This is What Happens When Your Dog Eats a Rainbow Bagel

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The missing bagel…

We have a local bagel maker. He makes these amazing rainbow bagels. Last week my daughter got out a bagel and left it out for her breakfast. Later that morning I heard “Mum! I’ve lost my bagel!”

We looked under the sofa. We looked under the bed. We looked under the cushions. We looked under the table. We even looked in the backyard.

Later that day we found the bagel. The dog had been ill and it didn’t look like a rainbow bagel anymore.

It’s funny because my three-year-old daughter is always asking me “what color does pink + purple + blue + orange + green make?” (Turns out the answer to the question when she asks it is not muddy brown, the answer is rainbow). That said, the answer this time was muddy brown.

You’re probably wondering where I’m going with this? Well this is actually relevant to a very important concept in Google marketing called segmentation.

If every color is a segment, you get a much better experience when they’re all separate. When they are all mixed together, all you’ve got is a mess on your carpet.

How to use this info?

Lets be serious now. Let’s say you sell shoes. Do people buy more shoes from their mobile phone or from their desktop? Google Analytics and Google ads gives you the ability to segment people by their device type so that you can know for sure which one does better.

The key here is that you need to separate them in order to know which one gives you the better result. If they are all mixed together then you would never know and so you can’t target your best customers.

How can you use this segmented data? If you know that more people buy from you when they are on their mobile phone, then you can set up your advertising to target people using their mobile phone. That way you can eliminate the waste of advertising to people using different devices if you only have a small budget. With small budgets it’s always better to focus on what works the best and trim everything else out of your advertising.

How about a different example. Have you ever considered segmenting by peoples interests? Google Analytics and Google Ads let you see the interests of people who go to your website or click on your ads.

Some marketers will add this interest data into Google ads, but they don’t always do it right. Lets use the example again of selling shoes. Often marketers will segment to users who have been shopping for shoes recently. But segmenting to people who have been looking for shoes defeats the purpose when you are selling shoes, because you already know they are looking for shoes! Otherwise they wouldn’t have seen or clicked on your ad in the first place.

Much more interesting segments could include comparing people who are into sports against people who are into cars and against people who like to go to the salon. These different groups of people will be more or less likely to buy from you, and you’ll be able to reach them with higher or lower CPCs depending on who your competitors target. If you segment by these different interests you can understand much better who are your best advertising markets and you can target accordingly.

If you leave all the different segments mixed together rather than separated you will have no idea!

I can assure you the bagel looked better when the colors where separate.