I recently had a Google Ads coaching call with Matthew, the marketing manager for a company that sells online language learning courses. He was leveraging Search, PMax, Display and Video, and his targeting strategy was quite narrowly focused on people who were already interested in learning a new language:
- Search keywords around language learning
- Custom segments using competitor URLs
- Custom segments using search keywords
- Remarketing
His ad creative, on the other hand, was quite generic and designed to appeal to everyone. The headlines focused on general benefits like, "Learn a new language" or "Start speaking today with our course."
This is a very common strategy, but it has a problem. It puts you in direct competition with every other advertiser targeting the exact same people. It also limits your reach to people who are only at the very end of their customer journey. And then when they get there... you have generic messaging?
I advised Matthew that in order to truly grow the business, we needed to shift his strategy from a narrow audience with broad creative to a broad audience with narrow creative.
Let me illustrate with an example...
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I asked Matthew to show me the Audience Insights for his customer list (you can find this under Tools > Shared Library > Your data segments > Audience insights). We found that a large segment of his customers have a strong interest in "Open Online Courses," which is to be expected. But we also saw that a significant portion of his customers were age 65+. This was the key.
Instead of only targeting people already looking for "learn French" or "Spanish course" or Duolingo, we could broaden the audience with a new campaign targeting those who are simply in a position to take up a new hobby or challenge. For example, people who are recently retired. Yes, that's a Life Event segment you can target in Demand Gen, Display & Video campaigns.
Then, the ad creative can work to qualify the audience, with messaging like "Retirement is the perfect time to learn a new skill. Our language course makes it easy." This approach uses the creative itself to filter the broad audience, train your Smart Bidding and attract the most qualified leads. I call this creative-led targeting and it's one of the most slept-on Google Ads strategies in 2025.
How can you turn your ads strategy upside-down with creative led targeting?
- Use your data. Your own customer list is a treasure trove of insights, even if you're not actively using Customer Match. Yet another reason to upload your customer list to Google Ads, so you can glean Audience Insights.
- Tell a story. We're all inundated with ads 24/7, so generic messaging just won't cut it. When you try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one. Use specific creative to connect with a broader audience on a personal level.
- Think beyond your competitors. Remember, Netflix's biggest competitor isn't Hulu or Disney+. It's sleep! Your biggest competitors may not be your direct industry competitors either. For Matthew, my hypothesis is that he should be competing against other hobbies, not against other language learning courses.
Need help turning your Google Ads strategy upside-down? Book a call with me and we'll get creative-led targeting working for your business.
