Digital Marketing: Today's Consumer Journey
Understand How to Structure Your Campaign
Structuring your social media marketing campaigns properly is the key to achieving optimal results. In the case of brick and mortar establishments, supermarkets don't randomly put items on shelves in unorganized aisles. Everything customers see upon entering a supermarket is thought out and determined by stats on consumer behavior.
Similarly, the way you run your campaigns on social media plays a role in attracting buyers. You need to operate based on your prospects' needs, preferences and lifestyle. As discussed in a previous post, you come to understand your clientele by creating a customer avatar. By understanding how your ideal customer operated, you can tailor your social media campaigns accordingly.
Mapping the Consumer Journey
Your prospective customer undergoes a journey when they come in contact with your brand. This consumer journey includes every interaction people have with your product or service. As with a travel itinerary, it is important to plot every step of the way to attain predictability in your results.
The consumer journey looks different depending on the product, company and service offer. As a business owner, you need to understand what information a prospective customer might need in making their decision.
Think of any product on the market and what consumers need when moving forward with a purchase. What do customers consider when buying new headphones? How about when purchasing flight tickets? What differentiates these purchases in consumers' minds and what conclusions can you draw about your products?
An Example
Let's consider the example of a men's belt. Though it may seem like a simple purchase, there are several stages the consumer goes through.
Discovery
The journey starts with the consumer's realization that he has a need. Perhaps he never wears belts but recently lost weight and his pants do not fit as tightly anymore. Maybe his belt broke and needs replacement. Whatever the case, there is a point where the discovery of this need occurs.
Product Research
After realizing that there is a need, the consumer attempts to arrive at the best option. This can happen with a quick web search on Google or a recommendation from a friend. Since we are focusing on social media, let's assume that the consumer comes across an ad on Facebook.
Clicking on a Facebook ad takes him to a landing page. Once there, the consumer will go through all the information to see if the belt is right for him. Fit, function, utility and style are all factors that can play a role in the purchasing decision.
The User Clicks Away
Not all product inquiries result in a purchase. People's schedules are very busy and many times an inquiry will result in clicking away from the landing page. This will happen without placing any items in the shopping cart.
Luckily, Facebook offers the ability to track users' actions and trends. With the use of a pixel, marketers can gain valuable information that can be used to understand consumer behavior.
Leveraging Remarketing
Remarketing is a strategy that allows business owners to reengage consumers. If a user researches a third-party location without making a purchase, they are reminded of your offering. Facebook retargeting applies this principle in the context of its platform.
In our example, after the consumer leaves the landing page without making a purchase, there is a way to target them at a later time. If not for remarketing, the lead might have been lost as the user can easily arrive at a different vendor after running a search in the future. By using remarketing, you know that the specific user is in the market for a belt and close to buying.
Using remarketing, the belt company shows ads to the consumer highlighting one of the key selling points of the belt. If the consumer wasn't ready to purchase on his first interaction, this reminder may lead to revisiting the decision.
However, it is also likely that the consumer doesn't click on the ad but rather goes on to search for reviews. Looking for testimonials that confirm his preference can solidify the purchase decision in his mind. YouTube is a primary destination for people searching for third-party product reviews.
The consumer goes to YouTube and types the name of the men's belt into the search bar along with the word 'review.' This should result in a list of videos of people that offer their opinions on the belt, how it's customized and its functionality.
These reviews fall under the label of user-generated content as they are not governed by the belt company. Prospects view this type of content as objective and will rely on it to complete their purchasing decisions.
If the initial experience is good enough to bring the user to search for reviews and the reviews are positive, then he is close to buying. Let's assume that life gets in the way and the consumer has to stop watching the video and rush off to an obligation. The more scenarios you account for, the better planned your social media marketing campaigns will be to cover all eventualities.
Giving Users a Reason to Click
Users will click or pass on ads depending on whether they have a great enough reason to engage. Just because a consumer doesn't click on your ads does not mean they are not interested. You may choose to seal the deal with a discount code. A special discount is often enough to cause the consumer to cross the threshold and complete a purchase.
Advertising has become much more complicated due to the endless options available to consumers. This is especially true for social media where the audience receives many marketing stimuli.
YouTube product reviews play a key part in affecting consumer choices. Product reviews on the video platform offer a visual experience with products that are useful to your prospects.
A great tactic is to reach out to bloggers that specialize in YouTube product reviews to leverage their influence. Offer a mutually beneficial collaboration to build a strong partnership. Set up an affiliate program for this to attract more content creators or create a direct partnership with influencers.
Creating Enough Content
It is important to test your social media content and ads so that you optimize your results. Depending on your product, there are different touchpoints where the consumer will engage with your products. It is recommended that you create three to five different pieces of content for each touchpoint.
In the case of YouTube influencers, you can try five different content creators to see which one works best for your products. After an ample testing period, select the one that performs best and use their content to market your goods.
Increase Performance and Reduce Cost
By honing digital marketing performance on social media, growth hackers can achieve significant synergies. Testing your ads and your content will result in the most effective avenues of promoting your products. The more efficient your lead-generation, the smaller the marketing outlay you will require to boost your results.