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The internet has transformed the advertising industry. Traditionally hard-to-measure channels like TV, billboards, and sponsorships are being pushed to the wayside by cheap, trackable online advertising channels like social media ads, display, and paid search ads. This shift is democratizing the industry. Even the smallest brands can compete on the same platform as multinationals if … Continue reading Online Advertising for Business: Creating the Perfect Plan That Gets the Customers You Want
The internet has transformed the advertising industry. Traditionally hard-to-measure channels like TV, billboards, and sponsorships are being pushed to the wayside by cheap, trackable online advertising channels like social media ads, display, and paid search ads.
This shift is democratizing the industry. Even the smallest brands can compete on the same platform as multinationals if they have the right knowledge, ad creatives, and targeting. If you want to grow your business, online advertising should be the first place you start.
I’ll show you how you can do just that in this guide. You’ll learn why online advertising is so beneficial, the best online advertising channels to use and how to create an online advertising campaign from scratch.
Online advertising is a hugely popular strategy, with almost two of every three small businesses using it to win new customers. Spending won’t decrease any time soon, either. Global online advertising spend is predicted to hit $646 billion by 2024, up from $378.16 billion in 2020.
Online advertising is a form of paid-for marketing that leverages internet-based channels to promote products and services. There are plenty of online advertising channels to choose from, including search engines like Google or Bing, social media platforms, and display ads, banner ads, and native ads.
Unlike traditional advertising mediums, the cost of online advertising is low. Small businesses can generate hundreds of new customers for just a couple hundred bucks a month. Online advertising is more measurable, too. Every channel can be tracked, measured, and optimized, so marketers squeeze as much ROI from their campaigns as possible.
Such are the benefits of online advertising, companies are increasingly dedicating more and more of their budget to digital channels.
As you can see in this infographic from Visual Capitalist, there have been sharp falls in newspaper and TV advertising spending, while search, social media, online video, and e-commerce spending has increased dramatically since the early 2000s.
However big your business, online advertising is one of the best ways to build a brand, win new customers, and grow revenue. It has many advantages over traditional forms of advertising and other forms of online marketing, but there are four big benefits I want to highlight.
When you advertise online, you don’t have to wait months, weeks, or even days to get rewarded for your efforts. Sales can happen as soon as your ads go live.
This is unlike virtually any other form of marketing—traditional or otherwise. With SEO, for instance, it takes an average of about three months for a page to rank well on Google. Social media accounts tend to grow between 9.4 percent and 16 percent every six months.
The speed at which you see results doesn’t just help you win customers and drive revenue faster, it also helps you optimize campaigns quicker. Because you get data so fast, however, you’re able to optimize your campaigns to maximize ROI much faster. What takes six months or more with SEO, takes just three months with paid ads.
This is vital because optimizing PPC campaigns can double your ROI or more. Easton Sports, for example, doubled its ROI from 400 percent to 900 percent by working with e-commerce marketing agency The Good.
Forget broad, mass-market ads that aim to please everyone. Online advertising lets you drill down into your target market and know with confidence that every dollar of your budget is being spent on them. That’s the kind of targeting traditional advertising can never compete with.
Most online advertising channels offer granular targeting, allowing you to focus your efforts on a small segment of their audience. Facebook lets you customize your target audience by dozens of criteria, including:
As a result, you don’t have to worry about wasting your advertising budget on people who aren’t interested in your product. If you have strong buyer personas, you can target them with ease. Even if you don’t have buyer personas, granular targeting makes it easy to identify profitable segments of a large audience.
Better still, online advertising allows you to reach millions of people every day. Facebook has almost three billion monthly active users. Google processes around 63,000 queries every second. No other advertising medium lets your average joe business reach audiences of this size.
You won’t be forking over millions in advertising fees to reach targeted audiences. Unlike traditional advertising—where it can cost over $100,000 to run a 30-second TV advert—the cost of online advertising is incredibly low.
It costs, on average, just $3 to $10 to reach 1000 people with online advertising, compared to $22 to reach 1000 people using traditional methods. While your mom and pop retailer can’t hope to afford a TV advert, they can run a successful online advertising campaign on Facebook, Google, or any other channel.
You can limit the cost of your online advertising, too. The vast majority of online ad platforms will let you set a limit on your total and budgets, so you don’t blow everything at once.
The worst thing about traditional forms of advertising like print, TV, or radio is that it’s tough to work out how well your campaign performed. That’s not the case with online advertising, where most channels show you exactly how well your ads performed.
Typically, online advertising channels will show how many people saw and clicked your ad, how many sales your ad resulted in, and many, many more metrics.
This data is gold. First, it allows you to measure ROI to see whether your online advertising is delivering a return.
Second, you can use that data to optimize your campaigns and make them even more profitable. With it, you can understand why your ad performed well or poorly and what you can change to improve your ROI in the future.
Below are the main types of online advertising you need to know
Paid search is one of the most important online advertising channels. The vast majority of all online interactions start with a search engine—which makes it one of the best places to target potential customers.
Google is the dominant force in paid search advertising, which is unsurprising given it currently enjoys an 85 percent global market share. Other search engines like Bing and DuckDuckGo also offer paid ad solutions.
Paid ads come in two models: pay per click and CPM. With pay per click, brands pay every time someone clicks on their ads. With CPM, brands pay a set cost per thousand views.
They are usually positioned at the top of search result pages, as you can see below. They may also feature at the bottom of result pages and in separate tabs, like the Shopping tab.
Paid search offers some of the best targeting available to online advertisers. Brands can target specific keywords, destinations, devices, and more. This allows them to create highly relevant ads that can return an average ROAS of 200 percent.
That comes at a cost, however. Paid search ads are some of the most expensive you can buy. The average CPC of Google Ads is between $1 and $2. Averages can rise much higher in some industries like law—where the average CPC is more than $6.
Pros:
Cons:
Social media advertising is huge. It is the second biggest digital advertising market with revenues of $153.7 billion in 2021. That’s expected to grow to $252.6 billion in 2026.
Consumers are obsessed with social media, too. Over half of the world’s population use some form of social media and the average person uses it for 2 hours and 27 minutes every day.
Every major social media platform has an advertising offering, including:
Ad formats vary depending on the platform, but the vast majority will be a form of in-feed ad. Facebook, for example, has four main ad formats.
The cost of social media ads will also vary depending on the platform. As you can see in this table by WebFX, LinkedIn and Instagram are two of the most expensive platforms with average CPCs north of $3. Facebook and Twitter tend to be the cheapest.
Pros:
Cons:
Native ads don’t feel like they’re ads at all. Brands partner with publishers to create sponsored content that provides a lot of value to the reader while subtly promoting your business. The content is published on the partner’s site and distributed as normal. The idea is that users read the content and get value from it without feeling like they’re being sold to. It’s a win-win.
Here’s an example of a typical native ad on Fast Company. Note the small “paid content” disclaimer in the top right-hand corner.
Native ads can be very effective.
It’s been shown the softer touch of native ads can result in five to ten times higher CTRs than direct response ads. Native ads can be expensive, however. Major publications charge as much as $200,000 to get featured.
The vast majority of major publishers will offer some form of sponsored content or native ad package, making it easy for your brand to get featured in dozens of high-quality publications.
Pros:
Cons:
Display advertising is one of the most common forms of online advertising. In fact, it’s probably the one that came to mind when you saw the title of this article. Display ads come in many forms, including banner ads, in-content ads, side-bar ads, and popups.
Below you can see an example of a banner display ad on Digiday.
There are multiple ad platforms that brands can work with to run these ads. Popular platforms include:
Display ads are one of the most cost-effective forms of online advertising, costing as little as $0.50 per click. There’s a trade-off, however, as display ads typically have some of the lowest CTRs of any online ad.
Pros:
Cons:
Retargeting ads are much more effective than standard display ads.
That’s because consumers rarely make a purchase the first time they land on your website. When you show them the same products that previously caught their eye, they’ll be more likely to eventually make a purchase.
That’s where retargeting ads come in. This is a form of display ad that only targets people who have landed on your website and left without making a purchase.
Retargeting ads can appear on any website that shows display ads, as well as Facebook and Google. The cost of retargeting ads will depend on where they are displayed. The average cost of retargeting ads on Google, for example, is $0.66 to $1.23 per click. Display retargeting ads will be much cheaper.
Pros:
Cons:
Affiliate advertising is where a brand partners with a third-party (usually a publisher or influencer) to promote its products or services. Rather than an upfront payment, third-party gets paid a commission every time they refer a customer to the brand.
Affiliate advertising is a rapidly growing market and is expected to be worth $8.2 billion in the U.S. in 2022.
The cost of affiliate marketing can vary dramatically depending on the industry you operate in and the third parties you partner with. Commission rates vary between $3 and $200 and can be as low as 1 percent per sale or as high as 60 percent.
Pros:
Cons:
Video ads are an increasingly popular form of video-based advertising. The most common form of video ads are YouTube ads, but other video platforms like Vimeo host ads, too.
The potential reach of video ads is huge. On YouTube alone, consumers watch more than one billion hours of videos every day. YouTube also ranks second in monthly user numbers for social network platforms and is the world’s second-largest search engine.
They are cost-effective, too. YouTube ads have an average cost-per-view between $0.01 and $0.03. It costs around $2000 to reach 100,000 users.
Pros:
Cons:
The steps to create an online advertising strategy will be broadly similar regardless of your business, product, or service. You start by setting goals, defining your target audience, and assigning a budget. Next, you pick a channel and create ads. Then it’s simply a case of launching and optimizing as necessary.
You should always set goals for your online advertising campaign. Having a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your strategy and how you measure those goals will keep you on track, increasing the likelihood of success.
One study found that 76 percent of people who wrote goals down, made a list of actions, and ran weekly progress reports achieved their goals.
Making more sales is a typical online advertising strategy goal, but it’s not the only one. Others include:
Whatever your goal, make sure it follows the SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) framework.
Instead of saying you want to acquire new customers with your Google Ads campaign, state that you want to acquire 1000 customers in one month by spending $5,000 on ads.
With a goal in place, it’s time to decide on your target audience. Who exactly do you want to reach with your ads?
As we’ve discussed, the beauty of online advertising is that you can target an incredibly specific audience. It’s time to take advantage of that. Consider things like:
Make sure you account for your goals. If you want to acquire tens of thousands of customers, you’re going to have to cast a broad net. If your aims are more modest, you can afford to be more specific.
Assigning an appropriate budget is essential for any online advertising campaign. It will define how much you can spend and, to a lesser extent, which channels you can advertise on. I recommend basing your budget on a variety of factors, including:
You don’t want to blow your budget on one campaign. Nor do you want to assign a tiny budget if you want the campaign to run for six months.
While you should always establish a budget upfront, be prepared to be flexible with that budget. The immediacy with which you can see results is another advantage of online marketing, so you should be prepared to increase the budget if you see success.
Now that you have a set of goals, a target audience, and a budget, you can finally decide which channel you want to advertise on. The truth is you probably already have a paid advertising channel in mind.
That’s fine, but it’s important to make sure it matches your goals, budget, and audience. Budget-wise, advertising on Google Search can be incredibly expensive for certain keywords.
The average cost per click for keywords related to the insurance industry was $20.12 in 2021, for instance. If you don’t have the appropriate budget, you’re better off choosing another channel.
Similarly, there’s no point in advertising on Google if your goal is to increase your social media following. Or advertising on Facebook if most of your customers use TikTok instead.
If it’s your first time launching an online advertising campaign, stick to one channel. It will make creating ads and setting up the campaign a lot easier. You can start to advertise on multiple paid marketing channels when you get a few campaigns under your belt.
This step is going to vary quite a bit by your chosen paid ad channel. In the case of Google Search ads, you’ll need to write ad copy. For display ads, on the other hand, you’ll need to design an image. Whatever channel you use, the bulk of your efforts should be spent here.
For example, if you’re advertising on Google Ads, improving your Quality Score can make a huge difference. This is a measure of how relevant your ad and landing page are. It’s been found that an above-average Quality Score can result in a 50 percent discount on your cost per click. Low-Quality Scores, on the other hand, can result in you paying four times as much.
Spending time improving your ad copy can also increase your clickthrough rates, as I show in my ad copy guide.
Creating an online advertising campaign doesn’t stop once you’ve hit launch. The wealth of data that these channels provide means you can start optimizing your campaign almost immediately.
Review your ad dashboard daily after launch and look for ways to optimize your campaign. Common strategies include:
You can also pivot your campaign entirely if things aren’t working out. There’s no point wasting budget on a campaign that isn’t generating any return. Instead, pick another paid channel and launch a new campaign.
Note: Don’t worry if this section seems overwhelming. You can work with an online advertising agency that will handle the entire process for you.
Launching your first online advertising campaign is just the start. Once you’ve got a few campaigns under your belt, you can start to experiment with advanced strategies like the ones below to supercharge your results.
You don’t need to spend money on anything else apart from your budget to see results with online advertising. There are marketing tools for almost every channel that can enhance your campaign and help you generate even more ROI.
Find and utilize these tools wherever possible. My keyword research tool, Ubersuggest, is a great example of a tool that can help you improve your paid ad campaigns by getting access to high-quality keyword data. This is useful if you want to make sure you’re targeting every relevant high-value keyword in your Google PPC campaign.
Head on over to Ubersuggest and click on the keywords dropdown in the left menu bar. Enter a keyword in the “Discover new keywords” bar. For this example, I’m going to use the keyword “digital marketing agency.”
Hit search, and you’ll be served hundreds of relevant and related keyword ideas. You can export the keywords as a CSV file and add them to Google Ads immediately. Or you can filter them to make them even more relevant.
For example, say I don’t want to target any keywords with a CPC higher than $20. By clicking on the CPC filter and entering between $0 and $20, I can filter them all out.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg of what you can do with a tool like Ubersuggest. For more help, see my complete Ubersuggest guide.
Automated bidding will feel like a lifesaver if you’re not confident in setting bids and optimizing campaigns. Google is the best-known ad platform for automated bidding, but plenty of others like Microsoft and Facebook offer some kind of automated or smart bidding service, too.
Google offers two forms of automatic bidding: a standard automated bidding service and a smart bidding service that uses machine learning to optimize for conversions. You can target five goals when using automated bidding on Google:
The benefit of automated bidding is two-fold. First, you don’t have to worry about setting the right bids and can focus instead on other parts of the campaign. Second, Google will probably do a better job of setting bids than you.
For instance, T-Mobile boosted conversions by 22 percent, decreased cost per acquisition by 27 percent, and increased conversion rate by 23 percent by switching to automated bidding on Google.
Personalization should be part of every marketing strategy—and your online advertising campaign is no different. More than half of customers (60 percent) say they’re more likely to become repeat buyers after a personalized experience.
Thankfully, Facebook makes this easy with its dynamic formats and creative solution.
When you use dynamic formats and creative, you create a personalized experience for every person who sees your ad. Facebook will automatically change certain elements of your ad to suit the user’s tastes. These elements include:
The benefits of hyper-personalized online advertising can be massive. Facebook tested the dynamic formats and creative solutions across 12 online stores and found they increased views, add-to-carts, purchases, and sales. There was also a 34 percent increase in incremental ROAS, a 10 percent improvement in lift, and a six percent decrease in cost per incremental purchase.
Most retargeting strategies focus on trying to convert consumers who have visited your site but not made a purchase. Let’s flip conventional wisdom on its head and focus on converting customers who have already bought from you.
Here’s the theory: it costs five times as much to acquire a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. You’d be better off turning one-off customers into repeat buyers rather than converting new customers.
Retargeting ads are also the perfect vehicle for these messages. According to an IAB survey, 92 percent of marketers believe retargeting ads perform the same as or better than search, 91 percent believe they perform the same as or better than email, and 92 percent believe they perform the same as or better than other display ads.
How should you re-target customers? I recommend three strategies:
I’ve got bad news for you. Everyone is advertising on Facebook. Most of your competitors are also probably advertising on Google, too. Ditto for display ads. Competitors with bigger budgets will target the same audience and the same keywords. That doesn’t bode well for you.
Better ads and more optimized campaigns are two ways to stand apart from the competition, but an easier way is to advertise on platforms where your competitors don’t.
Instead of Google, run search ads on Bing or even DuckDuckGo. Read my guide on Bing for advice on how to do it.
There are plenty of other alternative ad platforms that don’t get the love they deserve. Quora is an excellent source of engaged and highly targeted users ripe for being served great ads. Motley Fool Australia used Quora to increase leads by 111 percent and lower CPAs by 47 percent, for instance.
My guide to Quora is a great place to start.
Your marketing budget should be between 2 percent and 5 percent of your revenue. The percentage of that budget you should dedicate to online advertising will depend on your other marketing strategies and your success with paid ads. The fewer other strategies you use and the more success you have, the more you can devote to online advertising.
Online advertising is any form of paid-for internet-based marketing. It includes PPC, social media ads, banner ads, display ads, video ads, and many other channels and formats.
There is no best type of online advertising. The best form of online advertising is the one that works best for your brand and audience, whether that’s search, social media, or something else entirely.
Any business with an online presence should consider online advertising. It’s cost-effective, highly measurable, and incredibly targeted, which makes it easy for any business to get started.
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Online advertising is an incredible marketing strategy. It’s cost-effective, easy to measure, and accessible to virtually every business, big or small. I hope this article has shown you how easy it is to get started, too.
Once you’re familiar with all of the different paid marketing channels, follow my step-by-step advice to create your first online advertising campaign. Once you’re comfortable, you can start experimenting with strategies to take your online advertising campaigns to the next level.
Which channel is your favorite for online advertising?
Are you frustrated with email marketing? Does it seem like everyone simply hits send on a single email and rakes in the big bucks? Or maybe you have heard how for every $1 spent, email marketing generates $38 and that it has the broadest reach of all the platforms. Yet you have a non-existent list … Continue reading How to Win Customers’ Hearts and Pockets with These 7 Email Strategies [Free Webinar]
Are you looking for a bit of customer love online?
Tinder could be the hookup your brand is looking for.
With a monthly user base of 66 million people and 50 percent between 18-25, Tinder is the perfect place to connect with younger audiences, no matter the product offering.
Ready to swipe right?
Let’s take a deep dive into how Tinder Ads can help your business.
You can purchase Tinder ads with a direct buy through Match Media Group, who also manages advertising on the dating apps Hinge, Plenty of Fish, Match, and OkCupid, if you can meet their minimum spend requirements.
NP Digital offers custom Tinder ad buys through a direct buy with Tinder, programmatically through Google’s DV360, and through both Google and Facebook’s Ad Networks. Reach out to my team to learn more.
Besides buying directly with a large budget, you can also run display ads via Google and Facebook’s ad platforms.
These display ads are shown to users who haven’t upgraded to the ad-free experience.
The majority of Tinder users are male and either Millennials or Gen Z-ers. If either of those demographics is part of your target audience, you should consider using Tinder ads.
As with all other types of ads, there are best practices to follow when writing for Tinder. And when you’re writing ads to go with a dating app, you have some extra room for creativity and flair. So here are a few things to keep in mind when creating ads for Tinder users.
Looks are key on Tinder. Users speed swipe through profiles and only stop if the person’s first photo catches their eye.
For your ads to be successful on the dating app, you need to lean into this. Make sure your visuals are attractive to your demographic.
This could stop users mid-swipe, get them to spend time reading for ad copy, and click-through.
How do you create visually appealing Tinder Ads?
Your Tinder Ads should use phrases that resonate with your audience and spark their interest.
On an app where people’s attention spans are short, you don’t want to waste your ad spend on copy that doesn’t convert.
Keep these tips in mind when writing your Tinder Ads:
In general, you want to maintain your personal brand when on Tinder. As any Tinder dater will tell you, the only worse than being ghosted is being catfished.
Sure, there are Tinder Ad success stories where brands have used “fake” profiles to promote their products. Case in point: Ex Machina.
Male attendees at the SXSW festival could match with a 25-year-old woman called Ava. Once shipping right and after some light banter back and forth, Ava reveals she is a robot created to promote the film Ex Machina.
The campaign was a hit, but the movie had Tinder’s blessing to create a fake profile.
When The Gap tried something similar, it backfired. Promoting their 30 percent discount on jeans created a profile inviting users to a “pants party.” However, the brand didn’t get permission from the app, and Tinder swiftly deleted the profile for violating its terms of service.
People use Tinder because they’re single and ready to mingle.
Why not use your products or services to help users make a love connection? Find a way your product can help someone score that second date.
For instance, if you run a winery, offer users the chance to win a wine tasting for two. If you sell weekly meal kits, put together a perfect package for someone cooking a meal for a date. If you’re in the events industry, give away a free plus one ticket.
The Atlanta Hawks used this tactic with a “Swipe Right Night.” The event offered Tinder users the chance to win “Love Lounges.” On the night of, users could access the lounges and meet their matches face-to-face.
By focusing your campaign efforts on how you can help your customers, you’re putting their interests first and helping them make a connection.
Who knows, you could help someone find their life partner. Now, wouldn’t that be an epic brand story?
Tinder is a fast-paced environment. People are swiping left or right at lightning speeds.
If you want your Tinder Ad to stand out, keep it simple. Tell your viewers who you are and how you can help them, then make sure your calls to action (CTAs) are clear and convincing.
You can create Tinder Ads either via Facebook or Google. Here’s how to set up ads on both platforms.
You can only create Facebook ads for Tinder with a Business Account and a Facebook Page.
Navigate to the Facebook Ads Manager dashboard and click on the green “+ Create” button.
Select your campaign objective from the list and click on “continue.”
A new window will pop up where you can fill in all the information Facebook needs to run your ad.
To make sure it shows up on Tinder, click on “New Ad Set” on the left-hand side of the page and scroll down to placements.
Select “manual placements,” and you’ll see four platforms show up:
Audience Network is the platform that will deliver your ad to Tinder. The app is included in Facebook’s “dating apps” category.
Make sure you select Audience Network and fill out the rest of the fields to create your ad. When you’re done, send the ad in for review. Once Facebook approves it, you’ll have ads running on Tinder.
To create an account, navigate to the Google Ads webpage and click on “Start Now.” Next, confirm your payment info, enter a valid credit card, and click on “Submit.”
Once you’re logged into your Google Ads account, click on the “new campaign” button.
Next, select “website traffic” as your campaign goal for your Tinder Ads.
Scroll down and select “Display” as your campaign type.
Enter your website name at the bottom and click “continue” when you’re done.
Here, you can start defining your target audience for Tinder.
On Google Ads, you can set a minimum daily spend for your Tinder ad campaign.
Once you enter an amount, you’ll get an estimate of what your results will look like.
Click on “placements” to define where you want Google to serve your ads. This is where you’ll select Tinder to make sure it shows up on the app.
In the browse section, select “Apps” and type “Tinder” in the search bar.
Tick the checkbox next to the app, then click “done.”
Now all that’s left to do is finalize the creative for your ad, and you’re done!
No, Tinder ads are not free. The Facebook and Google ad platforms use a competitive bid system, meaning no fixed pricing for ads. Instead, the price depends on factors like demographics and the competitiveness of the ad auction.
It depends on who you want to target and your ad creative. Bumble isn’t only for singles; it’s for meeting new friends and professional colleagues too.
It depends on your target audience’s definition (the more specific, the smaller the pool of people) and how much money you have to pump into your Tinder Ads.
You can currently only run ads on Tinder through Facebook and Google’s ad networks.
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Let’s be honest: No one is going onto Tinder intending to buy your latest product.
This is why your Tinder ads need to play off the app’s purpose. Create a campaign around your audience’s dating life. Give them something to help them out on date night and bring them one step closer to meeting “the one.”
These fun campaigns can demonstrate you care about their daily lives while delighting them with a unique customer experience.
Don’t forget, if you’d rather have our team handle your paid ads or custom Tinder ad management, reach out to my team for a personalized consultation.
Are you using Tinder ads? What results have you seen from the dating app?
It costs 5X less to retain a customer than it does to acquire a new one.
That’s why customer retention is crucial to growing your Ecommerce business.
What is customer retention?
Customer retention is the ability to encourage customers to keep coming back to make purchases. Research shows that repeat customers spend more than once-off customers, making retention a priority for any Ecommerce business that wants to grow. With research showing that retail Ecommerce sales are set to be more than $548 billion by 2024, you’ll want your customer retention strategy to be solid enough to get you a piece of that pie.
This post will dive into the strategies you can use to boost your customer retention rates. We’ll also look at foundational principles like attracting and converting customers. So, let’s get to it, shall we?
Many businesses make the mistake of investing heavily in customer attraction. Sure, if you don’t attract new customers, there’s a possibility your business may fold. However, attracting custoTapymers is not the key to business growth.
The key to business growth is customer retention.
That’s why you must develop strategies that will help you retain the customers you attract. You also need to have the right tools for the job.
Why is customer retention so important?
I’ll give you a few good reasons:
Speaking of ROI, research shows that a mere 5 percent increase in customer retention can boost your revenue by over 25 percent, depending on the industry, product, and other factors.
With that said, let’s dive into the five customer retention strategies you can use to grow your Ecommerce business.
One of the first steps to designing a customer retention strategy that works is to understand the customer journey. The heart of customer retention lies in meeting or exceeding the expectations your customers have.
To do that, you must understand the customer journey and optimize it for positive customer experiences (CX) at every step.
If you can keep your customers happy, they’ll keep coming back for more.
How do you do that?
Understanding your audience allows you to know how to craft personalized messaging and experiences at every stage of the journey. Personalized experiences are essential in driving return sales. To better understand your audience, use:
To build and optimize customer journeys that effectively retain your customers, you must first understand who your target audience is and what they want. This way, you can ensure each touchpoint is meaningful, resulting in a positive CX and, ultimately, higher customer retention rates.
Part of your customer journey must include creating a customer loyalty program.
Customer loyalty is your customers’ willingness to keep buying from you. Loyalty programs encourage them to do just that and help increase their customer lifetime value (CLV). Designed and executed well, it increases sales and, most importantly, improves your customer retention rates. Here are a few tips and tools to help you design an effective customer loyalty program:
Designing a customer loyalty program must never be an afterthought; it must be an integral part of your customer retention strategy.
Running a hybrid B2B/B2C business?
My partner for this post, BigCommerce B2B Edition, makes it easy for you to offer different price lists and products to your different customer segments. You can also tailor your customer loyalty program to each customer category.
For most, a sale is the ultimate goal of running an Ecommerce business. However, to retain your customers, you must follow up after the first transaction is completed. Some follow up strategies you can implement include:
Many Ecommerce businesses send a thank you email after a transaction. To retain your customers, though, you must do more than just thank them. You must build meaningful relationships with them.
That’s why following up after a transaction is essential. Here’s an example from Zoe’s Kitchen:
Following up after a transaction helps you build meaningful relationships with your customers. For your follow-up to be effective, you must show your customers that you can provide more value. You do that by sending post-sales emails like:
This is where Ecommerce platforms like BigCommerce come in handy. It has many features you’ll get to help you grow your business. One of them is the automated email tool and integrations that will help you run follow-up campaigns. Coupled with BigCommerce’s fully customizable email templates (using code or the text editor), creating follow-up campaigns couldn’t be easier. That’s especially since you can add discount codes and coupons to your email templates to encourage conversions.
Customer onboarding is one of the most crucial steps to ensuring that a first-time customer becomes a repeat buyer. Onboarding refers to all the steps you take to gain customers’ trust until they become loyal customers. A few tips to enhance your customer onboarding include:
Customer onboarding is an essential follow-up process that allows you to show your customers that you value their success. Once they see that, it becomes easier for you to retain them.
By this time, your interactions with your customers have opened up a gold mine of data. Every interaction helps you paint a better picture of each customer.
This is precious data you can use to segment your customers.
Segmentation is crucial in helping you create targeted and personalized campaigns. When it comes to customer retention, segmentation plays an integral role in creating effective customer loyalty programs for your existing customers.
Segmentation is key to increasing your chances of creating a customer loyalty program that will help you retain your existing customers.
For your loyalty program to work, you must create tailored rewards and experiences for the different segments as their needs are different. Examples of segments you can consider creating among existing customers include:
This is another area in which platforms like BigCommerce shine. It has a built-in tool that allows you to create loyalty groups, making it easy to target particular segments of your customer base for your customer loyalty program.
Customer retention hinges on creating memorable experiences for your customers. One way to do that is to allow your customers to change their orders once they’ve made a purchase. For example, a customer may change their mind and want a product that’s a different size, color, etc. For BigCommerce users, allowing customers to change their orders is a cinch. That’s thanks to the order editing functionality the platform provides.
When that happens, allow your customer to swap their purchase for the one they really want.
One of the results of this is that your customers will trust you more. It shows that you have their back and are willing to bend over backward to make them happy. Of course, that kind of trust can only lead to one thing—higher customer retention rates.
Customer retention is a function of the experiences your customers have with your brand. Besides the shopping experience, customer service is one of the biggest elements of ensuring you serve your customers exceptionally well.
That’s why you must offer outstanding customer service.
When you solve your customers’ problems in a friendly and efficient manner, they’ll see you as a reliable partner. Although they had an issue with your product, you’ll have earned their trust and loyalty.
How do you ensure your customer service is good enough to bolster your customer retention strategy?
Creating an outstanding customer service experience will undoubtedly help you win your customers’ loyalty. People want to know that they can depend on you to help them fast and efficiently if anything goes wrong. On the other hand, poor customer service will cost you customers and, ultimately, your business.
Customer retention is all about creating memorable experiences for your customers. Here are a few more ways you can do that:
Creating profiles offers a platform where customers can input important dates like anniversaries and birthdays. Doing this allows you to send reminders and personalized product recommendations for the special occasion.
Create an affiliate program where satisfied customers can begin promoting your products and earn a commission. Besides the potential to earn revenue, an affiliate program makes your customers feel like part of your brand. The result is heightened customer loyalty.
People love being part of a special group. That’s why creating a community around your brand is an excellent way of boosting customer retention. An example of this would be creating an exclusive Facebook group where you share content surrounding your brand.
Now that you know how to retain your customers let’s briefly take a step back and look at how you can attract and convert your customers.
While customer retention is one of the main pillars of business growth, you can’t have retention without attraction. So, let’s briefly look at a few ways you can attract customers to your Ecommerce store.
Paid ads are a great way to gain traction, especially for a new Ecommerce store. However, if you want to play the long game, you must invest in a robust SEO strategy. The main reason being SEO is one of the best ways to attract organic traffic. A few tips to help you with your Ecommerce SEO include:
If you have the budget, one of the easiest ways to boost your SEO is to hire an agency to take care of it for you. Besides freeing up your time to run your business, hiring an SEO agency has the advantages of:
No budget for an SEO agency?
Then you could DIY your SEO.
While this approach will require time and commitment, learning the ins and outs of e-commerce SEO will help you better understand what it takes to attract the right traffic to your store. So, invest in a couple of SEO courses or teach yourself the art and science of driving traffic to your Ecommerce store.
An essential aspect many entrepreneurs overlook when picking an Ecommerce platform is the SEO aspect. Always consider the SEO features of a platform before investing in one. This is one of the reasons BigCommerce is one of the best platforms on the market. Here are a few SEO-centric features you can expect:
BigCommerce also offers in-depth guides like this one and this one to help ensure your store’s SEO is on point.
As said, SEO is about the long game—it takes time to see results. To drive traffic to your site quickly, you’ll need to leverage targeted paid ad campaigns. Research shows that 46 percent of the most visited Ecommerce stores spend up to $1,000/month on paid ads. The top 16 percent spend upward of $20,000 per month, so yes, if you want to drive traffic to your store, you must invest in paid ads. While paid ads may cost you, they have several advantages that include:
The main advantage of paid ads is the speed at which they produce results. So, if you’re running a promotion or simply want to boost your monthly sales, paid ads could help you drive the traffic you need.
For your ads to be effective, though, you must ensure they’re engaging and targeted. To do that:
It can be quite scary to put money in paid ads. After all, the ROI is never guaranteed. Creating engaging and targeted ads helps make your ads more effective, ensuring that you drive relevant traffic to your products.
Today’s buyer is spoilt for choice regarding the platforms and channels they consume content on.
That’s why, when creating your Ecommerce paid ad strategy, you must advertise your product on as many channels as possible.
You must adopt an omnichannel approach to advertising.
Omnichannel marketing will ensure that you meet your customers where they are. It makes it easier for you to create ads that will appeal to your customers—ads that convert.
What exactly is omnichannel marketing?
It is an approach to marketing where you anticipate that your customers may start their journey with your brand on one device or platform and continue on another. With omnichannel marketing, you create a cohesive and unified experience for your customers across all platforms and at every touchpoint.
The result is a positive CX that results in more conversions and, ultimately, higher customer retention rates.
This is important as research shows that over 73 percent of online shoppers use multiple channels when shopping. A few tips to help you create an effective omnichannel strategy for your Ecommerce store include:
Thankfully, with Ecommerce platforms like BigCommerce, your customers can easily buy from other channels (like social media) other than your store. You can also leverage external social media payment processing solutions to sell products directly on social media.
Being available for your customers on their preferred channels helps you create a positive experience that will get them hooked to your brand.
It’s no secret that mobile has overtaken desktop in terms of usage. Creating a mobile app helps you create tailored experiences for your customers on multiple platforms. It also helps you put your store in your customers’ pockets.
Listing your products on multiple channels is a great way of getting them in front of a larger audience. As a result, you’ll drive more traffic to your store and generate more sales on the different platforms you leverage.
Besides the three main customer attraction strategies mentioned above, you can use other more advanced ones. Here are a few of them:
Developing a strategy to attract customers to your Ecommerce store is an essential step to customer retention. If you can attract an audience in the right way, it improves your chances of them converting and, ultimately, becoming loyal customers.
There are three steps to growing a loyal customer base:
We’ve already dealt with attracting and retaining customers. Now let’s take a quick dive into how you can convert visitors into customers.
First—what is a conversion?
A conversion in Ecommerce is any visitor who purchases one of your products. Conversion rate, therefore, is the percentage of visitors to your store who turn into customers.
The higher your conversion rates, the more sales you make. Don’t take our word for it. Check out LARQ’s case study. After partnering with BigCommerce, their conversions lifted by 80 percent and they enjoyed a 400 percent average increase in YoY revenue.
How do you improve your conversions?
Your landing page is an important element of your sales funnel as it’s usually the one that does the heavy selling. That’s why you must ensure you create outstanding ones that convert.
Here are a few tips to help you do that:
Keep it simple: Your landing page must be easy to read and understand at a glance. To do that, keep your design clear and uncluttered.
Have only one objective: Your landing page must only have one goal—conversion. Keep it focused on that.
Personalization is crucial: From meeting search intent to using language and visuals that appeal to the visitor, personalize your landing page as much as possible.
Add detailed product descriptions: Your landing page is meant to sell, and one of the best ways is to give visitors a detailed description of what they’re buying. Include high-quality images.
Use multiple CTAs: Include the same CTA at different places on your landing page. Doing so makes it easier for your visitor to click-through and purchase whenever they’re ready.
Use a tried, tested, and proven landing page builder: If you’re a BigCommerce customer, you can use the built-in Page Builder tool to quickly and easily build landing pages.
Your landing page is an essential part of your sales funnel. Besides helping you target specific customer segments, they also help you drive higher ROI for your paid traffic. That’s why you must invest in creating optimized ones for your Ecommerce store.
Another crucial factor that helps boost your conversions is site security. Your customers want to feel safe when handing you their details during the checkout process, especially with the recent spike in data breaches. To ensure your site is secure, you must:
Use a Secure Ecommerce Platform
The first step to securing your Ecommerce store is to use a platform designed with security in mind. For example, platforms like BigCommerce offer sitewide HTTPS and other security features like firewalls, intrusion detection, and much more. A secure platform makes your customers feel safe to transact with you. It’s essential to boosting your conversions.
Support Multiple Payment Methods
Your customers will have different preferences when it comes to how they want to pay for your products. They feel more secure using a payment gateway they’re familiar with.
Using multiple payment methods is a great way of giving your customers more options. Besides, it also enables you to offer multi-currency options—a crucial ingredient to improving your CX for global customers.
While supporting multi-currency payment options may seem like a daunting task, with a platform like BigCommerce it isn’t. That’s because BigCommerce natively supports over 140 local currencies and over 65 payment gateways.
Closely Review and Monitor All Plugins and Third-party Integrations
When installing third-party solutions to enhance your store, you must make sure they’re from a trusted source. It’s also essential that you monitor them to ensure they’re regularly updated. Once you have no use for one, remove it from your store. You must keep third-party applications on your store to a bare minimum as they can create vulnerabilities in your store.
Stay on top of your Ecommerce store’s security by using tools like FreeScan to check for vulnerabilities and TrustWave for threat detection regularly. A secure store will not only protect you from cyberattacks, but also helps boost your conversions. Just make sure to invest in a secure Ecommerce platform and additional security tools if necessary.
Cart abandonment is an aspect of Ecommerce you can’t avoid. Research shows that, on average, close to 70 percent of carts are abandoned at checkout. That’s why, if you’re to improve your conversions, you must address this issue.
One of the best ways to do that is to use an abandoned cart saver.
An abandoned cart saver is a feature that allows you to send an email to customers who loaded their carts but didn’t complete the transaction.
With BigCommerce’s Abandoned Cart Saver, the emails are fully customizable, allowing you to create personalized invites (with discount codes or coupons) to encourage customers to complete their purchases.
Besides the three conversion strategies discussed above, here are other tips for increasing your customer conversion rates:
Attracting the right kind of traffic is always the first step to customer retention. The next critical step is converting that traffic into customers. Be deliberate about both.
Still have a few questions concerning customer retention strategies you can use to boost your Ecommerce business?
Let’s quickly clear the air on some of the most common ones:
Customer retention is the ability for a business to generate repeat customers from visitors to their business. Therefore, customer retention rate refers to the percentage of your customers that continue to buy from you over a given period.
Improving your customer retention rate is dependent on many factors. However, at the heart of a good customer retention strategy lies creating positive customer experiences at each touchpoint.
There are several activities you can undertake to retain customers. Here are a few examples: creating loyalty programs, using email to build relationships with your customers and designing outstanding customer service experiences.
Customer retention rates are affected by many factors such as industry, product, and others. However, the average customer retention rate for Ecommerce is said to be around 30 percent.
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One-time sales are good, but they don’t grow your business.
For your Ecommerce business to be successful, you must encourage your customers to keep coming back.
That’s why designing a customer retention strategy is crucial.
Using the tips above, growing your business by attracting, converting, and retaining customers is no longer a lofty dream. Putting the tips into action will turn your dreams of growing your Ecommerce brand into reality.
And remember, your choice of Ecommerce platform also plays a huge role in your success in retaining customers. Platforms like BigCommerce that come with in-built customer retention features (like single-page checkout, coupon and discount codes, etc.) are your best bet.
Which customer retention strategies and tools have worked well for your business?
Getting traffic to your site is nice, but there’s not much of a point if those visitors don’t convert.
There’s one tactic I use above all others to generate new leads:
A lead magnet.
They aren’t some newfangled tech trend. They’ve been an essential marketing tool for decades.
With lead magnets, you give people something for free in exchange for an email address and permission to send them more offers—for example, a free ebook or an SEO checklist.
However, not all lead magnets are effective.
Let’s take about how lead magnets work and explore how to create one that drives leads.
The lure of ‘free’ is compelling, according to Predictably Irrational author Dan Ariely.
He proved this by giving groups of people the option to select from different Amazon gift cards. Respondents could choose from receiving either:
If you were to look at that objectively, based on cold hard math, you’d see that the second option was the better value ($13 vs. $10.)
Check out the third column on the far right to see which one won:
It wasn’t even close! Everyone sampled chose the free $10 option instead.
Ariely calls this the Zero-Price Effect because humans don’t see the downside to something that’s free.
Ariely ran a related experiment. They staged a promotion for free tattoos and had people line up outside the store.
These people were waiting in line with full knowledge of what they were doing.
Yet when Ariely asked them if they’d be waiting to get the same tattoo if it wasn’t free, 68 percent of respondents said no!
In other words, people took time out of their busy schedule to commit permanent ink to their skin simply because it was free.
Good lead magnets, when done correctly, have the same effect (albeit without the same long-lasting effects).
They pass along a useful ebook, webinar, or email course, asking for very little (if anything) in return from visitors.
You leverage the power of free to kickstart the first step in your customer value optimization process.
Lead magnets are nothing new.
They get a lot of attention today because of how persuasive and powerful they can be.
One of the best ways to incorporate them today is with a content upgrade. People are already on your site, seeking something out.
Think about it:
They went to Google and typed in something specific to end up on your blog post.
A lead magnet sweetens the pot by providing additional insight on the same exact topic they were reading about.
Brian Dean used the content upgrade strategy to boost his conversions by 785 percent in one day.
Brian Harris of Video Fruit is seeing a 20-30 percent opt-in rate from blog posts where he links not one, not two, but three times to his lead magnet.
For example, the first comes right in the introduction:
Then he follows up that up with another two more for good measure down at the bottom:
The blog post goes through an in-depth analysis of how content upgrades can get you more leads. Then it distills those insights and actionable tips down so that you can easily start implementing the same tactics on your site (after downloading the lead magnet, of course).
If you want to see the same results, your lead magnet has to abide by a few rules.
The form or medium doesn’t matter necessarily. Instead, success typically comes down to a few >key ingredients:
So how do you figure those things out?
Let’s dive into what the best lead magnets have in common to find out.
Now that you know why lead magnets are important (to get you more leads!) let’s talk about how to create one that drives conversions like mad.
Saying you need to “know your audience” sounds obvious and trite. However, it’s one of those things that everyone talks about, but no one seems to know how to do.
The big clue is in the reception. If your digital copies aren’t flying off the shelf when it goes live, your issue typically comes back to a mismatch with your audience.
Thankfully, this can be an easy fix if you know where to look.
Start by looking for what people are already paying for.
That might sound counterintuitive because lead magnets are free.
However, if someone is willing to part with their hard-earned cash for something, it’s a sure sign that they’re committed.
For example, one of my favorite places to start is the Kindle Marketplace.
Let’s say I’m about to create a lead magnet in an industry I know nothing about: cooking. (Seriously, nothing.)
I could guess or make a few assumptions about which cooking lead magnet would work best. Or I could head on over to the Kindle Marketplace and see what’s already working well.
It’s not just the topic you’re looking for at this point, but also the ‘format’ that resonates with an audience.
Here’s what I mean.
Go to the Amazon Kindle Marketplace look at the sidebar on the left-hand side. There, you’ll find all the book categories and then subcategories upon subcategories upon subcategories. (In other words, drilling down to find your niche and your audience.)
Here’s what the bestsellers look like in European cooking and food:
Ok, now we’re getting somewhere.
Most are unsurprisingly recipe books. However, that first one is especially interesting.
It’s a “cooking for two,” book which means the people buying it are looking for quick, no-fuss meals in smaller portions.
See?
That tells you a lot about the audience and what their preferences are. The Mediterranean one on the far right is another indication — those meals tend to be easy and healthy.
So these people might be looking for a new recipe cookbook, but that doesn’t mean they want some haute cuisine that requires working for hours in the kitchen.
Instead, these (presumably) busy people want something relatively quick and healthy.
Next, the trick is to put something together that’s like these examples but somehow different, better, or unique.
For example, let’s dive a little deeper into books reviews to see what they say.
Here’s a positive review to kick things off:
Awesome! Two of our assumptions are already being proved correct.
People like this example because it provides recipes that are “quick to prepare. “
Busy moms might be foodies. However, foodies probably aren’t going to be buying this book.
That completely changes how you might create, package, design, and even promote this ebook already.
Positive reviews are helpful to start with, but many times you can learn more from negative reviews. Check this out:
First, this book’s organization and table of contents aren’t up to snuff for this reviewer. They’re even giving you the answer here, too: “… organizing the dishes into categories or even providing an index.”
Good ideas! These are the little details that you or I wouldn’t have thought of because we might not be experts on cooking already.
However, a little bit of research has already revealed a few nuggets of wisdom.
Then, this reviewer goes on to complain about some of the editing and attention to detail towards the bottom.
Easy — let’s also have a subject-matter expert help edit this work to ensure accuracy (critical in cooking) is on point.
Now let’s take this one step further by simply asking the audience which versions of our idea they’d prefer.
For example, write up a simple blog post that explains what you’re thinking about creating and ask for ideas or improvements.
This does two things at the same time:
Soliciting feedback from people who aren’t yet on your email list can help you better understand how to get them on the list eventually. Here’s what I mean.
Take this post on how an Instagram user-generated more than $300,000.
If you take a close look at the comments section of the post, you’ll find a couple of readers asking about how the Instagram user made her lists.
Multiple people are now requesting the same information in the comments, which means there must be built-in demand for this information.
Lead magnets are ‘free,’ but users still have to part with their precious contact info. They won’t do that for just anything.
So you need to create content that interests the audience.
Let’s check out Google Analytics to see which pages (and topics) are performing best:
Start by segmenting all your posts into categories.
Sometimes your site already has this done if you included categories in your URL string. For example, Unbounce uses the category “PPC” in this blog post:
So you can search for URLs in your most popular content that feature PPC.
You’ve now painstakingly compiled insight into what your customers want. Your next job should be insanely easy at this point: Give them what they’re asking for!
Picture someone on your site reading your perfectly crafted blog post about the latest trends in European cooking when a pop-up appears offering a printable “Be a Better Cook” guide.
Huh? That generic printed piece of paper is going to make them a better cook? How?
No, thank you.
What if it was a printable checklist on the “Ten Top-Rated Dinner Recipes from France and Italy?”
Now imagine you visit the landing page for Digital Agency Day because you want to see when the upcoming date is to make sure you don’t miss any of the great information.
You’re hemming and hawing about signing up for the live event because you’re not sure if you’ll be able to make it.
Then an exit overlay catches you before leaving, suggesting you sign up to receive the recordings when ready:
Ok, that’s something you can get behind.
It’s specific and relevant, so it immediately makes sense.
So you’ll probably hand over your email.
It’s no surprise that this example resulted in a 19.03 percent conversion rate increase.
People aren’t going to sign up for something they don’t think is useful.
For example, check out this 9-part lesson from Brennan Dunn:
It targets a massive pain point for freelancers (“charging what you’re worth”).
It’s incredibly detailed and in-depth (“9-lesson course”).
There’s social proof that proves its value (“20,000 other freelancers”).
Brennan could easily charge for something like this, and people would still buy it.
It’s that good.
Checklists or cheat sheets can provide immediate value by giving people something they could put to use right now.
A longer multi-part course (like this example) or in-depth ebook can provide that long-term value people will reference for weeks (and months) to come.
Side-step these three issues, and you won’t just churn out another cookie-cutter lead magnet.
Instead, you’ll create a marketing asset that kicks off a long, profitable relationship with a new customer.
Remember the complaint on the first cookbook a few minutes ago? The poor organization and presentation detracted from the content and overall experience for that reviewer.
Now imagine what happens if you gave your email to get a downloadable guide filled with poor image quality and lots of typos. Same thing, right?
Unsubscribe.
The goal here is to get these users to move on from the freebie and eventually make a purchase. You can’t do that without attention to detail. You also need to show your value.
Check out this checklist from Bryan Harris of Video Fruit.
Looks pretty snazzy, right? Not just another boring rundown filled with typos.
Don’t have the design skills or staffing to get this done? Hire a professional from Dribbble or Behance.
If you need a little extra help to enhance your own work, check out Beacon.
You can even hire a pro on Fiverr to do this for you, or you can do something similar by using a simple Google Doc.
A lead magnet is a free offer businesses offer in exchange for contact information from prospective leads. Examples include an ebook, discount code, free course, or checklist.
A great lead magnet must be valuable to your target audience. Aim to solve a problem or make their job or life easier in some way. For example, a business coach might offer “10 things to do before your next job interview.”
They should be free to your leads. For businesses, the costs should be for research, creation, and distribution. These consts can vary widely based on the lead magnet and resources available. For example, if you have an in-house marketing team and graphic design person, the costs would be minimal.
The best lead magnet is one your users find valuable, which can vary by industry, business model, and target audience. Common examples include ebooks, white papers, webinards, checklists, work sheets, coupon codes, and short courses.
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Lead magnets are one of the best ways to gather audience insight, generate leads, and even start the nurturing process to make the ultimate conversion (to revenue) easier.
Once they’ve signed up for the useful, relevant, and high-quality freebie, you establish yourself as a thought-leader on that topic and create a new customer relationship.
This means they’ll think of you when they need more information. They’ll come back for more. And they’ll come back to buy.
The good news is that these aren’t difficult to create, either. You need to take the time to dive deep into what your customers want and what they don’t want.
Then all you have to do is give them exactly what they’re already asking for.
What is your favorite lead magnet example?
Creating a customer journey map is enough to make even the best marketer freeze in their tracks and realize how little they really know about their prospects.
If this sounds like you, don’t worry.
Even if you’ve never created a buyer persona before, I’ll help you make sense of the process by giving you a sort of “map” to help you better understand who your customers are and what they want.
Let’s take a closer look.
A customer journey map is a diagram that illustrates each step in the buyer journey, including who the customer is, what their needs are, and what objections they face.
This map makes it easier for sales, marketing, and executives to make more informed decisions and humanize your audience.
The very first step in a customer journey map is the core demographic information about your customers, such as:
You’ll likely find most of this data in your CRM. If not, a survey can give you a clear picture of who your audience is and what they do.
I also recommend “humanizing” the persona by giving them a name and image. This brings out more of our emotional, empathetic side, versus looking at the potential customer as a number to slot somewhere in a sales funnel like a puzzle piece.
Now that you have the basics let’s look at an example of a customer journey.
For our example here, we’ve chosen to work with Lucy, a marketing director in her late 40s.
Her job primarily entails lead generation, sales management, and gathering competitive intelligence.
She organizes and prioritizes campaigns. She’s a pro at gathering competitive intelligence and uses it wisely to reinforce the brand while cementing customer loyalty in a very competitive marketplace.
Because of the huge growth in social media, Lucy’s looking to streamline the interaction process on social media without losing the “personability” of the brand.
She’s in the market for a solution and wants to make a confident decision quickly.
So with this in mind, our persona map is going to look something like this so far:
To stick with the map concept, this is our starting point. Next, it’s time to look at the journey.
Our first stop along the map is the buyer’s needs.
She has the basic research to know what’s out there. If we were looking at this from a traditional sales funnel point of view, she’s at the “comparison shopping” stage.
She’ll be looking to make a decision soon.
Buyers are eager to tell you what they need. All you have to do is ask.
Basic lead follow-up and nurturing questions can reveal quite a bit. Simple polls and surveys can often reveal a great deal about where the buyer actually is in the process (and whether they have an urgent need for your product or service versus basic curiosity).
Even if we don’t know specifically what they need, we can make a few general statements that apply them to our persona.
What would someone in this job typically need from our solution?
For starters, the buyer likely needs the product to be well documented. She’ll be managing dozens, perhaps hundreds of staff members – some of whom (based on age) may be more technically savvy than she is.
Some of the staff may pick it up quickly; others may need more time. We’ll add the needs and the persona’s place in the decision-making process (one persona can have multiple roles in the decision process — they can be a user and initiator, for example)
There’s also the fact that whatever solution needs to be adaptive and flexible to accommodate existing platforms and tools.
The company likely has certain procedures and requirements that will be added to the mix, like cloud-based access and specific security protocols.
These factors can influence and even conflict with what the primary buyer wants. The committee often makes decisions like these, which lengthens the time needed and the requested features.
Like all maps, there will be roadblocks that prevent your customer from taking action. You’ll want to outline those in your customer journey map.
There are constraints and concerns, frustrations, and issues that will affect their decision. You can brainstorm these obstacles and add them to your customer journey map to ensure that sales know how to address the most common objections before becoming major pain points.
You also have to decide where this buyer falls on the scale of decision-making.
Will they be using the product? Influencing the decision-maker? Initiating contact with the company? A mix of all of these?
Make a note of these objections and the buyer persona’s place in the decision-making cycle on your map.
Following our example, we end up with something like this:
Here, we’ve managed to discover (and brainstorm) the buyer’s potential:
All the kinds of sales-propelling information needed to acknowledge objections, concerns, and frustrations while concentrating on needs, requirements, and urgency.
We’ve learned core demographics about our buyer and key information that may be preventing them from taking action or details that could move a sale into the next stage.
Our customer journey map is less of a neatly-organized, bulleted list, and more like a mind-map that’s always being adjusted and revised. It may not be as tidy, but our customer journey map is closer to the actual customer experience — and therefore far more useful.
Think about the last time your company made a major purchase. It’s seldom a “beginning to end” one-time shot, right?
There are many details to hammer out, presentations to sit through, and suggestions and sign-offs to gather.
It’s a big process, and a fancy list of bullets just doesn’t cut it anymore – not in today’s two-way communication world.
Now, you need to go through this entire process with every type of buyer your company encounters. Each type of customer will have a different buyer path, objections, and challenges.
For example, if retail, you’ve got suppliers, wholesalers, resellers, and a whole avalanche of personas out there. Each buyer you have must be addressed individually.
Don’t panic, prioritize. Focus on your most profitable customers first and find the unifying threads that tie them together, then build on that persona. Once you have those down, start working down the list until you have all your customer journies mapped.
And remember that buyers are multi-faceted human beings.
Sometimes they make decisions that go against the grain of even the most well-developed persona. It happens.
Remember, the journey is just as important as the destination, and the easier you make that journey, the more receptive the buyer will be to taking the action you want them to take.
Are you planning to create a customer journey map? What is holding you back?
The post How to Create a Customer Journey Map (Even if You Have No Idea Who Your Customers Really Are) appeared first on Neil Patel.
Article URL: https://mux.com/jobs?hnj=10 Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21950884 Points: 1 # Comments: 0
Article URL: https://mux.com/jobs?hnj=10 Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21950884 Points: 1 # Comments: 0