Audience Segments

Google offers the option to add five different audience segments to your campaigns. 

These include demographics, Affinity, in-market, retargeting and combined audience segments.

In this guide we are going to talk about the various audience options and the best time to use each one.

Demographic Targeting

Demographic targeting focuses on quantifiable information regarding users.

Are they married? Are they parents? Do they have a college degree, are they employed?

This information can tell you a lot about a potential customer.

Someone selling interior design services, for example, may want to specifically target homeowners, as homeowners will be more likely to invest more in interior decorating services over renters.

Use demographic targeting when you know your audience and your product/service clearly applies to one group of people over another.

Affinity

Interests and habits make up the affinity segment which is all about what users are doing in their free time. And since so many users turn to Google for information regarding hobbies, activities and interests,  there’s plenty of different options to choose from.

Most subtopics like “food & dining” and “home & garden” have multiple specific options under their drop-down menus.

Someone who falls under the category of a “home decor enthusiast” for example, is likely to be more interested in expensive furniture for their living room, rather than other audience segments  who might just be looking for something quick and easy.

These audiences may be worth bidding more on, for both search and shopping.

In-Market Audiences

This is perhaps one of the most valuable segments you can add to your campaigns, if you have a category that fits.

The in-market segment is made up of different purchasing decisions that users are actively researching or planning.

Want to reach users who are looking at buying a new house? Looking to get in shape? Starting a business? 

You can now target all those people specifically.

This segment is particularly useful for eCommerce and service businesses.

And while it can be used alone, it can also be layered with audience segments. 

Combining affinity with in-market segments or demographics can be a great way to get ultra specific with your targeting. 

Targeting users who love home decor and are moving soon, for example, might open up a door to a larger-than-average order value.

Retargeting

If you want to show your ads to users who have already interacted with your business in some way (or to bid more on them), this audience segment is a good one to look at.

You can retarget users based on specific tracked interactions they’ve taken. This can include actions like pages viewed, abandoned cart, email signups and more.

You’ll need to set up conversion tracking in order to be able to utilize this data and create these audience segments. Make sure tracking is correctly set up from the previous checkpoints, so that you can use this audience segment.

Combined Audience Segments

Your combined audience segments are custom audience segments that you can create through your Audience Manager.  This can be worth setting up if you see a segment combination that is already working well and want to replicate it in other campaigns.