In this post I am going to focus on the "Learn" phase of the cycle. Specifically, three digitial marketing media strategies you can use to target consumers in the "Learn" phase.
In the "Learn" phase consumers have a need to be fulfilled or a problem to solve. They are looking for information that will help them fill this need or solve their problem. They are not ready to buy yet, so don't try to sell them anything. If your marketing message and website can establish your brand as an authority on the topic or product the visitor is looking for information on, then your in a good position to be on their shortlist when it comes time to buy. This is especially important for retailers with bricks and mortar stores as the chart below highlights.
Source: ACRS “The Internet’s Role in Offline Purchase Behaviour”, Jan 08 & Feb 09
The strategies I have outlined below are specifically for targeting consumers in the Learn phase of the cycle and are based around helping you achieve three goals:
- Increasing brand awareness
- Driving eyeballs to your website
- Building your newsletter database
Increasing Brand Awareness
Display ads are a great way to increase your brand awareness and it is hard to go past the Google Content Network when it comes to cost effectively buying display advertising. There are two great things about the Google Content Network. Unlike the majority of publisher networks that charge on a CPM basis where you pay a specified rate for every 1000 times your ad is shown, via your AdWords account you have the option of buying display advertising on the Google Content Network on a CPC basis which means you only pay when your ad gets clicked on.
The second powerful thing about the Google Content Network is the ability to specify which publisher websites you want your ad to appear on. If you sell healthy low fat cookbooks you can make sure your ad only shows alongside articles on sites about healthy eating or weight loss. Combine these two aspects of the Google Content Network and you can buy hundreds of thousands of ad impressions on relevant websites at an incredibly low CPM compared to other publisher networks.
The goal of this technique is not to buy traffic. It is to associate your brand with the issue or need that the publisher site is addressing. To use our low fat cookbook example, you could specify that you only want your cookbook ads to appear on lowcaloriecooking.about.com. People are visiting lowcaloriecooking.about.com because they are looking for information about low calorie cooking. They see you ad and associate your brand and site with content on the page.
Driving Eyeballs to Your Website
There were over 200,000 searches on Google in April 2010 for "low fat recipe" so even at only a 1% click through rate that's 2,000 eyeballs to your site for the month from one keyword.
There are a few keys to success for this strategy:
- Good ad position
- Compelling relevant ads that will generate clicks
- Comprehensive negative keyword lists to ensure that your ads are only showing for relevant searches.
Building Your Newsletter Database
First things first. Make sure you have a "Subscribe to our newsletter" call to action on every single page of your website. If you can establish your brand and website as an authority or expert on addressing the issue or fulfilling need that got them to your site in the first place, having them in your newsletter database is the beginning of your relationship with a potential customer.
To really turbo charge the growth of your subscriber base, combine a high search volume keywords AdWords strategy with dedicated landing pages with a sole focus to garner newsletter subscriptions. Be sure to optimise your landing pages on a regular basis to continually improve conversion rates.
Newsletter signups are also a great way to calculate the ROI of campaigns targeting the Learn phase. Of course, to be a true measure of ROI you need to know how much each new newsletter subscriber is worth on average to your business. Download the free Customer Life Time Value Calculator from the Tools & Resources section of the Traffika website if you need a hand figuring this out.
In my next post we will look at the "Shop" phase of the simplified purchasing behaviour model.
This article was posted by Bret Buckland. Bret is a Google Qualified AdWords Professional and Account Manager at Traffika. You can follow Bret on Twitter @bjbuck
