Using Google Ads To Target High Net-worth Individuals
The main aim of a Google ads campaign is to ensure that your product or service is reaching the correct audience. You will find that targeting a broad audience of people will contain a mix of lower and higher-income individuals. If you are marketing a more expensive product or service, however, this might not be your target audience at all, and you could be wasting your budget or bidding for search terms that are likely never to convert.
When targeting our Google ads, we usually base our ads around search terms and user intent. While some audience and demographic research must always be undertaken, when targeting a more upscale market, it is essential that we look at our targeting in slightly a different way. One of the first things we should do is identify a buyer persona.
In this case, your buyer persona should be around more affluent people. Try to think of how your buyer might act and how their lifestyle might differ from a lower-income individual. For example, higher-income earners will likely:
Be more frequent travellers
Eat out more frequently
Own their own home
Have a higher level of education
Be luxury shoppers (e.g. more expensive brands
They may undertake certain job roles such as CEO, CFO, or work in certain industries such as the legal or tech sector.
By the same token, you can also exclude people that may be less likely to purchase your product or service. For example, statistically, it's unlikely that current university students have much in the way of disposable income and are, therefore, less likely to purchase your product or service.
Today, we will be discussing some of the changes you can make in order to target a more wealthy demographic with your Google ads.
How to target wealthy people with Google Ads
Unless you live in one of the places with Google Ads household income targeting options (Australia, Japan, Brazil, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Indonesia, Mexico, South Korea, Thailand or the US), there isn't any pre-set easy way to target high net-worth individuals. Luckily for you though, we are about to impart some of our long-curated Google Ads wisdom.
Using the Google ads household income targeting options
While I won't talk about this topic for long as it doesn't benefit everyone, it should still be mentioned. The Google Ads household income targeting options are thought to be some of the more inaccurate metrics you can see within the Google Ads platform; however, this doesn't mean they are not useful. You can use these Google insights to leverage your campaign and more accurately target your best-performing income brackets.
Income targeting allows you to target across 7 different income buckets, ranging from the top 10% to the lower 50% of income levels.
The exact splits are as follows:
Top 10%
11-20%
21-30%
31-40%
41-50%
Lower 50%
Unknown
You can exclude users of certain income levels or use bid adjustments to more heavily target others.
But remember, and I can not stress this enough, test everything as an experiment before you implement it! This ensures you don't damage your existing campaign with potentially negative changes.
Google Ads targeting and audiences
The Google Ads platform uses data gathered on its users, to categorise searchers into different segments. These are:
Affinity - Groups users by the interests they have
In-market - Groups users by topics they are actively looking into
And as we previously mentioned, these audiences can be used to either specifically target or exclude audiences within your campaign.
Take the luxury travellers' audience as an example. An affinity grouping may not be the correct option here as a wide group of people, both young and old, rich or poor, may have an active interest in luxury travel but may not necessarily have the money to actually take a luxury holiday. In contrast, an in-market audience grouping may have people that are more likely to be actively researching and potentially booking lavish or expensive holidays.
As mentioned previously, you should always test your new PPC Campaign (pay-per-click) strategies using the experiments feature. This provides a good opportunity for you to test various in-market and affinity grouping alterations without affecting the performance of your primary account. If you would like an audit of your current Google Ads account and how it is performing, contact us using the form below. We will be happy to assist you!
Targeting your Google Ads by age bracket
While this targeting option isn't flawless, it can still yield positive results.
According to a recent study by Occam Investing, we can see that the average UK salaries by age are:
Ages 16-17: £10,910
Ages 18-21: £17,284
Ages 22-29: £24,600
Ages 30-39: £30,865
Ages 40-49: £33,477
Ages 50-59: £31,358
Ages 60+: £27,508
While this data isn't definitive, as it is calculated using the mean of the highest and lowest earners, it does show a pattern in that; generally, older people will statistically earn more and, by design, have more disposable income.
So how can we utilise this information to accurately target a more affluent audience with your ads? It may not be an exact solution, but as we mentioned previously, the lower age bracket of people in the Uk tend to earn less and, in turn, have lower disposable income and be less likely to purchase your product or service. By utilising this type of targeting, you can cut out the age groups least likely to convert for you.
Using remarketing to target your Google ads to an affluent audience
Remarketing (retargeting) is a powerful tool that can be used to improve the performance of most ad accounts, no matter who your target audience is.
Remarketing is the process in which people that have visited your site and then left will be shown ads for your product, service or website while browsing the internet more generally. Google will use partner sites to post your display (image/banner) ads so that people are more frequently seeing them, and you remain at the forefront of their minds.
When marketing a higher-priced item or service, it's unlikely that people will decide to purchase this on a spur-of-the-moment decision. Remarketing provides a gentle nudge towards your brand and a reminder that your website is there and has what they need.
Conclusion
While targeting the wealthy demographic isn't necessarily the easiest thing to do with Google, it's not impossible and there are lots of changes and adjustments that you can make to improve your overalls campaigns performance. If you would like some help with your Google ads, don't hesitate to give us a call, we will be happy to help!
FAQ’s
-
There are a couple of things you can do to make your ads stand out when compared to a competitor. Some of these things include:
Ad copy - Ensure your ad copy (headlines and descriptions, etc.) is well-written, attention-grabbing and correct. In some cases, ads with clear and defined prices can work better than others, but you should try this yourself and compare the performance.
Assets - Your ads assets can make an incredible difference when done right, and there are plenty of adjustments you can make to attract attention and make your ads stand out. Google ads assets include call buttons, location information, links to pages on your site and more. Learn more about Google Ads assets here.
Display campaigns - Ensure your imagery is clean and professional looking. Try to choose images that will catch the searcher's attention and quickly highlight your business and how you could help them.
-
Unfortunately, Google does not have any preset location-targeting options for higher net-worth individuals, but this doesn't mean that you can't target more affluent areas; it will simply require a little more research. Take this article on yahoo, highlighting some of the more affluent areas around the UK, for example; while not set in stone, this does give you a better idea of the higher earning areas of the UK and where you may be best to direct your ads.
-
Some of the most common mistakes that people make when attempting to target wealthy people with their ads are:
Targeting your ads towards the wrong audience
Oversaturing ad copy with words like "luxury" etc
General poor-quality ad copy
Not creating an extensive negative keywords list to filter out useless searches (such as cheap, free & bargain)