Inside Google Ads podcast: Episode 112 - Sensitive Categories

Have you seen that "Eligible (Limited)" status next to your Google Ads campaigns? Or tried to do retargeting and been denied?

This is the reality of running Google Ads in a “Sensitive Interest Category." If you work in healthcare, financial services, the law, real estate, housing, alcohol, or a dozen other restricted categories there are certain things you can't do in Google Ads, which means there are certain other things you must do.

Today, I’m going to share the specific strategies and tactics that I use with my Google Ads coaching clients who operate in sensitive interest categories so that they, and you, can still get the best results from Google Ads.

I'm your host, Jyll Saskin Gales. I spent six years working for big brands at Google, and now I work for you. 

This is Inside Google Ads, Episode 112: Sensitive Categories.

First thing’s first, what does it mean to operate in a sensitive interest category? 

I've put a link in the episode description with the official Google Ads Help Center definitions, but the short form thing you need to know is you can't do personalized advertising. This means no retargeting of any kind, no your data segments, and no customer match. You also can't use custom segments or Lookalike segments.

And in certain industries, in certain countries—for example, finance and housing in the US and Canada—you also can't do any basic demographic limitations like age or gender. There are even limitations around zip code targeting.

I often get clients who say to me, 'I'm in a sensitive interest category; I can't do anything.' And boy oh boy, that is not true! 

There are still a ton of things you can do even if you operate in sensitive interest, namely: keywords. All search keywords are still available to you. All content targeting is available to you in Video and Display campaigns—that's keywords, topics, and placements.

On the audience side, you know I love audiences, you can still use all of Google's pre-built audience segments, that's detailed demographics, affinities, life events, and In-market segments. You can use combined segments where they're still available to layer those audiences together. And you can still use audience signals and search themes in PMax and optimized targeting in Display and Demand Gen.

So you'll notice the list of things you can do is actually larger than the list of things you can't do.

I'm a glass half full kind of gal so now I'm going to show you what to do with those tools still at your disposal. 

But before we get into the strategies I know you want to hear, there is a broken record I must repeat right now: that none of this will work without proper conversion tracking in place.

And what I mean by that are these sensitive interest categories—like law or healthcare, or therapy or finance, or real estate—often have very high search CPCs. Now, high CPCs are not the enemy; low-quality traffic is. But in order to feel comfortable with those high CPCs and know that you're getting high-quality traffic, you need Offline Conversion Tracking.

It is not enough to just tell Google, 'someone filled out my form' or 'I got a phone call,' because guess what? Those are both hugely susceptible not just to spam, but to a lot of low-quality leads that are not going to convert into customers or patients or clients for you.

You want to make sure that you're optimizing for at least a Marketing Qualified Lead, if not a Sales Qualified Lead, or even a closed client or patient.

I'm not a lawyer, so you must obey what lawyers tell you to do. But something else I've noticed is that your in-house lawyers are often overly conservative around privacy laws and things that you can and can't do from an audience and conversion tracking perspective. 

So, if your in-house counsel says, 'Absolutely not; we can't do Offline Conversion Tracking,' that may be true. I'm not a lawyer. But I can tell you that I have worked with many doctors, lawyers in the United States and Canada who are able to implement Offline Conversion Tracking solutions while still obeying the law. So if the lawyer you're talking to says it can't be done, it may be the case, but I'd encourage you to at least get a second opinion. Because if you can't use those tools, it's going to make it a lot harder for you and Google to drive good results from your investment.

Now that your conversion tracking foundation is in place and we know what we can and can't do, let's dive into the specific strategies.

1. The first strategy I'm going to recommend is probably something you would not expect, and it's going wide.

Yes, we'll typically start with Exact Match keywords in sensitive interest categories, but once you have that Offline Conversion Tracking in place, you can and should consider expanding to Broad Match, assuming you have sufficient budget to do so, such that you're getting about one conversion a day. 

Why is that? Well, sometimes there's a keyword you want to target in Exact Match, but you can't because it's low search volume or there are policy restrictions. So if you use Phrase or Broad Match instead, you can actually target those exact same queries in a way that Exact Match wouldn't let you.

Also, with Exact Match, there's only so much demand and your CPCs are going to be really high. There's a whole other universe of queries out there where perhaps 95% of them are not relevant to you, but then 5% of them will be. And by using Smart Bidding and having proper conversion tracking in place, the system will be able to go out and find those 5% that you wouldn't have advertised on otherwise.

These are the types of queries that may only come in under “other search terms” on your Search Term Report. You may not even see where they are, but it's not uncommon for me to work with a Google Ads coaching client and see that actually their other search terms outperform their visible search terms. If they're only tracking phone calls or lead forms, then that can make us a bit nervous because we don't know what's in there. When we are only tracking qualified leads, then we can trust that data and see that by going wide in search, we're able to bring in a bunch of quality leads we wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

Something else you can do of course is expand beyond Search. If Search is saturated, maybe you do have Exact Match keywords, but you have really high Search Impression Share. Consider moving some budget into Demand Gen. This allows you to serve ads across YouTube, Gmail, and Discover to high quality signed in Google users, and you can still target your Demand Gen campaign using all of Google's audiences and using optimized targeting. So again, if you have that proper conversion tracking in place, Google can go out and find the users who are most likely to convert. 

The key is that Demand Gen tends to work on a bit of a longer time horizon than Search. So while the CPCs are much lower, the conversion rate will be much lower, too. Plan to run your Demand Gen campaign for at least three months before you start to judge performance, especially if you're working with a modest budget, say $50 a day or less on Demand Gen.

Also keep in mind that the impact of Demand Gen is often felt outside of Demand Gen. For example, you might start running a Demand Gen campaign in the small town where you operate and then notice after a month or two that your branded searches start increasing. Google is actually coming out with the new conversion metric called Attributed Branded Searches. I'll put a link in the episode description for more information about that. As of right now, it's not available yet. It's coming. But I mentioned this to say as well that the impact of Demand Gen can be felt beyond just the Demand Gen campaign. 

So that's another reason I'll often recommend it for advertisers in sensitive interest categories. It's a way to get your law firm out there in your town, your plastic surgery practice, or your counseling services out there when in reality there's only so many people you're looking to reach. You're not the kind of e-commerce advertiser who's trying to target a whole country. So showing your ads front and center to all of the people who are potentially one day in your target audience can be immensely valuable. It's like the digital version of putting up a billboard in the main town square.

So that's strategy one, the counterintuitive thing I recommend quite a bit in a sensitive interest category is to go wider than you would think, assuming of course proper conversion tracking is in place.

By the way, if you've never used Demand Gen or PMax before and you're really not sure where to start, these are just some of the hundred plus lessons that are included in my Inside Google Ads course. You also get access to JyllBot, a custom AI chatbot trained on everything I've ever said or written, including all the Inside Google Ads course materials, my book, Inside Google Ads: Everything You Need to Know About Audience Targeting, my Search Engine Land articles, podcast episodes, and more.

You can learn more and join now at learn.jyll.ca, that's J-Y-L-L dot C-A, or follow the link in the episode description.

Let's keep going.

2. Next, I want to share my non-linear targeting strategy. 

If you've seen me at a conference, you've seen me talk about this before. But the idea is that sometimes in a sensitive interest category, you can't take the direct path to target your ideal customers. The exact keywords or exact audiences you want may not be available. So when that happens, take a long route around to reach your eventual destination.

For example, maybe as a plastic surgeon, there's a specific kind of branded injection you want to target, but you keep getting disapproved or the competition is just too high. What is the problem that people wanting that solution might be searching for? 

Maybe you want to advertise on “how to reduce bags under my eyes” versus just the solution. This is a common tactic I'll recommend to healthcare clients to focus on targeting the problem as well as your offered solution.

This can work in banking as well, for example. There's an in-market audience for people in the market for a mortgage; you can absolutely target that and absolutely see great results. But you should also think about: what are the other things on people's minds as they're looking for a mortgage? Maybe it's people who are in the market for a new home. And by targeting people in the market for a new home in a Demand Gen campaign, let's say, you're building that brand awareness and affinity, so that when they're ready to buy that new home and thinking about, 'hmm, what mortgage provider should I choose?’ You're not jumping in at that moment when suddenly there's mortgage intent, fighting with all the other people who want to offer mortgages. You've already been building that awareness and affinity. So they go, 'I think I saw something from Jyll's bank about mortgages. Let me just Google Jyll's bank.' Aha! And there you got them: on a branded search, plus a couple of Demand Gen impressions or clicks. Way cheaper than trying to fight over the very expensive mortgage keyword.

In order to make non-linear targeting work for you, you want to think about the other things top of mind for someone who is your ideal customer. What else are they doing online or searching for? Or even better, what are the things they do right before they're in-market in your category?

Right before someone needs a personal injury lawyer, they're in a car crash. Maybe they're in a car repair shop. That's the kind of creative thinking that can make non-linear targeting very effective for sensitive interest categories. 

3. And speaking of creative, that brings me to my third strategy, which I call creative-led targeting.

In fact, this is really the way that performance max works. When your targeting is restricted, your creative needs to do much more heavy lifting and actually becomes your primary targeting tool because the people who are interested in your text, image or video ads are the ones who are going to engage and potentially convert. And just as importantly, the people who are not interested in the text, image and video ads you put out are not going to engage and therefore are not going to convert. And those initial engagement or non-engagement signals are really important for campaign types like PMax or even Video, Display and Demand Gen to decide who to show your ads to next.

From a Search perspective, you want your ad text to be so specific that as much as it strongly appeals to your target audience, it strongly does not appeal to your not-target audience. Maybe there's certain jargon you want to use, certain price points you want to emphasize that makes it clear who this ad is and isn't for. When Search CPCs are expensive, you want to do what you can from a creative perspective to ensure that you're pushing away the people who are not going to be interested in becoming customers.

From a visual perspective, image assets in PMax, Demand Gen, and Display… don’t just show a stock photo of someone on a computer. You want that imagery to, again, show real people in a real-life context in a way that your target audience will really relate to and your not-target audience will really not relate to.

A happy couple standing in front of a house is not specific enough. A worried looking person standing in front of a more dilapidated house is going to really speak to the people who identify with that and really not speak to the people who don't identify with that. You just have to be a little careful here because if the imagery gets too negative, that can also get you disapproved, especially in a Demand Gen campaign.

And then with video, whether it's video assets in PMax, in Demand Gen, or a Video campaign, the key is to get the right kind of audience to view the video and the not right kind of audience to skip the video. So make it very clear in those first six seconds and in the thumbnail exactly who this is for and not for. Showing your brand for three seconds and then a spokesperson just starting to talk for three seconds is not going to be helpful. Starting with an emotion right up front is going to be much more helpful.

In the decade plus I've been doing Google Ads with advertisers across industries, these are the three perhaps surprising tactics that I found to be most effective in sensitive interest categories like finance, legal, healthcare, real estate, and more. 

1. Going broader than you might think is necessary from a Search and beyond Search perspective. 

2. Embracing non-linear targeting to reach the right person in a moment either just before or around the time they're in market for what you offer. 

3. Using creative as the ultimate filter to guide the AI towards the right kind of customers for you and, just as importantly, to repel the not right kind of customers for you.

Of course, none of these tactics work unless you have Offline Conversion Tracking in place. The biggest recipe for disaster in general in Google Ads, but especially in a sensitive interest category, is only tracking a lead and nothing beyond that.

In fact, the three strategies I've shared with you today will not work and may even make your campaigns perform worse if you don't have Offline Conversion Tracking in place.

So as long as you do have the proper conversion data, bid strategy, and creative, Google's AI will be able to find your best customers, clients, and patients, in spite of your targeting restrictions.

For more specifics on how to set up all the different campaign types I've discussed today and to get your burning questions answered promptly and regularly by me, you should check out my course, Inside Google Ads, at learn.jyll.ca. That's J-Y-L-L dot C-A, or follow the link in the episode description. 

Thank you to my friend Marjorie Vizethann for requesting the topic of today's episode. If you have a request for a future episode, feel free to drop a comment wherever you're watching or listening to this now. 

I'm Jyll Saskin Gales, and I'll see you next time Inside Google Ads.