By: Brooke Abbott, Director of Paid Search and Performance Media at Beeby Clark & Meyler
Imagine waking up one morning and logging into your Google Ads account, only to find that all of your keywords are no longer active. You can't turn them on, you can't use them – they're simply gone. What do you do?
This might sound like a nightmare scenario, but it's a reality that marketers may soon face as Google continues to move away from keywords (at least, the way keywords used to work) and toward a more audience-centric approach.
So, how can you prepare for this shift? The answer lies in a combination of audience targeting and creative messaging.
Audience targeting is a way of showing your ads to specific groups of people who are more likely to be interested in your product or service. There are a number of ways to target your audience, including demographics, interests, and even their past behavior.
Creative messaging refers to the way you craft your ads to appeal to your target audience. This includes the use of images, videos, and text. When done well, creative messaging can help you capture the attention of your audience and persuade them to take action.
In a world where keywords are becoming less important, audience targeting and creative messaging are more critical than ever. This is because they allow you to reach the right people with the right message.
There are a number of ways to use audience targeting and creative messaging together. For example, you can use audience insights to identify the values and interests of your target audience. You can then use this information to create ads that are more likely to resonate with them. It can also help you improve your ad efficiency and train the algorithm to replicate those results.
Here are a few tips to get started:
Create customer personas.
Develop a creative hypothesis.
Set clear goals.
As Google continues to prioritize audience signals over keywords, it's more important than ever for marketers to adopt an audience-centric approach. By using creatives that are relevant to the needs of your target audience, you can ensure that your ads are seen by the right people.
Brooke comes from a background in travel and hospitality, and was recently named a Cynopsis Rising Star in Marketing. She’s the Director of Paid Search and Performance Media at Beeby Clark & Meyler in New York.
You can find her on LinkedIn