What is Journey-based Advertising?

 Advertising is a great way to bring qualified traffic to your site quickly. But what happens when your advertising efforts start to plateau? How do you get to the next level?

You, the advertiser, have the power to make campaigns more engaging and, in the process, lower your cost-per-click (CPC) to get more results. It sounds like magic, but it’s not: it’s called journey-based advertising.

Journey-based advertising is your key to standing out in a saturated online space. Traditional pay-per-click (PPC) ads are kind of spammy and unhelpful, and you’re likely paying an arm and a leg for ads with modest or any return on investment (ROI) anyway.

Why the Buyer’s Journey Matters

We can’t do journey-based advertising unless we first understand the buyer’s journey itself. The buyer’s journey is a three-phase process your leads go through to (ideally) become a customer.

Journey-based advertising is powerful because it adapts your advertising strategy to the buyer’s journey. You can map the awareness, consideration, and decision phases to paid advertising offers and ad copy — as well as the structure and strategy of your paid advertising campaigns. For example, offers and keywords related to case studies, demos, and coupons may fall flat for your buyer personas in the awareness stage but are compelling offers when they are in the decision phase.

Buyer’s journey stages are also the basis for an ad account structure. You can create campaigns for each buyer’s journey stage and choose ad formats, bids, and more based on how much your buyer persona knows about their problem, the possible solutions, and your organization.

Sure, it’s still advertising, but this advertising is informative, useful, and meets your buyer persona where they are. It might disrupt the user experience, but in a way that’s aligned with your buyer. Say you were about the buy your dream car online and right before you hit submit, a door-to-door salesperson knocks. You answer the door and are offered the same car for $5,000 less and a better warranty. If you weren’t worried that your house was bugged, you’d probably invite the salesperson in for coffee to hear more. The same scenario but only after you received a bill from the mechanic that was higher than you hoped and you wouldn’t give the salesperson the time of day.

Bottom line: journey-based advertising uses the buyer’s journey to inform your advertising content, formats, and campaign settings. It’s the key to a better user experience and optimizes ads for performance. If you need to get more advertising ROI, it’s time to focus on buyer needs through journey-based advertising.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

6 Advertising Tips to Draw Customers In

Image
  This ad successfully combines humor and relatable language to compel me to subscribe — additionally, it solved a "problem" (learning how to cook pasta) I didn't know I had. Those are three elements that can make an amazing ad. Oftentimes, marketers assume a good ad can only be made with a big budget. They also believe ads are most effective if they're busy or loud. While these factors   do  contribute to an enjoyable ad experience, ads certainly aren't limited without them. In fact, some of the most effective ads I've come across have none of them. The ad above, for example, isn't busy or flashy at all, yet it's still an example of a good ad. In this post, let's explore six components for creating a good, engaging ad. What makes a good ad? A good ad engages consumers. Whether the ad makes consumers click to learn more or enter a store, it employs different methods to make consumers stop and pay attention. These methods can include customer testim...
Read more

How to Use Smart Content to Take Advertisements to the Next Level

  Every publisher wants to stand out from the crowd, but the days of one-size-fits-all content creation are over. The reason why? Content marketing is a double-edged sword. As companies realize that it works, they want to invest in it more—which means that there’s more information being published on the Internet than ever before. Some media companies are responding and trying to outsmart the crowd by producing more content, generating more listicles, and writing more ‘quick wins’ and listicles. But keep in mind: many consumers view these actions as noise. The tech savvy ones, especially, will see more and just get annoyed. Their screening criteria is also becoming stricter: according to one stat, human beings have an attention spans worse than goldfish, according to Microsoft (seriously: check it out—it’s a cool study). That’s why smart content is so important. It’s also a powerful value proposition for advertisers who are looking to reach the right audiences with the right me...
Read more

Negative Impacts of Advertising

 Now you've done it: Your small business has finally gotten to the point where you can commit to regular advertising buys, and now you've opened the door of criticism to people who wish to remind you of the negative impacts of advertising. Yes, some sour grapes may be leading the charge, but there's no denying that bad, manipulative and poorly executed advertising gives all advertising a bad rap. Your best strategy? Size up some of those negative impacts so you can be prepared to quash those sour grapes. Charge No. 1: Advertising Encourages Monopolies Advertising doesn't come cheap. It's never come cheap. And even if you've been indoctrinated in the ways of inbound marketing and the more cost-effective tactics you can use to lure new customers to your website, advertising still represents an investment. For this reason, advertising has long been considered the domain of big businesses with deep pockets, which critics say gives these businesses a competitive adva...
Read more