Identifying the audiences NOT to reach is as important as identifying audiences you want to reach for PPC campaigns. By not showing ads to negative audiences, marketers can reduce spends and avoid tiring out potential customers by running irrelevant ads.
Here, in this guide, you can take a look at the five audience categories to exclude from PPC campaigns.
1. Support Seekers
People who are looking at your web pages for support are generally existing customers. They are not looking to purchase from you, but require extra assistance.
Brands can build retargeting lists based on the URLs visited. Customers who visit the FAQ and other support section of the website can be excluded from PPC campaigns.
2. Previous Customers
Including or excluding previous customers depends on business goals. Let’s understand this with an example. Consider a brand that has a multi-step funnel before customers convert.
At the first point of contact with the brand, customers are offered an asset like free delivery on their first order when they sign up for the newsletter. Marketers can now include these customers to a retargeting list and entice them for a second transaction. On the other hand, marketers can exclude them from the campaign, since they already have the asset (free delivery coupon) in hand. However, marketers can decide to include them in another campaign, say a product demo campaign.
This way, marketers can ensure that past customers are not retargeted for duplicate messages. Instead, it gets them to take the next step in the funnel.
3. Job Seekers
It’s common knowledge that site visitors who are more interested in the career section of your website are not likely to purchase from you. So, it makes sense not to include this set of audience in your PPC campaigns’, and thereby avoid unnecessary spends.
4. Present Customers – But it depends
Current customers fall under the grey area of PPC campaigns. Some PPC marketers argue that they should be included while others believe otherwise.
- Brands that are looking to upsell can include current customers for ad campaigns.
- Alternatively, marketers can include customers who have purchased Product A for campaigns related to Product B and vice versa.
- Existing customers provide recurring revenue to brands. You can segment them into smaller segments based on whether they are likely to repurchase or not.
5. Audiences in non-retargeting Campaigns
It’s a good practice to avoid audiences from other campaigns in specific retargeting campaigns. For instance, if a brand is running an interest-creating campaign on Facebook. Make sure to include the audience from this campaign in one particular retargeting audience list so that you can send them specific messaging, getting them to convert.
Define your Audience for Precise Targeting
While these are the top 5 audience categories to exclude from your PPC list, there may be several other categories based on your goals and objectives. Make sure to refine the audience list that you want to show and not show your ads. This way, you can avoid wasting money on the wrong audiences while getting the right audiences to convert.
