Life Events Now in Google AdWords

Better late than never?

That’s what many digital marketers are probably thinking with the recent, albeit delayed, life-event targeting update released by Google AdWords. This update now brings AdWords into the world of tailoring advertising campaigns based on key milestones customers live through. Social platforms like Facebook and Twitter have long been able to provide this targeting to customers as users freely provide this information through their profiles but now Google has figured out a way to target similar information within the Video and Gmail campaigns.

So what exactly do I mean by “life-event targeting”?

Google has introduced six new targeting options, focusing on three significant life changes people go through:

• About to/recently graduated
• About to/recently moved
• About to/recently married

It’s important to remember that the pool of people in your target location will be finite. Don’t expect the reach of these targeting options to be comparable to that of other targeting options, like in-market or affinity audiences, available through Google’s display network. But it’s about quality over quantity in this case.

Why is this such a powerful opportunity for marketers?

In marketing, it’s no surprise that your efforts need to meet the needs of your customers with highly personalized and tailored campaigns. With these new targeting options, advertisers are able to use Google AdWords to get their catering company in front of brides-to-be or make sure that recent graduate knows they can save on their moving truck rentals the summer they move away from home. Many marketers have already fallen in love with this hyper-specific targeting that has been available in social media platforms for years, now they’ll be able to run similar campaigns across their YouTube and Gmail campaigns in Google.

Some initial performance results

Google has provided some initial performance through a case study with Sonos & Purple. Sonos used life events in their digital campaigns on Google and saw a 50% increase in ad recall, 35% lift in purchase intent and a 5x lift in branded searches on Google.

Purple, through video ad campaigns, saw a 21.8% and 23.1% increase in purchase intent among recent movers & married audiences, respectively. Not to mention, over 153.2% and 175% increase in brand searches using the recently moved and married audiences.

Needless to say, this stuff works!

Many of us have long been in love with the ability to target our social media campaigns to common life events and now Google has joined the game, helping brands get in front of their ideal customer when it matters most.

Interested in Google’s life event targeting? Let the team at Top Draw help take your campaign to the next level.