Google Analytics Ad audience Guide

Reduce advertising costs while improving conversions rates with ad audiences built on company and behavior data.

Rohan avatar
Written by Rohan
Updated over a week ago

With company identification data in Google Analytics, you can build retargeting audiences filled ideal company visitors.

Leading to less wasted budget spent targeting visitors from bad-fit companies. Plus, higher conversions through more relevant ad copy! πŸš€

So how do you get started?

πŸ‘‰ Set up - you will need to have Google Analytics connected.

πŸ‘‰ Strategy - at the bottom


How to create an ad audience

If you are using GA4, please follow this guide to create audiences.

Sign in to your UA account, head over to 'Customization', drop down the menu, and follow the steps below.

  1. Create a new segment

  2. Advanced - conditions

3. Add filters for your target audience (ICP) using custom dimensions -> save Segment

4. Segment dropdown - select Build Audience

5. Select the Audience definitions

6. Select the Audience destination


Factors to consider in your advertising strategy.

There is a multitude of tactics that can be employed within a re-targeting strategy. The optimal mix will depend on a few factors.

  • How your target audience and content are segmented
    Do you have one main target audience bucket containing a few industries and company sizes within a single buyer's journey?
    ​
    Or do you have distinct buckets/segments within your target audience and the content to provide multiple buyer journeys to each segment?
    ​

  • How much target audience website traffic do you have?
    Re-targeting on Google requires varying minimum audience sizes depending on if you’d like to target on Search or Display.
    ​
    For instance, if you have a relatively low volume of target company traffic, it might be wise to make a master re-targeting audience pool that can be used immediately. While beginning to collect data in segmented (additional) audiences that can be used when you hit the required minimum size.
    ​

  • Do you have the resources to create multiple audience segments plus the associated ad copy and content assets?
    Will Segmenting your audience make ads more relevant? Or is it more of a one size fits all type of offer?
    ​

  • Current cold advertising and campaign strategy


Formulating your audiences

Based on the above, you will hopefully have a clear idea of how many buckets/groups/segments your target audience is comprised of. Plus, the number of content assets you have to support each segment.

From here, you can make a decision on the number of groups and create the relevant Segments in Google Analytics. For example:

πŸ’» Tech Segment

βš–οΈ Legal Segment

Industries

IT + Software

Law + Legal Practices

Company sizes

200 - 5000

500 - 2000

Location

US, Canada

Europe


Adding behavioral metrics.

Here are two examples.

πŸ‘‰ A target visitor belonging to one of the segments finds your website via a blog article and then checks out 2 of your product pages.

πŸ‘‰ Whereas a different visitor comes directly to the website and spends 15 minutes on 3 case studies.

Both are within your target audience, yet in very different stages of the buyer's journey. As such, there is a higher likelihood of click-throughs and conversions with different ad types (and landing pages) that relate to their stage.

Just as you segment your target audience, it makes sense to split your buyer's journey into a few stages.

Here are some of the behavioral metrics you can play around with:

  • Number of page views

  • Time on site

  • Page viewed / time on page

  • Visit source (campaign, channel, ad content)

  • Video plays

  • Downloads (with visitor tracking, this doesn’t need to be gated)

Copy the Company based audiences you created and add the relevant behavioral filters for each.

Remember to keep the audience sizes in mind as you go.

Decide on the ad content you would like to serve each segment (which will now be relevant to the company type or segment they are in and the actions they took on your website or the source of the visit), and don’t forget to send them through to Google Ads.

Ready, steady, spaghetti 🍝 , and you now have intent-based ideal company profile retargeting.

Wow, that was a bit of a mouthful! Let us know how it goes; we really enjoy this part of the platform and enjoy seeing clients generate incredible results πŸ’ͺ

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