Whoever runs Google Ads decides, through the target audience and the keywords, who gets to see your ad at all. This guide shows you step by step how to narrow down audiences in Google Ads, find suitable keywords with the Keyword Planner, and sensibly supplement your suggestions. The example is an online shop for dog toys.
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Key Takeaways
The target audience determines who sees your ad, and the keywords determine which searches it appears for. You should combine both deliberately. Define audiences by interests, behavior, website visits, and demographic characteristics. Research keywords with the Keyword Planner and pay attention to search volume, cost per click, and competition. It is better to start with many keywords and turn off the weak terms later, because only the data shows you what actually works.
Part 1: Define the target audience
Define the target audience roughly
You don't have to know every detail right away when you start with the target audience. But you should know what your customers are looking for and what they like to see. This preliminary work is the foundation for all further settings.
Narrow down the target audience by interests
In the next step, you define what your customers are generally interested in. For a dog toy offering, terms like dogs, dog toys, dog food, or pet information are suitable. If you enter several dog topics, the target audience becomes much narrower. That is intentional, because this way you reach people who are genuinely interested in dogs, and not everyone who has read the word once.
Consider behavior and life situation
Google also offers options for status, education, hobbies, and buyer behavior. For example, you can specify whether someone is married or engaged, what hobbies they have, or whether they show up as an online shopper. Use these characteristics only if they truly fit your offering. A dog toy is aimed more at dog owners with an interest in pets than at people who are currently renovating a house.
Create custom audiences from website visits
Audiences that have already come into contact with your website are particularly valuable. You can create a custom audience by linking your website. Then you can, for example, address all visitors from the last 30 days. These people already know your offering and are often more willing to buy than people who have never seen you.
Define demographic characteristics
With age and gender, you can narrow the target audience further. If you only want to address women between 25 and 44 years old, for example, you set that here. However, be careful not to exclude the "Unknown" category too hastily. At Google, many users are classified as "Unknown." If you exclude this group, your reach can change significantly and the analysis can be distorted.
Review additional characteristics and restrictions
In addition, there are characteristics such as parental status or household income. For parental status, the rule is: if it plays no role for your product, leave it out. Household income is currently only available for users in the USA. So you cannot use this option for a campaign in Germany and Austria. That completes the audience section.
Part 2: Find and select keywords
Derive keyword suggestions from the website
Before you do your own research, it's worth looking at the suggestions Google derives from your website. To do this, enter the address of your website. Google then shows you suitable terms such as dog toys or toys for dogs. These suggestions are a good starting point because they directly match your offering.
Open the Keyword Planner
For more thorough research, you need the Keyword Planner. You can find it under Tools, in the Planning subsection. There, using the option for new keywords, you can search for terms related to your offering. For example, enter dog toys and have matching results displayed.
Setting the region and language correctly
For the numbers to be meaningful, you need to set the region, language, and time period. In the example, these are Germany and Austria, German as the language, and a time period of one year. If you choose the wrong settings here, you will see search volume from a market you don't serve at all.
Reading the metrics correctly
The Keyword Planner shows you three important values. The monthly search volume reveals how often a term is searched for. The cost per click indicates roughly what a click is likely to cost. Competition shows how many advertisers are bidding on the same term. A term like dog toys has a high search volume, but it is also highly contested. So you have to weigh reach against costs.
Expanding keyword ideas
The Planner also provides further ideas, for example dog accessories or dogs and co. In practice, several thousand suggestions can quickly accumulate. You don't have to adopt all of them. Choose those that fit in terms of content and have a reasonable search volume. Keyword research is a large topic in its own right that you can explore in depth in a comprehensive course. To start with, however, it is enough to begin with the most important terms.
Supplementing keywords with an AI assistant
An AI assistant like ChatGPT can also help you collect keywords. To do this, formulate a specific request, for example for keywords for your Google Ads campaign, and state your product and your target audience. You can adopt the suggestions directly. Since you have already explained the context in the chat, the results are often already quite fitting.
Adopting keywords and reviewing them later
Start with a generous selection of keywords. This is not a mistake, because later in the analysis you will see which terms bring clicks and which do not. You can then simply deactivate weak keywords. It is better to test too many terms at the beginning than too few, which cost you valuable reach.
Outlook on the ad
With the target audience and keywords, you have laid the foundation. What is decisive for the user, however, is the ad itself, that is, texts and images. They are the only thing people actually see, while everything else happens in the background. In the next step, you will learn how to design this ad.
Summary ??? Setting Google Ads keywords and target audience correctly
You have seen how to narrow down target audiences by interests, behavior, website visits, and demographic characteristics. You now also know how to find suitable terms with the Keyword Planner, set the region and time period correctly, and interpret search volume, costs, and competition. Start with a broad keyword selection and optimize it based on real data. The next step deals with ad texts and images.
FAQ
Do I have to fill in all the characteristics for the target audience?No, only select the characteristics that fit your offering. Settings that are too narrow can severely limit your reach.
Should I exclude the "Unknown" category for age and gender?I advise against it. Many users are stored as unknown at Google, and an exclusion can distort your reach and your analysis.
Why is household income not available for me?This option currently only applies to users in the USA. It is not available for campaigns in Germany and Austria.
How do I find the Keyword Planner in Google Ads?You can find it under Tools in the Planning subsection. There you can search for new keywords.
What do search volume, cost per click, and competition mean?Search volume shows how often a term is searched for per month. The cost per click is a guideline for roughly what a click costs. Competition indicates how many advertisers are bidding on the same term.
How many keywords should I use at the beginning?It's better to start with a larger selection and later deactivate the terms that don't perform. This way you can tell from real data what works.
Can I also find keywords with an AI assistant?Yes, an AI assistant can provide good suggestions. To do so, state the product, target audience, and goal of the campaign, and then check the results in the Keyword Planner.
