We were excited to have Will DeKrey and Alex Girard with us at our latest HubSpot User Group. Will is a Sr. Product Manager at HubSpot and Alex is a Product Marketer and they traveled up to Manchester to talk about journey based advertising.
What is journey based advertising? Our speakers defined it as, "Advertising to your audience at every stage of their buyer's journey, and changing your strategy to meet the unique needs of your audience at each stage."
Will and Alex centered their presentation on the four M's; Medium, Moment, Momentum and Measurement.
Medium
First, you’ll need to figure out if your ad is a search ad or a social ad. Search ads reach a user based on that user’s intent, while social ads reach a user based on their interests. Keep in mind where your target is in the user journey.
When you go to Google you have a specific question and you’re looking for that quick answer. Where is the best place to eat near me? Where can I buy _____? Based on keywords, Google is known for “intent” based advertising.
Facebook is the best place to put an ad that is “interest-based”. Facebook allows you to get very targeted with your audiences by using their demographics as well as their interests.
Moment
Next, choose the right moment. This step is all about making sure you’re matching your ads to a specific stage in your buyer’s journey Should the buyer see this ad in the awareness stage or consideration stage?
Within Facebook, you can use custom audiences, pixel audiences, and lookalike audiences. Find the right combination of these while creating your ad. Keep in mind that it may take several strategy changes to create an ad that meets your goal.
Momentum
The question here is, ‘How can I move people from one stage of the buyer’s journey to the next?’ Facebook does a great job telling you when you create ads and what you should consider while doing so. If someone is in the awareness phase, they may want to take a look at a blog post. If they are in consideration, they could download afree guide. In the decision stage, they may want to set up a free smile consultation. The message in each is different each one is focused on moving the user through the funnel.
Measurement
Here is where you track how successful your advertising campaign was. This is important to remember, as the goal of any advertising campaign is to have a positive return on investment. To measure success at each stage you may be tracking a different goal. Is could be the number of clicks on your ads (awareness stage), how many form submissions you receive (consideration stage), or how many customers did it bring in (decision stage).
When creating your ad strategy, keep in mind that there is no “one-size-fits-all” way to do things. You need to know your audience, create great content, track your results and make improvements. While you’re creating your ads strategy, pay attention to the ‘Four Ms’.
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Here are the slides Will and Alex shared with us: