Expert Tips For PPC Personalization and Privacy Concerns

It’s never been easier than now to find data about web users and personalize your pay per click (PPC) marketing ads and landing pages to them. At the same time, web users are becoming increasingly concerned about data privacy on the Internet, and wary of PPC marketers like you who they think seem to know a little bit too much about them, their interests, and their recent web activity when they see your well-targeted ads.

How do you appropriately adjust your PPC targeting so that you are balancing PPC personalization and privacy concerns? Continue reading for our suggestions on how using audience segmentation can help you achieve your desires as a PPC advertiser while also respecting your target audiences’ data privacy concerns.

PPC Platforms Have Moved from Targeting Keywords to Targeting Audiences, and Your Campaigns Should Keep in Step

Years ago, PPC targeting was simply centered around search engine keyword search activities. A person entered a search term into Google that you had selected in your Ad Group, your PPC ad was displayed if you won the bid against those also bidding on that keyword, and hopefully, your PPC ad was compelling enough to generate clicks.

My, have things changed.

Today, the best PPC campaigns are audience-centric. While PPC targeting of search terms is still important, choosing the proper audiences for your PPC campaigns is pay per click advertising’s sweet spot.
That’s where audience segmentation, which is the latest development to come from new PPC platform technology, comes in.

Our Top 4 Tips for PPC Targeting Audience Segmentation

You can respect data privacy through proper audience segmentation, which tells you about web users’ recent online interactions without revealing personally-identifiable information about them that they may feel is too sensitive for you to be using.

Here are our top 4 tips for PPC targeting and audience segmentation.

• Market, and Remarket, to People Most Likely to Decide to Purchase Your Products.

Thanks to advanced PPC platform technology, you can market to, and remarket to, a variety of different audiences who are more likely to purchase your products using personalized ads and landing pages, including:

• People who were already in your online store, but abandoned their shopping carts.
• People who purchased a specific one of your products, which is a great way to upsell them on add-ons or complementary products.
• People who are actively searching for and engaging with a product or product type, but haven’t made a purchase decision yet.
• People specifically looking for organic or environmentally-friendly products, which is great if these aspects are relevant to your brand.
• People who are price sensitive.
• And so much more!

With audience segmentation, we encourage you to think about your specific products and services, how someone in the process of making a purchasing decision would likely research products they’re interested in and market (or remarket) to those groups.

• Always Know Your Audience

Just because PPC targeting technology is so advanced doesn’t mean you get a free pass on marketing 101, which is knowing your audience.

For example, let’s say you’re a hotel. You, of course, have ADA accessible rooms. You might think that people who want to book them will search “ADA accessible rooms in (city)” or “wheelchair accessible rooms in (city).” But is that really what people who use wheelchairs are looking for when deciding on what hotel to stay at?

By drilling down into your specific audience’s needs, you may realize that better search terms to reach those looking for ADA hotel rooms include:

• “Hotel rooms with roll-in showers in (city)”
• “Hotel rooms with shower seats in (city)”
• “Hotel rooms with no stairs in (city)”

This example can be extrapolated to be used in any specific audience segmentation. Be sure to give careful thought to your audience’s needs, not just the buzz words surrounding a product or service that they might desire that your company uses internally. By personalizing your PPC ads and landing pages accordingly, you’re able to create a more relatable experience for potential customers, which puts your brand a step above.

• Know-How Your Going to Use Audience Segmentation in Google Ads

Google Ads’ seemingly never-ending options are a double-edged sword. They’re great because they let you tailor your Campaigns and Ad Groups to your specific goal. They’re bad because there are so many options for you to learn – with new options being added all the time for you to master.

To help you out, here’s a quick breakdown of how you can use audience segmentation in GoogleAds:

• You can add an audience on the Campaign or Ad Group level, and from there adjust:
  • Keywords.
  • Bid modifiers, like your cost per click (CPC).
  • Ad copy.
  • Landing page.

As you can see, there are so many different possibilities for Ad Groups and Campaigns when it comes to applying audiences. In fact, you may find that in order to reach all your objectives, you have several similar looking campaigns, each with a different aspect, or lever, changed.

• Document Everything You Do

Your GoogleAds Campaigns and Ad Groups are constantly changing. This means, as you’re changing your PPC targeting options and performing audience segmentation, it’s easy to forget what you did even just last week.

We recommend you save digital copies of all your reports, along with very detailed notes about what was unique about that campaign. While a tactic that didn’t work 6 months ago may work now, meaning you’ll repeat tweaks in the future that weren’t successful before, you don’t want to forget what you’ve tried, when, and what results in you received from it. In fact, documenting is one of the most important tasks we think a PPC marketer should be doing.

We Can Help with PPC Targeting and Audience Segmentation

As we mentioned before, Google Ads is great because it has so many options, and it’s cumbersome for the same reasons. What we know, though, is that audience segmentation is a great way to lift results while maintaining a balance of PPC personalization and data privacy.

If you simply don’t have the internal resources to take advantage of all the features Google Ads has to offer today, we can help. As a PPC agency, we help a variety of different brands with their pay per click advertising, and we’re available to help you, too. Start a conversation with us today by calling our agency at (877) 682-2012. 

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