Digital Growth Made Easy

The Customer Journey

The Customer Journey

Different names: The Buyer’s Journey, The Purchase Path�

• A customer centric approach to marketing
• Focusing on key goals (reaching the peak)
• Understand the steps it takes to get to the goal
• One step follows another

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Marketing is all about delivering the right message �to the right person at the right stage in their journey.

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Three Steps to the Journey

Awareness

Understand WHAT you do, the products you sell or services you provide and where you’re located

Consideration

WHY you should buy the product or service you need from us rather than our competition

Conversion

Understand HOW to buy a product or service

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Conversion

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AWARENESS

CONSIDERATION

CONVERSION

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Conversion Campaigns

• People in the “conversion” stage are the most qualified vs “awareness” or “consideration”
• They have identified that they have a need
• They have researched several vendors and solutions to solve that need
• They are ready to make a purchase
• Smallest audience size
• Most valuable / highest cost to market

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Conversion is About Encouraging Action

• Sale (eCommerce or In-store)
• Proxy Sale
• Closest trackable action to a sale
• Example - Test Drive sign up
• Campaigns that integrate with the advertiser’s CRM can track right to the point of purchase

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SoCast Platform Conversion Campaigns

Conversion > Store Traffic

• Designed for hyper-local campaigns for foot traffic
• Example: Lunch time campaign for downtown restaurant
• Advanced campaigns utilize GPS to track people as they enter the business location

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Conversion > Conversions

• Everything else

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Does the client have a conversion need?

• Do they have ecommerce?
• Do they have a lead-gen program or form to fill?
• Do they need better qualified leads?
• Do they have an established CPA/CPL?
• How do they appear on search? Page 2? Below the fold?

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Common Conversion Goals

Form Fills

• Book an appointment (ie: Test Drive)
• Request a Quote
• Newsletter sign ups

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Page Views

• Product page views (Manufacturer co-op)
• Contact Us / Directions

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Building a Data-Based Strategy

Because of the high cost to target someone at the bottom of the funnel, it’s important that we use data to dictate the marketing strategy.

Buy Data

Collect Data

• Intent audience segments
• Paid Search

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• Retargeting via a pixel
• Custom audience segments

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Buying Data

Data Audience Segments

Affinity Targets

Intent Targets

“I like…”

“I want…”

People in the “affinity” segment have done some basic searches and consumed some content, but do not plan to purchase in the near future. They are likely in the “Awareness” part of the journey.

People in the “intent” segment have read reviews, blogs and done searches with keywords that indicate that they are actively searching for a product. They are in the “Consideration” or “Conversion” stage.

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Data Audience Segments

• Data adds additional cost to your base cost-per-thousand (CPM) or cost-per-click (CPC)
• Intent audiences tend to cost more than affinity targets
• Match the targeting to the goal!
• Audience segments can be used with most digital channels

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Search Engine Marketing

• 65% of SMBs (Small/Medium Businesses) use SEM as part of their marketing strategy
• Search is between 30% and 40% of all digital advertising
• Keyword strategy can focus on bottom of the funnel / end of the journey audiences
• When conversions are tracked, we can determine a “cost per lead” or “cost per sale” that can help you scale

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SEM vs SEO: REMINDER

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)�

• Paid advertising
• Appears ahead of other websites
• Top of page or right rail
• Good use when you don’t rank for certain keywords, terms or phrases organically

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

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• Organic (non-paid)
• No direct cost, but good SEO requires investment to do properly
• Appearing near the top of listing below the advertisement placements
• Proper website structure
• Proper (and regular) content postings
• Good SEO helps reduce CPC

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CONVERSION

CONSIDERATION

Search Engines

• Google�92% of search marketing share
• Bing/Yahoo�5% of market share
• DuckDuckGo�2% of market share
• Everything else: <1%

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Collecting Data

Pixels

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An advertising “pixel” is a piece of code on your website that drops a “cookie” on the visitors device, allowing us to:

• Track conversions from the marketing campaign
• Retarget people who’ve visited your website

Campaigns that use pixels can be optimized for performance and give you better ways of shepherding your customers along their purchase journey.

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Retargeting / Remarketing

Jon visits a website for a local business.

Code on the website drops a “cookie” on Jon’s PC or Mobile that indicates the pages he visited.

Jon then visits Facebook. FB picks up on the cookie on Jon’s PC, and serves him an ad from the website he visited.

The ad includes a product that Jon was looking for, and an offer to help him make a purchase today. It redirects back to the website.

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Common Pixeled Pages

Homepage

Pixels placed on the homepage or on every page to provide broad data collection or retargeting options.

Product Page

When placed on a specific product page you can retarget people with offers specific to that product - great for Co-Op!

Shopping Cart

Target those who’ve added something to their cart, but haven’t completed the purchase (aka: Abandoned Carts)

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When to use a Pixel?

• Every client. All the time.
• Even without a campaign
• Pixels grow audience pools for future marketing campaigns
• Pixels can also provide valuable data in your client’s analytics

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When Not to Use Retargeting

• Retargeting is part of a campaign - not the entire marketing strategy
• You need a large website audience
• Retargeting is used to optimize a campaign and improve performance
• Ideally, a mix of retargeting & intent audiences make for a great conversion campaign

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Custom Audience Segments

Your client may already be collecting data that can be used to create a custom audience segment.

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We call this “First Party Data”

• Normally an email or phone number
• Lead generation forms
• Newsletter database
• Previous customers

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Privacy Warning

• A user must opt-in to receive marketing messages
• Normally a check box when filling out a form or subscribing
• Client should have a privacy policy on their website
• We do not police this for your client

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Custom Audience Segment Process

Data Upload

We upload an excel file with the preformatted data (normally a list of emails and/or phone numbers) to Facebook, YouTube, Display etc.

Connect to Users

The platform uses the data to connect with users who’ve registered with the same information on their service.

Advertisement

The platform then serves your advertisement to ONLY those who you’ve identified as your prospective customers.

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Look-a-Like Audiences

You can also use your first party data to create a “look-a-like” audience target.

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• System matches your email list to their user list
• They find similar people to those you’ve uploaded to their platform
• You can then target those who have similar likes or actions to your custom list

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Consideration Key Performance Indicators

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Key Performance Indicators

Reach�# of people who saw the ad

�Impressions�# of times the ad was seen�

Frequency�Average # of times each person saw the ad�

Engagement�# of people who interacted with the ad (could be click, share or like)�

Website Metrics�Bounce rate, pages per visitor, time spent on website�

Sales�eCommerce or other tracking to the point of sale

�Leads Generated�Number of forms filled, newsletter sign ups, etc

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AWARENESS

CONSIDERATION

CONVERSION

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Conversion Tracking

• Can be tracked through pixels installed on key pages (like a thank you page after form fill out)
• Analytics with UTM tagging and proper goal setting
• Directly connected into CRM

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Cost Per Sale/Lead/Action

• Campaigns that are conversion focused normally allow for you to calculate a cost per lead/action (CPA, CPL)
• By looking at campaigns as a CPA, we can compare different campaigns using different platforms
• It also converts marketing metrics into business metrics that are easy to understand

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Marketing Spend

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Leads Generated

= Cost Per Lead

Example: Buying vs Generating Leads

• Used car dealer buys leads from a 3rd party automotive website
• Client pays $100 per lead, average profit is $2,000 per car
• They manage their own lead generation campaign, investing in the customer journey, driving people to an appointment form
• Budget is $10,000 a month, and generate 125 qualified leads
• Their CPL = 10k / 125 = $80 cost per lead
• We’ve reduced their CPL and improved their brand awareness!
• Because CPL is below profit, they can scale upwards

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Creative Notes

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Creative

• Customers have decided their buying - but from whom?
• Creative should focus on offers and other incentives to purchase
• Product focused
• Remarketing is incredibly effective way of grabbing attention

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Summary

• Conversion is all about closing the deal
• Conversion strategy relies heavily on data
• Pixels are important to track results
• It’s the most expensive part of journey, but has the highest pay-off for the advertiser
• It’s part of a full marketing strategy, supported by awareness and consideration elements
• Budgeting - 3 / 2 / 1

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AWARENESS

CONSIDERATION

CONVERSION

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Customer Journey Worksheet