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Targeting Your Customer

Now, this is Google AdWords and AdWords is, I've been around for many, many years. It's where all the ads you normally see on Google, but, of course, Google bought YouTube quite a few years ago and now you can run video campaigns inside of AdWords, but the great thing about is this is you're using the power of AdWords. AdWords are tracking everything we're doing all the time. If we go to a website, Google will know. If we're kind of typing in search terms, Google will know that about us. And they know this information. They're tracking everything about us. They're gathering so much data and as advertisers, we're able to tap into that data to be able to advertise to the audiences that are relevant for our businesses. So when it comes to targeting your customers, there are many different ways that Google will give you options to target your customers. The first thing that we need to talk about is keywords. Now, let's say, for example, you go to Google and you type in a particular keyword...

. That might be something like how to do this or how to do that or it could be just a general keyword, something that you just typed in that you're looking for. You have that search intent happening right there at that moment in time. As soon as you type in that keyword that keyword almost becomes attached to you as a user. So Google will know that you've typed in that keyword. Now, that means as a advertiser we're able to tap into the people that have typed in keywords that could be relevant to our business. Now, this goes for Google. It also goes for YouTube. So it means that as you advertise on YouTube, no matter if someone's typed a keyword on Google or a keyword on YouTube, we can get in front of those people. Now, this normally lasts what Google will call a session. So a session can be around about 40 minutes on a mobile device. It's slightly different on a desktop. I'm not sure how long it is on a desktop. But if you've recently typed in a keyword either into Google or into YouTube, that data is something that you can use. So if you start targeting by keywords, you're about to get in front of people that have typed in those keywords recently on either Google or YouTube. It's really powerful because we know that they're really in that moment of need and it's the perfect time to be advertising to this audience. You can also advertise to people based on placements. Now, placements are where you can choose which videos or which channels you want you're ad to appear in front of. So I'm sure you've been to YouTube before, where you are online, you're going to YouTube, you're just about to watch a video, you've pressed play on it, and a pre-roll ad, or in-stream ad it's called, pops up beforehand and you have to wait for that five seconds to skip the ad button. Well, as an advertiser you can literally choose which videos you want to appear in front of. So you can go through the list on YouTube. You can find out exactly what videos you feel is most relevant to you and your business, and you can say, "Based on this content, "this video here, I want to advertise "in front of that video. "I want my pre-roll or my in-stream ad "to appear in front of the video of any of those people "that are about to watch that video, "my pre-roll ad will run." You can be that granular to choose individual videos for your ad to run in front of. It's really powerful and it's a very good targeting strategy as well. There's also topics. So Google AdWords will look at all the content of different websites and also look at all the content of different videos on YouTube and will categorize them into topics. Now, I think the last time I checked there were over, just shy of 2,000 different topics that you can choose. So the likelihood is there's gonna be some very relevant topics that are relevant to your business as well. So by Google categorizing all these different videos, it's able to then give you this option to choose different topics to advertise upon. So as a targeting method you can say, "If anyone watches videos around this topic, "I want my ad to appear in front of them." So it's another really fantastic way of advertising to people when they're searching for content. Now, there's also video remarketing. Now, video remarketing is basically if someone's watched one of your videos before, whether it be as an organic video, something that you just got on your YouTube channel, or if they've seen your videos before, or potentially if they've liked your video, commented upon any of your videos, if they've engaged with any of your videos at all, this means you can collect a list of those people that have taken certain actions. So you won't have their email list or anything like that. It's more of like an audience list that you can build that Google will kind of like hold for you. It's got a remarketing list. And then you can choose which remarketing lists you want to build and then which remarketing lists you want to target with your ads. Again, really powerful because you can get back in front of people that have engaged with your video ads. Now, likewise, this doesn't go just for your video, it also can go for website remarketing as well. So if someone goes to your website, engages in your blog, or visits a certain landing page or a sales page or a checkout page, any page in your website, you can collect different audiences based on peoples' interactions with you and your brand and your website. And you can build those audiences again and then select those audiences to run ads to. So if you had lots of people go to the checkout and didn't buy your product, you can say, "Right, all those people that didn't buy my product, "I want to run ads to that audience "so the next time they go to YouTube, "they'll see my ad again." It's a really powerful way of advertising, and website remarketing and also video remarketing can be very powerful for lots of different types of businesses. You also have here, as you can see, in-market audiences. Now, in-market audiences are built by Google. And these are audiences that Google are collating based off users' recent history of what they've been up to. So if, say, for example, in the last seven to 14 days you've been going online and you've been thinking about going on holiday or maybe you're just about to go on holiday, and you're looking up things like car rentals. You're looking up hotels, flights, for example. When Google see that you're going to lots of these different websites, then they'll be able to be clear that, okay, you're going on holiday soon. And they can even do it by destination as well 'cause if you've booked flights or are looking at certain destinations, Google are tracking that information and they'll collate that information and give you audiences based off what people have recently been doing in the last seven to 14 days. Which means, and, again, there's hundreds of these different audiences that you can potentially choose, but it's all these people in the market for certain types of products or services, and, therefore, you can choose to advertise based on those people and what they're doing in the last seven to 14 days. Very powerful indeed. You also have affinity audiences. Now, affinity audiences are based off not the more recent search, but what people just naturally do online. If, let's say, for example, you have a hobby of some sort. The chances are you keep on going back to similar websites. Or if you are a business owner, for example. Let's say, for example, you are in a creative role. Maybe you're a designer, for example, or something on those lines. Or maybe a photographer, for example. The chances are you'll keep on going back to certain types of websites. Well, guess what. Google are tracking all of that. And, as a result, they'll start putting all these different people based off their interests. This is these affinity audiences. So there's even something called shutterbugs, which means that if someone's really into their photography, then chances are they go to lots of photography websites on a regular basis, and, as a result, Google will collect that information and say, okay, these people are called shutterbugs. And that means if you want to advertise to people who are really into their photography, you choose that audience and you can advertise to that audience. It's very powerful. And, again, these audiences are huge. So you can really advertise to a lot of people and keep it relevant, keeps the message relevant for those people. And the last thing I want to talk about as well is called similar audiences. Now, based off all the audience, all the interactions people are having with your website and with your videos, and even if you upload your email list to Google via something called Google Match, then what'll happen is Google AdWords will build other audiences that are based off that data. They'll send to you lists like based on that original source of like audience. Let's say, for example, it is an email database that you've uploaded, Google will be able to look at that information based on those users and look at exactly what they're doing. So let's say, for example, you upload all your prospects for an email list or all of your buyers for an email list to Google, Google will look at that information and build other audiences and say, "All these other people are just like those people "that have bought from you recently, "and so I've built a similar audience "that you can advertise to as well." Now, these audiences will refresh every 30 days or so, but they're great to advertise to because it's based off Google's data. You can get back in front of people that are just like your customers or just like your prospects. And it really does open up a very large audience to you as well to advertise to. Now, here's the thing. We've been through eight different targeting, and there's others as well that you go by, because you can go by location targeting, you can go by demographic targeting and ages and genders, of course, and household income. You can go through people going through certain life events. There's so many options, and they'll keep on expanding as well. 'Cause Google have all this information and they're looking to give us advertisers different ways of getting in front of our audience. But it can feel confusing sometimes, like how to know which targeting strategy to use first and which one's gonna work best for you. And so in order to simplify, I want to give you a model that might help you out with this process just so you're clear and have a clear mindset of what you're aiming to do. Now, what I tend to try and do is go offline with my thinking. I think like if we're to go back 25 years ago before the Internet really took hold, then what was happening at those times? Because as human beings we haven't changed all that much. We still buy in the same way. We still want to see certain assets or features of different products before we make a decision to go and buy. We haven't changed that much as humans, but we have changed our behaviors of the way we buy. Things have got a lot easier. We can do a lot more research very quickly indeed. But I wanna take it back to offline so we can just get a firm understanding of what's happening and so we can get in front of the customers with the right message as well. So the way I look at this is if we go back in time, imagine if you had bricks and mortar business. Then you'll have three different types of customers. If someone was to walk past your store, and there's people that stop and look in the store window because maybe something, you've got some products or services that could potentially be of interest. They might stop and look because they have a shared interest with what your business does. At that moment, those people will be considered a window shopper. So that's how it was many years ago. Anyone that stops outside, looks, they'll be kinda considered a window shopper. Now, if they were to be that interested to even come in the store, that's when they become an in-store shopper. Now, an in-store shopper has an interest, but also, they have a level of intent as well. They're looking for information at this point. They want to talk to a sales rep and ask different questions about the products and services that you provide. Now, so you have your window shoppers, you have your in-store shoppers, and those people that have made up their mind. They're like great. You know what, I've got the product that I want. It's almost like under their arm and they're going to the checkout. They might just have a few more questions of the sales rep or just maybe something about like the price or maybe could want to know a bit more about the warranty or something on those lines about that product. So those people will be considered checkout shoppers. But if you were the actual bricks and mortar store, you're conversations that you would have with these three levels of customer would be wildly different. If you were to go outside and talk to your window shoppers, you'd need to have a very different conversation to bring them in the store than you would do with an in-store shopper. Someone who's in the store, you can basically answer their questions and ask them questions to help them choose a product or service that's relevant for them. Whereas someone who's at the checkout just wants the last few bits so they feel more confident about their purchase. So all these different types of, these three different types of customers are looking for different things that we need to communicate with them in different ways. And if we can break it down like this it means that we can just understand our customers a lot better. Now, based off the fact that we just talked about things like targeting, I wanna show you how the different levels of targeting now apply to these different types of shoppers. So let's say, for example, you're looking at a checkout shopper, someone who's ready to like make a decision to go and potentially purchase, and now we're gonna take it online. The people that we can get in front of here are things like we're targeting such as website remarketing and also video remarketing. These are the people that have already been to our website. Maybe they've checked out many pages or they've seen our video ads quite a few times. Those people have engaged with our company. They're warm. They probably know us. They like us potentially. And they're close to potentially buying from us, but they haven't yet bought. Or maybe they've bought some products, but they haven't bought the big product that you want to sell. Maybe your flagship product, for example. Those people can be reengaged, I mean if they haven't yet bought, with things like website remarketing and video remarketing. So those are the sorts of targeting I would apply to get in front of a checkout shopper. Now, if I want to get in front of an in-store shopper, which I feel like are the best audience, especially when it comes to YouTube, is you can use search-based targeting, things like keywords, which we discussed earlier, things like placements, and also topics. Those three types of targeting can work really well to get in front of people that are the in-store shoppers. They're people who are looking for more information. And if you wanted to get in front of window shoppers, then we'd go by interest-based audiences. And these could be in-market audiences, people who are in the market for certain products and services, but maybe not know who your company is just yet. You might have affinity audiences, those people who generally are interested on a regular basis about certain things. And also there's similar audiences, people that look very similar to your customers and your prospects but don't know who you are just yet. So they share interests, but they may not want what you have right now at this moment in time. Now, when you separate out these different types of targeting to the different types of shopper, then you can start to understand how to communicate to these different people. If you were to target people based off, let's say, topics or keywords or placements, a conversation would need to be very much like they're looking for information, they're wanting more information, they want to know something, do something, potentially buy something. We're getting in front of them, and what would you say at that point? You would need to be that sales rep who actually provides value and provides good content. And if you do that they'll resinate with you and connect with you as a company. There's people, let's say, for example, you wanted to get in front of a checkout shopper, the ads or the videos you would need to create for that type of audience would be very much like little bit shorter perhaps, but asking for more of a call to action to say, "Okay, look, "you know this product exists and you're interested in it. "Let's talk about how you can maybe make "the purchase easier on you," for example. Or if you wanted to get in front of a window shopper, those people don't know who you are, maybe not even be searching for what you've got right now but are showing an interest. Those people, you'd need to kinda grab their attention. It's difficult to grab their attention sometimes with ads on YouTube, but it's kind of you know they're gonna be interested in what you have to offer, but you've gotta grab their attention and get that communication across to them. That's a little more challenging and you need to be much better at the sales side of things, but that can work incredibly well when you get that right. But here's the thing. If you wanna get started with YouTube with the best possible process to get kind of like the ball rolling with YouTube and get some profit in the door and kind of not have to tackle this really difficult audience, there's an area that I think would work really, really well. And this is when we look at the search audiences and, in particular, when we look at the keywords. That's what we're gonna be focusing on. Should your customers go to YouTube looking for information by typing it in? Or maybe they've gone to Google. Whatever they've been doing, if they've been onto Google or YouTube typing in certain keywords, we can select that audience and get in front of them. It means you're getting in front of people that are full of intent, want information, and are ready to potentially buy something. So it's the perfect audience and we can connect with them. And we don't need to be salesy. We don't need to be kind of over the top. We can just be really create decent ads full of value, being very, very relevant, and it can really work incredibly well.