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How To: Use 6sense With Google Ads

November 3, 2022 schedule 7 min By Matt Ellis
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents

Introduction

Google Ads allows you to promote your products and services when and where people are searching for them. Google receives over 5.6 billion searches per day and over 59% of shoppers use Google to research a product or service before purchasing.

Unfortunately, Google Ads provides few standalone capabilities for account-based marketing.

By properly integrating 6sense with Google ads, you can implement an account-based marketing strategy which will significantly improve performance and give you a leg up on your competition!

Make sure you:

Definitions & notes:

6sense attributes: Technographic and firmographic attributes of a website visitor generated through the 6signal API

Audiences: Previous visitors of your site categorized into groups based on 6sense attribute. Audiences are built in Google Analytics using custom dimensions that pull in the 6sense attributes. Link Google Analytics to Google Ads to use these audiences for the below opportunities.

Smart bidding: Smart Bidding is a subset of automated bid strategies that use machine learning to optimize for conversions or conversion value in each and every auction. Measurement is extremely important for the success of smart bidding.

How third-party data can be used: Third-party data can only be used to segment first-party audiences: https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/6242605

Minimum audience size:

Tactics: Measurement & bidding

Track conversions based on 6sense attributes.

This will allow Google to drive more visits from users with these attributes when using a Smart Bidding strategy.

Example: Track conversions for visits from users within ICP, strong profile fit, etc.

How: Use Google Tag Manager to fire a conversion event when a user comes to the site matching your criteria by utilizing the 6signal info.

Multiply the value of tracked conversions based on 6sense attributes.

This will allow Google Smart Bidding strategies to perform better by more accurately valuing conversion actions and driving more from your key audiences.

Example: If a user is within your ICP and signs up for a demo, multiply the value of that conversion by 3.

How: Build audiences in Google Analytics using custom dimensions that are populated by the 6sense attributes, particularly the 6sense segment. Then, setup conversion value rules in Google Ads.

Tactics: Creative​

Customize ad copy and landing pages based on using 6sense attributes.

Example: If you are targeting the keyword “accounting software” and someone searches this (who has been to the site) from the manufacturing industry (as defined by 6sense) your ad would read “accounting software for manufacturing companies”.

Example: If a user who has been to you site is in the “purchase” buying stage then use “Schedule Your Demo Today” in the ad copy and land them on the demo signup page.

How: Build audiences in Google Analytics using custom dimensions that are populated by the 6sense attributes. Apply the audience to an ad group in Google Ads using the “Targeting” setting. Customize ad copy respectively

Tailor the ad copy on keywords that see most of the traffic coming from one buying stage.

Example: we saw that users driven through lead generation keywords were predominantly in the “awareness” buying stage so we adjusted our ad to send them to an informational video about how 6sense helps with lead gen.

How: Analyze keywords by buying stage in Google Analytics. Identify groups of keywords that skew towards specific buying stage and adjust ad copy/landing page appropriately.

Note: It would be optimal to adjust the content of the page based on their buying stage instead of making the decision at the keyword level as not all users searching for a keyword will be in a specific buying stage.

Tactics: Miscellaneous

Block previous site visitors from seeing, and clicking, your ads based on 6sense attributes.

Example: Prevent previous site visitors from seeing and clicking your ads if they work at companies with annual revenues under $10 million.

Example: Prevent competitors who have been to your site from seeing or clicking your ad again.

Example: Prevent previous site visitors from seeing and clicking your ads if their profile fit is poor.

How: Build audiences in Google Analytics using custom dimensions that are populated by the 6sense attributes. Add these audiences as “excluded” within Google Ads.

Target a wider, less relevant, set of keywords for previous site visitors in high-value audiences.

This will allow you to profitably expand your reach.

Example: Your company sells account based marketing software but the keyword “marketing software” is too general and does not perform well. You can move this keyword to a campaign that only targets previous site visitors within your ICP.

Example: Use broad match versions of keywords only for users within your ICP.

How: Build high-value audiences in Google Analytics using custom dimensions that are populated by the 6sense attributes. Create a new campaign or ad group with the general keywords and add the high-value audiences as Targeted instead of Observation.

Create parity amongst keywords in 6sense and paid search campaigns.

There could be valuable keywords being monitored in 6sense that aren’t being targeted in Google Ads, and vice versa.

Example: The keyword “CDP” is researched by most companies in your ICP yet you aren’t targeting it as a keyword in Google Ads.

How: This is currently a manual process that requires cooperation between the team managing 6sense and that managing paid search.

6sense opportunity: pull in keyword data from the Google Ads API and programmatically uncover opportunities within the 6sense platform.

Update content on landing page based on buying stage.

Keywords does not dictate buying stage.

Conclusion

Through the implementation of these tactics, you will increase engagement with high-value prospects and reduce spend on the low-value ones.

It will also put you in the small minority that have adopted an advanced ABM strategy in their Google Ads account.

This article was written by Jim Vaillancourt, owner of Lionhurst, a digital marketing agency with expertise in Google Ads and ABM. It was most recently updated on December 2nd, 2022.

Lionhurst manages Google Ads for 6sense. Lionhurst’s implementation of these tactics with 6sense has led to a large improvement in Google Ads performance.

I want to target all people at a certain company when they search “software” on Google.

This question, and similar iterations of it, are common. One of the most important concepts to understand with all of this is that third-party data (in this case, 6sense attributes) can only be used to segment first-party data for targeting on Google Ads. This is why most of the examples above cite “previous site visitors”. More information here.

The audience that I want to target is too small.

This is an unfortunate consequence of only being able to use third-party data to segment first-party data. Because search audiences need to be greater than 1000 users and display audiences need to be greater than 100 users, you can not get overly specific in your targeting.

How often do I need to update audiences?

Audiences that are built in Google Analytics are dynamic. When a new user comes to the site and matches the criteria for a specific audience then they are automatically added to it.

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Matt Ellis

Matt Ellis is a Staff Writer at 6sense. He has over 10 years of experience creating B2B content across numerous industries including B2B tech, cybersecurity, and the travel industry.