How a Consumer-Based Approach Improves Ad Performance

There are literally millions of businesses operating in Canada, approximately 90% of which are online. Typically the internet, social media and search engines are convoluted with competing brands. While it's the best place to do business, the crowded nature of the internet can keep relevant businesses hidden from consumers.

However, with the right strategy, that can all change. With the help of a digital marketing agency, paid advertising can help businesses cut through the clutter online and bring their brand to the forefront. 

Oftentimes online advertisements are viewed by at least thousands of people online, but those viewers don't always convert into sales. If you're spending on ads, it can be incredibly frustrating to not see a significant return on your investment. An effective yet often overlooked way to improve ad performance is to take a consumer-focused approach to PPC marketing strategies. As it turns out, 76% of businesses don't leverage consumer behavioural data for online ad targeting depsite its effectiveness. By leveraging a strategic customer-based approach for your PPC marketing, your business will be one step ahead of the competition. 

Here's how you can improve brand awareness, sales, and customer retention by revamping your ad strategy with consumer insights. 

Define Your Ideal Customer

When forming a PPC marketing campaign, a wide cast net can improve the visibility of ads. But, unless it resonates with the viewer, those impressions will not convert into sales at a profitable rate. 

As you begin to define the critical characteristics of your ideal customer, it's best to start with a broad overview then work your way into more specific or niche qualities. The first step is to reflect on who your products or services are designed for. 

Working in-house or with the support of a digital marketing agency, define the following demographics related to your target customer: 

• Business: B2B or B2C? 
• Age: Generation, Millennials, Gen X, Seniors, Parents? 
• Location: City, State, Country? 
• Language: English, Multilingual? 
• Disposable Income: Salaries, Average Net Income? 
• Gender: Identity or gender expression? 
• Interests: Hobbies and Leisure Activities 

Depending on the nature of your business, this list expands to define who your service or product offering is best suited towards. 

At Xi Digital, our team of digital marketers uses consumer insights and demographics based on your unique product offering and industry trends to ensure that ads are being presented to the right audience. This strategy ensures paid ads show up in the right searches or on the best online channels with the most relevant content. 

Understanding Consumer Motivation 

A motivator is a link between the "subconscious" and an offering that drives the consumer's decision to purchase. When you understand consumer motivations related to your industry, you can create ad campaigns with your digital marketing company that speak to these factors. 

There are three main categories of consumer motivators: physical, emotional, and enhancement. 

• Physical Motivator: a product that fills a basic human need such as food, water, shelter, and safety. 
• Emotional Motivator: the link between a product and our emotional needs, such as a sense of belonging, achievement, excitement, and happiness. 
• Enhancement motivator: these don't speak to basic needs but the desire to enhance our lives, further addressing wanting something faster, better, or more accessible. 

How to Extract Consumer Insights

There are various ways to get relevant consumer insights. Research, market trends, analytics, and surveys of existing customers combined with marketing expertise from industry professionals all provide an in-depth understanding of consumer pain points and purchase motivators. 

If you review existing customers, you can work backwards to understand why they chose your brand. In looking at customers who have previously made a purchase with your company, your PPC marketing team can help you leverage analytics to pinpoint pages that have been most visited and pages that commonly bounced compared to website pages that converted into sales or clicks.

How to Apply Consumer Insights to Maximize Results

A clearly defined understanding of your ideal consumer is applied to sponsored ad campaigns to maximize results. Working in tandem with a digital marketing agency, consumer insights can be used in 3 important areas of ad development: positioning (target searches and online channels), sales copy, and imagery.

Images can be chosen that evoke relevant emotions that align with motivators, and sales copy can be written accordingly, too. These eye-catching elements of online ads relate and resonate with target audiences attracting them to click on the ad. 

Consumer research enables you to select the best websites and online channels to feature your ads that your research suggests your ideal consumer will be using, whether local news sites or social media. When you work with a digital marketing agency, like Xi Digital, our team works with you to guide you on extracting consumer insights and creating online ads that perform.

At Xi Digital, our team of PPC marketing experts works to help brands effectively develop target ads using custom strategies and relevant insights. By leveraging a consumer-focused approach, businesses like yours can see elevated sales, profitability, and return on investment with their paid ad campaigns. 

The secret to success with ad campaigns is to create a customized strategy.

Call the digital marketing experts at Xi Digital to start developing your consumer-based ad campaigns to improve your reach, generate leads, and boost your ad ROI.