New customers often come to me wanting help setting up and managing a paid ads strategy.
However, sometimes people don’t realize that so much more goes into paid ads than just throwing an ad on Google and crossing your fingers for results.
There is a holistic customer journey people take from the point they see your ad to finally converting into a customer.
Thinking through every step will help you get the biggest ROI from your efforts.
Key Takeaways:
- An overview of the customer journey related to paid ads
- The biggest mistake I see business owners make
- Why organic marketing strategies are just as important as a paid ads strategy
The Holistic Customer Journey
I’m sure you’re familiar with the stages in the customer journey (Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Retention, and Advocacy). Let’s discuss each one as it relates to your paid ads strategy.
Awareness
Here, you introduce your brand to people who don’t know about you yet. You can use social media ads, Google ads, display ads, or rich media ads to increase brand exposure.
Determine your target audience, budget, and chosen platform to drive consistent traffic to your website.
This is typically where people think a paid ads strategy stops, but this is just step one!
Consideration
Next, we move into the consideration phase, where customers evaluate different options before making a decision. On average, someone needs to see an ad 7-8 times before taking action.
You want to keep your brand top-of-mind in this stage of the holistic customer journey. Maybe they visited your landing page but didn’t take action. Utilize retargeting ads to remind visitors of your products or services after they leave your site.
Decision
In the decision stage, the page where you send ad traffic will do the work for you.
The landing page piece is key, but businesses often miss the target. It needs to be built to convert, so it’s important to reduce distractions on the page, such as multiple calls-to-action, confusing messaging, and even your main navigation bar.
The entire goal of the landing page is to convert people to ONE offer, whether that’s buying a product, booking your services, or signing up for a webinar. Remove anything that doesn’t work towards the goal of converting people on your offer.
See this example from one of my clients. Notice how this ad only has one goal—to encourage people to book a free consultation. We removed their main website navigation to reduce distractions and only have one CTA. It’s very clear what action we want them to take.
Retention
Now it’s time to keep those people in your world! This is where email marketing and automation play a big role.
People expect quick responses after taking advantage of an offer. Set up an automated email drip campaign to nurture new leads or customers as soon as they click ‘submit’ on your landing page. Automation will help you stay connected with new subscribers 24/7.
Advocacy
Finally, we reach the advocacy stage of the holistic customer journey. The timeframe around this stage will vary depending on your offer and customer lifecycle.
Once you consider them mature customers, you can offer a referral program, request a testimonial, or celebrate milestones to encourage them to stay involved with your company.
Loyal customers are the best customers!
Biggest Paid Ads Strategy Mistake
I see this allll the time with busy business owners. It’s unfortunate that entrepreneurs spend all this time and money on a paid ads strategy and don’t prioritize this KEY piece of the holistic customer journey.
The mistake: Not following up with leads or having good systems after you earn the lead from paid ads.
It’s hard to manage all the follow up, especially when you’re juggling all the things to grow your business. I get it!
However, from the customer’s perspective, this is a huge miss.
Imagine getting ghosted after submitting payment for an online course or not receiving confirmation that you successfully registered for a webinar. As a consumer, you’d probably be freaking out a little bit, worried you got scammed!
Skip the manual work of sending follow-up emails and set up automated emails to work for you, even while you’re sleeping or on vacation. No matter what time of day someone submits the form on your landing page, they receive communication from you.
A Larger Marketing Strategy
I feel it’s important to point out that an ads strategy is part of a larger marketing strategy.
You shouldn’t rely on paid ads alone; otherwise, you’ll always be paying for new leads! Once you stop paying, you stop seeing results.
Organic marketing strategies are just as important and effective as paid advertising. I highly recommend investing in an SEO strategy to drive consistent organic traffic to your website.
SEO and paid ads actually work very well together. Balancing both strategies gives you full control over search performance while increasing quality traffic for better conversion rates and user experience.
How Does AI Impact a Paid Ads Strategy?
AI is used in basically everything we use these days, and paid ads platforms are no different.
AI tools can make our campaigns more efficient, but we can’t rely on AI to do the job for us.
Everything from ad creative and audience targeting, to management and budgeting needs human oversight.
And – I cannot stress this enough – do not rely on AI to create copy on behalf of your brand. Your voice and tone can be the difference between connecting with your target audience and creating more internet noise people scroll right by.
I personally like using AI to test creatives and analyze results. It can help me make better decisions for my clients.
Considering the Customer Journey Behind Paid Ads
Before you throw together an ad and put it on Google, consider the holistic customer journey.
- What do you want to happen after they click on the ad?
- What does the landing page look like?
- What happens after they fill out the landing page form?
- Or after they receive a confirmation email?
Thinking through this process both from customer and business operations perspectives will help you create a positive customer experience. When someone has a great experience with your brand, they’re more likely to remain loyal customers. And who doesn’t want that?!
If you need help creating a holistic customer journey and experience related to your paid ads strategy, let’s hop on a quick call to discuss! As a fractional CMO for businesses, I know what it takes for a marketing campaign to be successful.
Schedule a call with me to talk about how to get the results you want from your paid ads strategy.
FAQs About a Paid Ads Strategy
It depends on your industry, profit margins, and campaign goals. In general, for every $1 you spend, earning $3 in revenue is a good ROI. It typically covers your ad spend and cost of doing business, while leaving room for profit.
Plan the entire customer journey behind your paid ads strategy. When you think through all the steps, you’ll provide a great customer experience and book more clients.
Unfortunately no. Ads are a ‘pay to play’ marketing strategy. You have to set a budget for every ad campaign you create.
I recommend business owners start using paid ads when they have a specific offer that they want to sell. For example, it might not make sense for a business owner who will always book more 1:1 clients. But if you were launching an online course, paid ads could drive more people to enroll.
