinkedIn profiles.

Allocating a small portion of your budget to test this could prove worthwhile, especially for B2B brands that want to show search ads to people based on their employers, industries, job titles, or work experience.

Special considerations for eCommerce and Shopping

What we’ve discussed so far has largely been specific to Search campaigns, but paid search remains a lucrative channel for brands selling goods and products. If this is you, here are two areas you should focus on.

1. Audiences

Many advertisers don’t realize that as you bid higher in Shopping campaigns, Google matches your products to a wider variety of broad terms. So if you’re selling a toaster oven and your bids are quite low, you’re probably going to show up for more “exact” queries:

Brand name i.e. “kitchenaid”

Model number i.e. “5KMT2115DER”

Product category i.e. “kitchenaid toaster”

As you increase your bids, you’ll start showing up for keywords such as “kitchen appliances” or simply “toaster”.

The question to ask yourself is: How broad am I willing to go? You have to decide if it’s worth the spend to bid that much and pull in that traffic.

Oftentimes, if you have multiple shopping campaigns you can deprioritise one, but maintain higher bids and layer audiences on top. After you get whatever traffic you get from your other campaigns, that campaign can start going after broader terms from specific audiences.

3. Product feeds

There’s much more nuance behind feeds, but Google primarily looks at two parts in order to decide when and where to show your product ads.

The first is your identifying columns, which your feed needs at least two of in order to show up in as many options as possible:

UPC (universal product code) or GTIN (global trade identification number)

Brand name

MPN (manufacturer part number)

From a keyword perspective, Google considers your title. In particular, they consider the beginning of the title. So make sure that you use the most relevant keywords in the beginning of your title—within reason, without being too spammy.

Know your limitations before you test audience targeting

As with all things related to digital marketing and data, there are limitations to consider.

The nature of search itself is changing. More people report using professional devices to make personal searches and vice-versa, so there is going to be some degree of overlap in your targeting. This is why understanding your buyer has to be the first step, as it supersedes device and audience limitations.

You are somewhat beholden to what Google will let you target, such as demographic markers (e.g. marital status, parental status, education, income) and audience lists (e.g. retargeting people who’ve interacted with your business, excluding existing customers).

Targeting in Google Ads beyond just queries and keywords is still a relatively new concept – even though RLSAs have been around for some time. If you’re starting out, keep these RLSA limitations in mind:

RLSAs have a maximum lifetime of 540 days.

For privacy reasons, a list must have at least 1,000 cookies before it can be used.

Lists that include the Display demographics for age, gender, interests are ineligible.

Lists made in mobile-app views are ineligible.

Going after these “irrelevant on the surface” searches comes at a cost, so you will need a healthy testing budget. Smaller brands—where demand capture is very much still the sole priority—may struggle to make room for this strategy given how important it is for them to see returns on the bulk of their ad spend.

Teams that do better have clients and managers who understand the need for patience and first-party data, and who appreciate that not all tests will pay off.

Once you’ve got a solid grasp of how to use audience targeting and RLSA in paid search, you can build a stronger omnichannel strategy, complementing these marketing efforts with others on email, content, paid social and other channels.

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