Learn How Google Ads’ New Policy Impacts Senior Living Marketing, By Melanie Nikolaiev

Almost 500,000 companies are actively using Google Ads. This staggering number is due in large part because Google’s dominant advertising platform can deliver qualified leads when used effectively. However, getting more mileage out of your advertising budget means digital marketers must continuously optimize their strategy and be aware of the ever shifting digital advertising landscape.

Writing great ad copy and refining your landing pages is a must when it comes to best practices, but all of those efforts will go to waste if you’re not using relevant keywords.

For Senior Living marketers the stakes are now especially high given the ongoing effects of the pandemic, chronic labor shortages and inflation.

First and foremost, all of us need to consider some of the changes taking place in 2022:

In October of 2020, Google made an announcement regarding their new policy which introduced the implementation of targeting restrictions specifically aimed at businesses in the U.S. that fall under ‘sensitive interest’ categories. These businesses include employment, housing, credit services and healthcare.

The new Google Ads Personalized Advertising policy update now forbids advertisers from targeting users using potentially sensitive demographic data points such as gender, age, parental status and even their zip codes. Furthermore, personalized advertising which falls under sensitive interest categories are now prohibited from using remarketing, custom and curated audiences.

This is a big deal.

Senior Living marketing falls squarely under Google’s new sensitive category as housing. Therefore, this policy presents significant new challenges, such as the prohibition of targeting audiences or using remarketing to nurture leads.

Although these challenges are significant, it’s not time to panic although it is time to refine your Google Ads strategy.

The tried and true saying that every challenge presents us with an opportunity is accurate in this scenario because it means we must develop and deploy new and even more effective approaches to optimize campaign performance.

Following are 5 of the most effective strategies Senior Living marketers can deploy in 2022 to avoid potentially negative fallout from Google Ads’ policy changes:

1. Ensure that each and every one of your ad campaigns falls under compliance in order to avoid suspensions or penalties (Three Strikes and You’re Out isn’t just applicable to baseball). We all know the Senior Living market is hyper-competitive, so it’s critical that you are getting your targeted audience’s attention throughout every stage of the marketing funnel. Ultimately, it’s our ethical responsibility as marketers to make sure messaging speaks to our audience in a manner that doesn’t violate Google’s ad policies
2. Keeping up with keywords performance may seem obvious, but it’s all too often overlooked. The oft repeated phrase that ‘audiences show interest, but keywords demonstrate actual intent.’ remains true. Therefore, it’s crucial that advertisers create a well thought out keyword list and to implement routine keyword audits. Search terms research will also go a long way in demonstrating that your ads are relevant to the information your audience is actually searching for
3. A powerful way to generate attention is to provoke an emotional reaction without resorting to shock value. This is another scenario where the basics are more important than ever. Make sure your message is strongly worded, attention grabbing and has a clear call to action that is relevant to your audience’s needs
4. Research goes a long way in creating a clear and concise message that vanquishes your competition in Google’s bidding auction arena, but research takes signifcant time so plan (and budget) accordingly
5. Monitor campaign performance and divert unqualified traffic. This two-fold objective can be achieved by creating a negative keyword list for search terms that are triggering ads but are not qualified or aren’t showing interest in your offering. You should also make sure to use targeted locations with highest interest, intent, and conversion rates

Thanks for taking the time to read this article! You can find official information and guidelines on Google’s policies here:

Google’s personalized advertising policy:

https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/143465?hl=en&ref_topic=3123080&visit_id=637793465517507046-2136643537&rd=1

Google’s resources for best practices:

https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6154846?hl=en

Ad policy violation:

https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/7187501