Describe a situation where you had to optimize a campaign for a difficult-to-target audience.

In one campaign, I worked with a client offering CRM consultancy, management, optimisation, and migration services exclusively for large enterprises with complex CRM needs. The challenge was significant because CRM-related keywords attract a broad audience, from small businesses to large corporations, and our goal was to focus solely on high-budget, enterprise-level clients.

Initially, we encountered inefficiencies in spend as our ads reached smaller businesses that were not suitable for the client’s premium-priced services. To address this, I implemented a multi-pronged optimisation strategy.

Keyword Refinement: We shifted from broad keywords like "CRM consultancy" to longer-tail, enterprise-focused terms such as "enterprise CRM migration services" and "Salesforce consultancy for large businesses." By adding qualifiers like "enterprise" and "corporate," we filtered out less relevant traffic.

Audience Layering: We utilised advanced audience targeting features in Google Ads, focusing on industries and roles that align with enterprise-level decision-makers, such as C-suite executives and IT directors in sectors known for large-scale CRM needs.

Ad Copy and Landing Page Alignment: The ad copy was tailored to highlight the client’s expertise and high-value services, explicitly mentioning "enterprise-level solutions" and "designed for large organisations." The landing page mirrored this messaging, reinforcing exclusivity and discouraging inquiries from smaller businesses.

Negative Keywords: We built an extensive negative keyword list to exclude terms commonly associated with small business users.

One situation where I had to optimize a campaign for a difficult-to-target audience involved promoting a luxury travel service for high-net-worth individuals. This audience is notoriously hard to reach due to their selective browsing habits and privacy concerns. To overcome this challenge, I began by leveraging advanced targeting tools, focusing on specific demographics such as income level, occupation, and location. Additionally, we used behavioral data to understand where these individuals spent time online and what kind of content they engaged with. We also implemented a strategy of personalized ad messaging that emphasized exclusivity and luxury, as this aligned with the brand's value proposition. To further enhance the targeting, I employed retargeting techniques, showing personalized ads to users who had previously interacted with the brand's website but had not yet converted. Through these efforts, we were able to fine-tune the campaign’s targeting, leading to an increase in both engagement and conversions from this high-value audience, all while maintaining a cost-effective approach.

One of my clients in France was selling yachts and wanted to target high-earners in California. They asked to build and manage their Google Ads and Facebook Ads campaigns. While the task and intent were similar, the approach for each platform differed due to their distinct natures.

Google Ads

To effectively target high-income yacht buyers in California, the Google Ads campaign was optimized using several key tactics. The campaign focused on users in the top household income brackets, specifically selecting the "Top 10%" income tier while excluding lower income brackets to avoid wasted ad spend.

The ads were targeting affluent areas of California known for yacht ownership, such as Newport Beach, San Diego, Marina del Rey, the San Francisco Bay Area, and wealthy enclaves like Beverly Hills, Malibu, Montecito, and Tiburon.

The keyword list was designed to include high-intent, luxury-focused terms like "Luxury yacht for sale California," "Custom superyacht builder," and "Multi-million dollar yachts." Negative keywords like "cheap," "affordable," and "budget" were added to filter out budget-conscious searchers.

The ad copy was crafted to appeal to high-net-worth individuals, emphasizing exclusivity, customization, and premium features, and highlighting financing options for multi-million dollar purchases.

Facebook Ads

For the Facebook Ads campaign, a different approach was used to reach affluent yacht buyers in California. In demographic targeting I selected the "Top 10% of ZIP codes by average household income" option, targeted users with a college degree or higher and focused on the 45-65 age range, which typically has higher earning potential.

Similar to Google Ads, the campaign targeted affluent coastal areas of California known for yacht ownership.

For interest and behavior targeting I included users interested in luxury brands, yachting, and sailing, included interests in high-end travel, fine dining, and wine collecting, and focused on the "Frequent International Travelers" behavior category.

I also built custom Audiences through uploading customer lists of past yacht buyers and high-value leads, created lookalike audiences based on these high-value customers, retargeted website visitors who viewed specific luxury yacht models.

And the ad content was tailored to appeal to affluent individuals, similar to the Google Ads campaign, but with different wording. High-quality imagery featuring stunning California coastal locations was used. Ad placement was optimized for maximum impact, prioritizing Instagram placements for visual appeal and utilizing Facebook news feed placements for longer-form content.

These refined targeting strategies allowed the yacht company to efficiently reach their ideal customers in California, resulting in higher-quality leads and a high ROAS.