One of the great benefits of events like SES is it provides the ability to refine large and sometimes abstract ideas to make them computable in pieces of information.
A standout "idea nugget" that caught my attention was using "mental models" to drive marketing efforts. Although this was brought up in the context of website planning, there was a connection to recent thinking around paid search and ways to take it beyond just keywords and ads and to the heart of advertising - the Audience.
Admittedly, this is no breakthrough - there has been plenty said before about the importance of audience segmentation in advertising. That said, when is the last time you actually planned, executed, measured, and optimized a PPC program with all of your different audiences in mind - as opposed to, say, the best overall converting keyword?
Moving Beyond Labels
The traditional structure of a PPC account has its clear uses: control, organization, and targeting, to name a few. Unfortunately, the presence of these labels can also be confining for strategic thought, and can limit the ability to make the next big leap in your results.
Thinking of your clicks in terms of mental models can be both liberating and beneficial to your results. So how do you get started?
Here are some questions you might want to ask yourself:
1. What are the goals of my landing page or website? As we all know, goals are paramount. But we also know that not all clicking audiences will convert, so the key is understanding which clicking audiences are converting, and how. If they are not completing the primary action, then what are the secondary goals of the website?
2. Does my existing account already target audiences that I'm not aware of yet? Whether or not you've realized it, your paid search program most likely reaches a number of audience types, all of whom are looking for different things. Take a close look at your campaigns, ad groups, and keywords, and consider what the users are looking for in regards to your website, regardless of the account labels that have been established.
3. Are all of my audiences created equal? Some users that are clicking through to your website are more or less valuable than others, based on their intent and the likelihood of conversion. Knowing which "clickers" are where in your conversion funnel is an essential step in asserting value to each type.
Next steps
Once you understand and identify your audiences, there are a number of actions you can take to help your program succeed.
1. Opportunity: Now that you know the users clicking on your ads, you may witness some new opportunities that had not presented themselves before. Is there something this audience likes/dislikes that your can leverage? New keywords to test?
2. Navigation Paths: The audience segmentation exercises may very well end up informing how you view your website. Different audiences will likely pursue unique paths to get to their conversion; What can you do to make their experience more effective? Are your audiences doing what you expect, or are they providing surprises that can be used for website optimizations?
3. Account Segmentation: Although you have been freed strategically from the limitations of a PPC account, you are still confined by the labels in practice. However, this doesn't mean you can't use them to your advantage. After looking at the results from your audiences, is one core audience type being squeezed out by others due to budget flow equality? It might make sense to give certain primary audiences their own budget or targeting to ensure tighter control and more resources, while limiting the presence of lower-quality audiences.
4. Landing Page Messaging: If your audiences are looking for different things when clicking, why not give them different messages upon landing on your website? Ways to achieve this could be by simply sending them to different pages, or perhaps recognizing their needs and changing small landing page copy, messaging, or calls to action to better give them the confidence that they made the correct decision by clicking.
5. Reporting and Analysis: Audience segmentation in search can't just be used for account improvements, but can also be helpful when reporting and presenting materials to others, as it provides neat packages in which to place results; and if your PPC audiences are in line with website mental models and results, even better! When reporting results, try to illustrate the story of each one of your PPC audiences, and prove why each one is valuable, or how they can be better served through marketing efforts.
Segmenting audiences in your paid search accounts can be a powerful way to re-evaluate your programs, and can lead to positive results.
Do you have any additional thoughts about PPC audience segmentation? Feel free to share in the comments below.
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