How do you use SEM audience targeting to test new ideas?

1 Define your audience segments

The first step to use SEM audience targeting to test new ideas is to define your audience segments based on your goals and hypotheses. For example, you might want to test how different age groups, locations, interests, or behaviors respond to your offer. You can use tools like Google Analytics, Google Ads, or Bing Ads to research your existing and potential audience segments and identify their characteristics, needs, and preferences. You can also use surveys, interviews, or focus groups to gather more insights from your customers.

3 Set up experiments

The third step is to set up experiments to test your new ideas with your audience lists. An experiment is a controlled way to compare the performance of two or more versions of your SEM campaign elements, such as keywords, ads, bids, or landing pages. You can use tools like Google Ads Experiments, Bing Ads Experiments, or Optimizely to run experiments with your SEM audience targeting. You can either split your audience lists into different groups and show them different versions of your campaign elements, or you can show the same version to different audience lists and see how they react. The key is to have a clear hypothesis, a measurable goal, and a sufficient sample size for each experiment.

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?