Pay per click advertising using AdWords has become a powerful platform for online marketers. Its simple interface and the fact that it can be customised to fit any budget makes Adwords a popular strategy for small businesses and enterprises alike.

Adwords is designed so that pretty much anyone can set up and run their own ad campaign. There are plenty of advanced features and optimisation strategies to make the most of the tool.
If you’re keen to get into Adwords, setting up the basics is pretty easy. But with so many businesses out there trying to reach the same audience, you'll need some strategies and tactics to get the most out of your campaign.

Here are 4 sure fire tips for improving your targeting to reach the best possible audience.

1. Add Your Competition in as Keywords – Add your competitors to your Campaigns! It’s totally legal and quite commonplace – provided your competitor hasn’t trademarked their name with Google. And don't think of it as poaching, but simply allowing the advertising platform to understand that your businesses are closely aligned so searchers will likely be interested in your offering.

2. Use Negative Keywords – Not every search that includes your keywords are going to be relevant to your business. For example, an eco-friendly store might want to target the term ‘green baby’, but they won’t be interested in clicks from mothesr researching ‘green baby poo’. (True story!) And because you’ll be charged for every click, you really only want clicks from genuine leads.

One great way to filter your audience is to set up negative keywords. These are words that, if included in the search, will exclude your ad from eligibility. Popular negative keywords are ‘Free’or ‘Cheap’. (or in the above example, ‘poo’.) Just as you should be specific in your keywords, you should be scrupulous in your selection of negative keywords as well. 
3. Practice Remarketing - Remarketing is a neat Google ads feature that essentially lets your ads ‘follow someone around the web’. The way it works is that your site will drop a supplied cookie when a visitor visits your site. This cookie puts them on a remarketing list so your display ads will be show up throughout their browsing journey. This helps to capture site ‘exits’, where a customer might have looked at a product but wasn’t quite ready to purchase. The ads serve as visual reminders of their visit.
You can take remarketing even further by fine-tuning your messages to specific visitors on your remarketing list. So you can offer special discounts or incentives for the specific item they were looking at to help them convert. The best thing about remarketing is that you’re not charged for displaying the ad, only for the click through. It’s the ultimate example of ‘pester power’. 

4. Establish Time Restrictions - You probably have some idea as to when people are most likely to visit your website, request more information or even make a purchase. You're able to restrict the visibility of your ads to specific timeframes and days. This lets you customise your messages even more - so you can promote Happy Hour at 4 PM or late night shopping specials on specific days.