With the rise of digital and social media, advertising is no longer as simple as it once was. Advertisements are now hyper-specific, and companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon make it easier to put your advertisements before both broad and highly selective target audiences. Though advertising is cheaper and more accessible, this means the market is flooded with various advertisements. Getting your advertisements seen is no longer a concern—but making a lasting impact is. So, how do you create an advertising campaign that will generate intrigue and engagement with your business? Journey-based advertising may be the solution.
What is Journey-based Advertising?
Curating a personal and authentic journey for your customer has never been more important since the market is often oversaturated with ads and commercials. Journey-based advertising provides a better experience for the user by targeting customers with your brand at different points along their purchasing journey.
Essentially, this means different ads are produced for customers depending on where they are in their interaction with your business and/or product. If a customer is familiar with your product, it would not be very effective to show them an advertisement that offers a demo of the product. This is why journey-based advertising is so effective since it curates your advertisements to your audience and their individual buyer “persona.”
How to Use Journey-based Advertising?
HubSpot recommends creating three campaigns to reach each stage in the buyer’s journey. These stages are:
- The Awareness Stage
- The Consideration Stage
- The Decision Stage
The Awareness stage is when your potential buyer realizes they have a problem or a particular need. At this point, you will not want to share ads with them that jump right into promoting your product or business. Instead, you will want to make your brand appear as a trusted authority within the space of the particular solution your buyer is looking towards. The best way to do this is to present the consumer with display ads, video, native promotions, and boosted posts.
The Consideration stage is when your buyer persona is beginning to consider a broad number of solutions to their problem or need. At this point, the consumer is not ready to buy just yet but they are comparing brands. But if you effectively grabbed their attention during the Awareness phase, your brand is on their mind. This is the time when to present the buyer with hyper-relevant ads that directly address your buyer persona’s needs.
The Decision stage is the final stage for your buyer persona. This is when the customer is truly ready to purchase the solution to their problem. At this point, you will want to cater your ads to reach buyers that are using search terms such as “near me” or “buy.” It can also be a good idea to show advertisements with coupons, discounts, or marked down prices in order to help sway their decision in favor of your business. This is the time to hard sell your product, so you will want to be more aggressive in your advertising tactics. HubSpot suggests non-skippable ads, prominent display ads, call ads, and retargeting to connect with more Decision-stage buyers.
Why Does Journey-Based Advertising Work?
By serving the right message at the right time, your buyer persona is more likely to pay attention to the advertisement they have been shown. They are also more likely to retain the information presented to them, says Vontweb.
To better illustrate why this style of advertising works, consider a call-to-action advertisement for a language learning subscription service. If you serve an ad to buyers that tries to convince them to subscribe now at a discounted price for the service, but this is the first time your particular audience is hearing about the service, their engagement with your company is likely to be very low. However, if you were to present the same advertisement to an audience that is in the later stages of the buyer’s journey, the advertisement is more likely to make a memorable impact. By marrying targeted messages with the appropriate stage of the buyer persona’s journey, your company can expect a much higher conversion rate of interested parties to actual buyers.
At Auburn Advertising, we understand that the world of advertising and marketing can be complicated and, therefore, difficult to approach. However, we have the tools and knowledge base to help you navigate this world. We can effectively implement strategies such as journey-based advertising as necessary to help meet your business’ specific marketing and advertising needs.
