October 8, 2021
The Ideal QA Process in Digital Advertising
Basic digital marketing funnels tend to move from prospecting to retargeting to brand, treating brand as one large group. But just because people are searching for your brand name does not mean they are all at the same stage in their search process. By segmenting your branded audience further, you can drive even more performance gains from this valuable subset of customers.
Segment A: Brand Searchers Who Have Never Visited Your Site
The first segment of traffic is people who search for your brand but have not been to your website before. They may have heard of you through word of mouth, a review site, paid social, or another marketing channel.
This audience is essentially a prospecting version of brand, so you can treat it like a prospecting audience. For example, try using a top performing prospecting landing page with high-level information and competitive selling propositions to make a memorable impression. If you’re advertising for an ecommerce brand, using a promotion or free shipping offer on their first order would also work well here.
Segment B: Brand Searchers Who Have Visited Your Site, But Have Never Converted
The second segment of branded traffic has been to your site before but has not purchased. You can still use some of the same tactics as Segment A, such as sales or discounts for new users. However, if they’ve been to your site before, they are likely lower in the decision funnel and need some additional information to push them to sign up or purchase. If they’ve already seen a whitepaper or webinar, a free trial or a demo of your product is a potential next step after they’ve invested the time to research. Highlight new products, strong customer reviews, or great customer service policies to convince a shopper to make a larger purchase if they are still wavering.
Segment C: Brand Searchers Who Have Converted Before
This final segment consists of customers who have purchased previously and are returning to your site. They could return because they want to reach out to your support team, look up specifics about the product they bought, or purchase another product or service. You may be thinking, “They already know my brand. They should come back through direct or organic channels.” While that could be true, you have a chance to own the conversation by continuing to advertise to this audience.
If you have a subscription model where you want to advertise different deals for subscribers, then this is the perfect way to do so. If you have an upcoming webinar or conference for existing customers, then you can advertise it to prior converters only. For a local conference, you can add geo-targeting so only local customers see it the next time they search for your brand.
This process does require maintenance of your remarketing lists. To supplement cookie-based tracking used by Analytics and AdWords, use Google’s CRM audiences to import your customer list once a month or more depending on volume. This will improve the accuracy of Segment C.
If you aren’t quite ready to take the plunge and separate out your brand traffic immediately, try applying remarketing audiences to branded campaigns at observation only, with a 0% bid modifier. This will allow you to gather data on past purchasers and determine your next steps. If these audiences have a significant difference in clickthrough rate compared to other site visitors, you could separate them out and test new ads. If you’re seeing a significant difference in conversion rate, you should segment the past purchasers out and send them to new landing pages.
Just as we adjust our tactics for the other parts of the digital marketing funnel, changing messaging for branded searches can also help with both conversion gains and user experience. Contact us to learn how your brand campaigns could perform better.
