There are quite a few things to consider before building out a full-scale omnichannel marketing strategy. One of the first and foremost essential steps is to define, create, and visualize the target audience to which the campaign should be directed. Without defining the target audience, it becomes very difficult to craft a campaign that effectively markets your brand, service, or product to the specific group of people who are most likely to purchase and use it. Google Ads has proven to be a very useful tool for marketers to use when they are looking to expand their audiences and reach more of the people who would potentially be interested in making a purchase or clicking to learn about the service provided. That being said, as Google’s similar audience feature begins to be phased out, it’s important that brands start adapting new tactics to expand their customer base.
Google similar audiences: What is it?
Google similar audiences is a feature that helps marketers identify and target new customers. Google utilizes a brand’s already established remarketing list to identify individuals who exhibit similar search and purchase behavior so they are able to expand the audience. Remarketing lists are built from individuals based on audiences who have already visited your brand’s website and consumers who have already been identified as interested in a similar type of product or service to the one that your brand offers. What makes Google audiences unique from other retargeting tools is that it retargets very specific groups of people, as opposed to just your average broad audience.
Now that you’re familiar, why is similar audiences leaving?
Starting on May 1, 2023, Google Ads will stop generating new similar audiences for brands. Starting in August 2023, similar audiences will be completely removed, even from campaigns that already have them integrated. Regardless of the capacity in which your brand utilizes similar audiences, it’s important to start planning for marketing without their availability.
Without the use of Google similar audiences, it will be important for marketers to adapt new tactics to expand their customer base. Similar to what we see at Apple in their continuous effort to increase new privacy laws, first-party data will be key to guiding marketers toward potential new customer bases. There are not any limitations on marketers’ abilities to gather first-party data, and it can be an effective way to learn interesting details and demographics that will ultimately grow your audience.
Further, audience expansion and optimized targeting are two tools that marketers can use to develop their own version of Google’s similar audiences. Audience expansion increases a brand’s audience pool simply by choosing audiences that look like the existing target that was selected manually. Audience expansion finds opportunities to grow by finding people who look like and embody the same demographics as the individuals a brand is already successful marketing to.
Optimized targeting can help identify more niche groups than audience expansion, as it looks at specific things like keywords, to find audiences that meet the criteria your brand is searching for. Optimized targeting goes beyond the audiences that marketers manually select and expands to target those who are most likely to convert, based on the performance data from your campaign.
Looking for your next steps?
Need some help? Let’s chat about how you can adjust your marketing strategy so you can continue maximizing Google Ads. Identifying and reaching the correct target audience is key to a successful campaign and strategy, and our team of experts is here to help you achieve that.
