When done properly, Google Ads are an effective piece in any multi-channel marketing strategy. The ability to target traffic to specific behavior and keyword searches is invaluable. Well, Google is now following in the footsteps of Facebook and Twitter and on September 27 announced the roll-out of a new Google Ad feature named Customer Match. This new feature allows Google advertisers to upload first-party email databases and serve ads via Google search, YouTube and/or Gmail to the business’s specific customers. Facebook and Twitter advertising platforms have had this feature for some time and it has been a very effective tool for businesses to market to existing customers.

Dealers that have used these features in any digital marketing efforts on Facebook and/or Twitter should understand how powerful this type of targeted marketing can be. Imagine using targeted Google Ads to market offers and specials purely to members of your loyalty program. While not everyone uses Facebook or Twitter, nearly everyone uses Google in some form or another - whether that’s as a search engine, email service or to simply watch video content.

Dealers could also use this new feature to target service customers, shoppers that visit but do not purchase, and just about any combination of a segmented audience. If you can create a segmented email database, you can now precisely target marketing to that specific list of people using Google. When you factor relevance into the equation, this new feature opens up a world of possibilities for dealers to use in their marketing.

It’s been proven that consumers who receive relevant offers and information respond at a much higher rate than to mass campaigns of any kind - whether that’s via email, direct mail, or digital marketing. The ability to precisely target these segmented groups with offers via Google is a highly effective tool for dealers to add to their arsenal.

This new Google feature could also decrease the costs of the ads themselves. Instead of getting into a bidding war over keyword searches, targeting specific individuals that are already connected to the business itself, should certainly produce better results for less money. Since it’s your data, nobody else can use it to target your customers. Therefore, you eliminate any competition with others for those specific customers. Sure, those customers will still be targeted through keyword searches and behavioral targeting.  However, the edge that Customer Match provides dealers is the ability to send hyper-relevant messages to their customers, rather than just generic ones to the masses.

If you’re a dealer that utilizes Google Ads, consider immediately integrating this into your marketing ad spend. If it performs as well as Facebook’s Custom Audiences and you should find that it’s one of the most valuable advertising paths available.