PPC Targeting that Reaches the Right People at the Right Time

Unlike some of the more gifted individuals in the universe, we believe in well refined, scientific PPC targeting that reaches the right people at the right time. There’s no magical force guiding PPC advertisements towards the right people.

We’ve got to step in and make sure your PPC ads are targeted to, and reach, people that are likely to become customers.

Getting a Qualified Quantity of Conversions

Balance between the reach and targeting of a campaign can be seen as the ever-famous quantity versus quality equation.

If you refine your targeting until you are reaching the single perfect customer, you might get that one sale but you won’t be showing advertisements to the numerous other prospects who may not have fit through every single one of your targeting filters.

You might have a 100% conversion rate with the perfect customer, but it is only one sale. On the other hand, you might loosen your targeting and have a 3% conversion rate, but it is now hundreds of sales.

The balancing act begins when costs are considered. A PPC manager’s first priority is reaching or exceeding the client’s expected ROI. This expected ROI can help the manager find the right PPC targeting options—options that will cater to your budget while balancing the quality and quantity of clicks your advertisements receive.

Achieve a Positive ROI

A strong campaign takes advantage of PPC targeting options to create filters that work towards your marketing goals.

Targeting options help you reach the right people with your ads. By honing in on the most qualified individuals, your PPC advertising can see greater profitability.

However, all of your refined PPC targeting will have effects on the reach of your PPC advertising campaigns. As you hone in on your perfect prospect customer, the amount of people exposed to your advertisements is reduced.

An effective PPC manager will balance refined PPC targeting with the reach of a campaign to achieve a positive ROI.

PPC Targeting Options

For Search PPC Ads:

Keyword targeting—choosing words or phrases that you want your advertisements to show up for when a person enters them on a search engine. A highly relevant keyword list partnered with a researched negative keyword list will make sure your ads serve the most qualified search queries. The question of quality versus quantity comes into play for this PPC targeting in the length of your keywords.
- Shorter, more general keywords, or head keywords, will generate a higher volume of impressions.
- Longer, detailed keywords, or long tail keywords, will generate a higher quality of clicks but will receive fewer impressions.
Location and language targeting—choosing the language and location you want your ads triggered for on a search engine:
- Locations can range from a country, region, city, to a particular city block.
- Languages can be targeted by the preferred language that the user uses on search engines or by the language of websites the user has visited in the past.
- As in most targeting, be careful not to be too broad or too refined. Targeting too small of a location may kill your traffic. However, targeting a massive location with a product or service that is only applicable to a certain location will make your ad copy irrelevant.
Like keywords, you can use negative locations to remove places where you do not want your advertisements to show.
Device targeting—choosing which devices receive which ads.
- Bidding modifications can be made for the various device types on which your ads may show, allowing you to target certain devices more or less aggressively.
- Make sure that any ads targeting mobile devices incorporate mobile optimized ad copy and landing pages
- Device oriented targeting backfires when user experience gets ugly.
Remarketing targeting—choosing individuals from audience lists that you populate with past visitors of your website.
- This targeting allows you to serve ads that are relevant to the sections of your website that the person visited previously.
- Retargeting brings back customers and leads that might not have converted on a single visit
Custom Ad Scheduling—choosing certain hours and/or days of the week when you want your ads served.
- Bidding optimizations make AdWords bid more or less aggressively at certain times.
- For example, if you are targeting a B2B audience, you may not want to show your ads to people searching at 2 AM on a Sunday.

Display PPC Targeting Options

Contextual targeting—using keyword targeting choices to identify central themes that will then be used to serve your ads on other websites.
Topic targeting—choosing a topic that umbrellas a broader range of websites, automatically placing your advertisements on sites that match your targeted topic.
Interest targeting—choosing an interest relevant to your products or services to target internet users who browse websites that fall under that interest category. Browsing data from internet users compiles to create topical interest profiles for you to choose from.
Placement targeting—choosing specific websites on which you want to serve your ads. You may choose an entire website or a subset of a site.
Remarketing targeting—similar to the search engine results page, you show ads to previous visitors of your website across the internet.
Location and language targeting—similar to the search engine results page, you choose certain languages and locations that are relevant to your advertisements. Sites that match your language and location criteria serve your ads.
Device targeting—choose whether specific devices serve your ads or not.
Demographic targeting—choosing demographic groups such as age, gender, and parental status, to create targeting profiles that will serve ads to relevant demographics across the web.

All of these targeting options are often compatible with one another, allowing you to layer your targeting and hone in on the right people at the right time.

Putt PPC Targeting on The Green

Staying on target defines PPC. You’ve got to keep your budget on target, your advertisements have to be hitting the right targets. Most importantly, you’ve got to be able to land that near impossible putt that will impress your high profile clients on that wonderful golf trip (we’re always available).

We hope that the aforementioned PPC targeting and reach information will help keep your PPC account on target, or at least give you an idea of how we keep accounts on target. If you’re still unsure, or would like a free audit of your account, feel free to contact us.

Read the next PPC Fundamentals article here: What Optimization Does for PPC Advertising
Read the previous PPC Fundamentals article here: The Power of the Google Display Network for PPC Advertising