Understanding Affinity Audiences Targeting to Scale Your Performance Max Campaign

Wed, Oct 5, 2022

John breaks down affinity segments, and how you can use this audience targeting type to boost brand awareness and target the right audiences in scaling your Performance Max campaigns. He also shares a low-cost experiment you can run to target audiences already interested in your products.

This is the third part of the guide to scaling Performance Max campaigns for eCommerce.

If you haven’t watched the previous parts where John shares why YouTube is the best campaign for cold traffic expansion and how to define and structure your in-market audiences, you can watch them here:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLp…

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0:00 Intro | Scaling Performance Max Campaigns for eCommerce

1:09 About affinity segments audience targeting

5:20 Do you want to work with the best Google Ads agency in the world?

6:00 Explore your in-market and affinity audiences

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Transcript
John:

Not a great direct response target as much as in market, but

John:

a very great target to start to introduce your brand to excellent.

John:

Excellent, excellent excellence.

John:

Now, what do we do to scale you can't just add Aspen because there's no

John:

more people being born every minute that I just really want that product.

John:

So we hit a finite audience there we've stopped 100 out

John:

of my $5,000 per month camp.

John:

$500 outta my $5,000 per month budget to engage and warm up that audience.

John:

That's a very creative way to scale.

John:

eCommerce is to pay less for new, to an audience that I know it's the

John:

same thing that we we're replicating throughout human existence.

John:

As an example, if we want to go and find a bunch of people interested in Google

John:

ads, we go to traffic and conversion.

John:

Why those are all affinities of digital marketing.

John:

And I will find people there that want Google ads.

John:

It's the same exact scenario.

John:

Google's brilliant.

John:

All I did was just replicate human.

John:

it's not, a big departure, which is great.

John:

We need to use logic, but these are so, so, so, so expansive now.

John:

in the affinity affinity is a permanent fixture of your personality.

John:

If you are a yoga instructor, yoga is your affinity.

John:

You're not in the market for yoga.

John:

That's what you do.

John:

That's who Google thinks you are.

John:

That's who you are.

John:

As a person, you are into yoga all the time.

John:

You look at YouTube videos, you look at websites, you look

John:

at blogs, you buy products.

John:

You are just your, common interest that is never wavered.

John:

Is yoga, not a great direct response target.

John:

As much as in market, but a very great target to start

John:

to introduce your brand to.

John:

Excellent.

John:

Excellent, excellent.

John:

Excellent.

John:

If you have a product market fit, which means like I'm not gonna be

John:

selling Pilate cables to a yoga person, that's not a good idea

John:

because they may be yoga, not Pilates.

John:

That's not, it's like, Hey, these people that are into yoga, let's see

John:

if I can convince them to do Pilates.

John:

Like that's just a bad product market.

John:

but a good product market fit would be yoga affinity, yoga mat.

John:

Perfect.

John:

If you have a new yoga mat that is, squishier and lighter, I don't know.

John:

I don't, I don't do yoga.

John:

I'm just making up things here.

John:

But if you have something that is really, really awesome in yoga, that's

John:

new that has very little engagement on, or your direct response is low.

John:

And you're like, yeah, people that are looking for new yoga

John:

mats, when they find us, they do.

John:

, that's not very scalable.

John:

that's not a, we're talking about the creative ways to scale eCommerce.

John:

So you already covered your direct response.

John:

PAX is already scooped above the low hanging of fruit that found

John:

you because looking for yoga mat and they say, wow, that's cool.

John:

I will buy that now, what do we do to scale?

John:

You can't just add as, but because there's no more people being born every minute

John:

that it was really want that product.

John:

So we had a finite audience there we've stopped.

John:

So if we actually start to look over at the.

John:

Affinity audiences of people that are interested in yoga or yoga classes or

John:

yoga fitness or whatever that may be.

John:

We can identify any areas for yoga and see if there's other people there.

John:

So actually let's, let's try that.

John:

Let's test this theory live.

John:

I'm gonna go into the audience manager.

John:

I'm gonna try to build a new custom segment.

John:

So the custom segment here, I'm gonna look let's do this.

John:

Actually, no I'm actually do a performance max.

John:

I wanna see if this is something that can actually be found in performance max,

John:

in a signal.

John:

I wanna see if this is actually available here,

John:

because if this is a signal that we should be targeting we can identify

John:

if this is not working in PAX, then we can use it for our individuals.

John:

So intros and demographics detail, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

John:

This is yoga.

John:

Ah, yoga, mats and accessories.

John:

They're in the market.

John:

Excellent.

John:

let's look at, see if there's any affinities, ah, perfect affinity

John:

segment of yoga lovers, perfect people who enjoy practicing yoga.

John:

They're not in the market for map.

John:

They're not, they may be, but they're not, to Google the people

John:

that are in market for the yoga map.

John:

Those are the, people that are in market for yoga mats.

John:

Different audience, different segmentation, different ad copy,

John:

different video, different unique selling proposition, different unique value

John:

proposition, different spends possibly even a different bidding strategy.

John:

All of these things can change now because one's infinity and one's an in market.

John:

It questions here so far.

John:

Cause I don't wanna like beat a dead horse, but I just wanna make sure that

John:

this is kind of landing well with.

John:

This is not a glitch.

John:

I'm interrupting the video you're watching because I need to remind

John:

you that I'm always looking for people to join our team.

John:

So if you're passionate about Google ads and you wanna work with the best

John:

Google ads agency on the planet, please go to so late.com/apply.

John:

Speaking of working with the best Google ads agency on the planet, if you're having

John:

trouble with Google ads and you want professional help, that's what we do.

John:

You can go to.

John:

So lake.com that's S O L eight.com to apply for your

John:

free no obligation action plan.

John:

And if I've.

John:

Any level of value at all.

John:

Maybe think about giving me a thumbs up and try to our channel.

John:

That's how we juice the YouTube algorithm.

John:

So they actually know that I know what I'm talking about.

John:

If you have questions, comments, concerns, or confessions hit

John:

me below in the comments.

John:

And now back to your regularly scheduled program.

John:

You know, I think it's really important that everybody goes through

John:

and just spends an hour traversing.

John:

The in-market in affinity categories because they're so expansive and it's

John:

actually a lot of fun and it might be worth doing on a per client basis.

John:

Like every time you get a new client, just go play in-market in affinity

John:

and see what's available for that client mm-hmm . And when we're talking

John:

about scaling and commerce, we already know that You can do discovery.

John:

You can do display.

John:

But YouTube is so cheap.

John:

Yeah.

John:

And people love engaging with video content.

John:

it's just the best.

John:

Well, and stop me if I'm going off the rails here, John.

John:

But one thing that I like to think.

John:

you've already touched on this a little bit.

John:

if we have an InMarket audience for somebody who, just added a

John:

new dog to their household, right.

John:

That's the InMarket audience you'd identified earlier life, event audience.

John:

Yep.

John:

Yeah.

John:

Life event audience.

John:

Well, are they buying puppy food and dog houses and all that stuff?

John:

Yeah.

John:

Are they also buying carpet cleaner?

John:

Yeah.

John:

You know what I mean?

John:

Like, so if you can start to really connect the dots and think creatively,

John:

then these things can just be amazing.

John:

Yeah.

John:

Especially all we have to do too is we could throw 'em

John:

into a performance max asset.

John:

I mean, we can start to, we don't have to have a dedicated

John:

a hundred dollars per day.

John:

APEN on it and be like, oh gosh, wonder if this works, but yeah, let the AI test it.

John:

Right.

John:

Let the AI test even look through your audience segmentations and say, yeah, the

John:

people that are actually interested in or the people that are in the audience

John:

of life event at a dog, recent household.

John:

Yeah.

John:

They're 47% of your conversions that share a 2.3 higher frequency than traveling from

John:

your general population with the strength.

John:

Perfect.

John:

that's a signal that you now want to dive into further.

John:

You're exactly right.

John:

A hundred percent.

John:

Yep.

John:

And I think that this is one of the areas that I think that we

John:

have not really dove into too much.

John:

For a good reason if I was to choose well, the people that I searched recently for,

John:

squishy yoga map, probably go after those.

John:

Those are people that have actually gone to Google and have actively

John:

been, been searching for it.

John:

The InMarket is what they're doing online.

John:

What potentially without searching is based on the content matches of sites

John:

that they visit the affinities though.

John:

Yeah, there we're exactly right to the, the, that's one step up the

John:

funnel, but still very relevant.

John:

So what's interesting about what well, here's one thing that I love.

John:

Affinity is I could probably use Glen's idea here.

John:

Now use a target CPM model cost per Millie, and I'll pay $20

John:

to show a thousand yoga lovers.

John:

My new map.

John:

Are they gonna buy?

John:

No.

John:

Is it cheap?

John:

Absolutely.

John:

Will they come back directly, organically and engaged through my social content?

John:

Maybe visit, be remarketed to purchase.

John:

Yeah.

John:

How much do I spend on that?

John:

Well, I don't wanna spend a direct response budget on it,

John:

but I'll spend a testing budget.

John:

I'll spend a top of funnel budget on it.

John:

I'll take 100 outta my $5,000 per month camp or $500 outta

John:

my $5,000 per month budget to engage and warm up that audience.

John:

That's a very creative way to scale commerce is to pay less for

John:

a new, to an audience that I know it's the same thing that we we're

John:

replicating throughout human existence.

John:

As an example, if we want to go and find a bunch of people interested in Google

John:

ads, we go to traffic and conversion.

John:

Why those are all affinities of digital marketing.

John:

And I will find people there that want Google ads.

John:

It's the same exact scenario.

John:

Google's brilliant.

John:

All I did was just replicate human life.

John:

it's not, a big departure, which is great.

John:

We get to use logic, but these are so, so, so, so expansive.

John:

Like, for example, I'm looking for people that are currently

John:

in the market for pet insurance.

John:

Why?

John:

Because they have pets.

John:

Well, if you aren't, if you care about the life of your dog and you have pet

John:

insurance, you probably have a pet that might actually be sick, any medication