5 Ways the Customer Journey Can Help You Build Effective Digital Advertising Campaigns
By Nathan Mendenhall, digital advertising manager at Digital Resource
Jan. 20, 2021
In this modern era, digital advertising is one of the most effective ways to launch, grow, and scale any business online. But just because you run an ad on Facebook or Google doesn’t mean that it will automatically drive your business to success. It’s a little more complicated than that.
The key to a successful digital advertising campaign is understanding the people you want to target with it. You need to know how they go from being completely unaware of a brand to actively recommending it to their network of friends and family.
Knowing these things gives you an insight into how to conduct your advertising in a way that will drive results, conversions, and sales. And the best way to do this is to map out your customer’s value journey.
The customer journey is a step-by-step process that draws prospects in and converts them into loyal customers. It provides invaluable information that allows you to customize your digital marketing efforts for every stage of your customer’s journey into buying your products. This enables you to lead your prospects and customers, making sure that they move seamlessly and swiftly through each stage and convert.
In this article, we will discuss how following the customer journey can help you build effective digital advertising campaigns!
Follow the Customer Journey for Effective Digital Marketing
Aware Stage
The first stage in the customer journey is to let people know who you are, what you do, and what you have to offer. Creating awareness is very important because if people don’t know you exist, they can’t buy from you. Simple as that!
Here are some of the different ways that your target audience could become aware of your company:
- A pregnant woman sees a Facebook Ad for a new maternity clothing brand on Facebook
- A gym rat searches Google for the nearest gym in the area
- A student who is about to go to college watches a YouTube video of an influencer talking about the essentials that a freshman student should have
There are many ways to get your brand in front of your potential customers. But it’s important to find out which platforms your target audience is spending most of their time online. Is it on YouTube? Instagram? Facebook? Knowing the best platforms to reach out to your target audience allows you to capture more leads.
Here are the different ways you can build brand awareness:
- Paid Ads (Search or Social Media)
- Social Media Marketing
- Search Engine Optimization
- Influencer Marketing
- Content Marketing
Interest Stage
At this stage, people are getting interested in what you have to offer! Your goal is to get people to interact with your brand and get them to consume content that encourages them to like your brand. To do this, it’s best to invest in publishing high-quality content your target audience can relate to. Remember, you don’t want to pressure them into making a purchase or anything more.
Here are some other ways on how you can get your audience to interact with your brand:
- Hold a contest on Instagram to encourage engagement from your audience
- Create a YouTube video about what goes on behind the scenes when sourcing or making your products
- Create sharable content that your target audience can relate to
- Educate your audience on the pros and cons of your products or services through infographics or video content
- Use social media to show your audience how you live your values, like supporting a worthy cause
- Reply to comments on your blog posts and use a chatbot to cater to inquiries immediately
Constant interaction helps build and strengthen your relationship with your prospects and customers. It also encourages customer loyalty, which is essential to expand your customer base.
Consideration Stage
By this stage, your prospects already know who you are and have interacted with your brand to some degree. They’re now ready to speak with a salesperson. So, your next objective is to take the relationship to the next level and get your target audience to take action.
Today, people are constantly flooded with information from many different companies. Just because they read one blog from you or watched a video on your channel, doesn’t mean they’ll buy from you or even remember you.
To get people to consider working with you, you need to offer something they can’t refuse. It can be free content, exclusive discounts, free products, or whatever it may be. Other businesses’ tactics is that they create a valuable offer in exchange for enlisting in their newsletter.
Here’s an example:
Somewhere in your blog post (where it’s appropriate and relevant), insert a call-to-action that says “Subscribe to Get a Free Sample of Our Best Selling Product.”
Conversion Stage
A lot of businesses skip the first three stages and immediately jump into selling their products or services to people. It usually ends up in disappointment because of the following reasons:
- Lack of awareness: When people are not familiar with a brand, they often hesitate into buying their products or services
- Lack of understanding: Your target audience should be able to understand the benefits of your products or services to convince them to buy your products
- Lack of perceived value: It’s important to create a perceived value that can be associate solely with your brand to convince people why they should purchase your products or services
But when you follow the steps in order, you’ll see that people are more likely to buy from you.
Here are some examples that real businesses use to convert prospects:
- HubSpot offers free courses that users can access once they fill out a form
- Bed Bath & Beyond offers a 20% discount to first-time subscribers
- Trello offers a free version of its tool to capture leads and drive free users to go premium over time
Post-Purchase Stage
The post-purchase stage is all about turning your customer into loyal customers. The customer journey allows you to create a unique and personalized experience for your audience at every step of their journey into buying your products.
When you get this right, people will keep coming back for the experience that comes along when buying your products or services. This can encourage them to make more purchases – and bigger purchases – over time.
You can run social media ads to remind your customers about you and to keep in touch with them. You can also use email marketing to send them exclusive discounts during their birthdays or holidays. Customer retention is the key to growing your customer base. Your goal in this stage is to keep your customers happy and to develop a relationship with them that will encourage them to remain loyal to your brand.
Posted: April 13, 2021
Category: Digital Marketing, Social Media, UF CJC Online Blog
Tagged as: Digital Advertising
