Digital advertising is the most cost-efficient way to build awareness around your brand. But that doesn’t mean you should approach it with a “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” strategy.
Learn how to harness the power of digital advertising, and you’ll have a steady stream of traffic to your website and storefront.
How to Build a Digital Advertising Strategy that Resonates with Your Audience
From demographics to SEO, there is a lot that goes into creating an effective digital advertising plan. These four questions help you construct your strategy, beginning with the foundation (who) and building up from there.
- Who is your target customer?
- What problem are you solving for this customer?
- Where is your customer going to search for the product or service you offer?
- How can you help your target customer find you?
Get to Know Who Your Target Customer Is
This is the most critical question to ask when you begin drawing up your marketing and advertising strategy. When you’re clear on who you are trying to reach, the rest of the plan comes together much more easily.
Understanding Demographics
Demographics provide a gold mine of insight into your potential customer base. The information about your target audience that you can glean from the statistics includes:
- Gender
- Age
- Income
- Interests
- When They’re Online
- What Social Platforms They Use
- What Kinds of Content They’re Most Likely to Engage With
But these stats don’t tell the story. To do that, you need to use this data to create Personas.
You have to understand your target customer and what you’re trying to sell them.
Daniel McGraw | Founder of Effin Amazing
Personas: Putting a Face on Your Demographic Data
Sometimes people use demographics and personas interchangeably, but they are not the same thing. Demographics is data: personas are created using that data. While data can be siloed, personas often overlap several demographic groups.
For example, suppose you’re opening a yoga studio. You may be targeting people with an income between $35,000-$70,000 who are interested in low-impact fitness and have flexible daytime schedules. You can use your demographic data to create several personas who make up your target audience.
Each of your personas will comprise several demographic groups (age, race, income, employment status, etc.). Although each persona will have a different motivation, your early afternoon yoga schedule offers each of them a refreshing workout that won’t blow a hole in their schedule or their budget.
Understanding How Your Audience Searches for Your Product or Service
Another essential piece of information you need to better understand your target audience is how they go about looking for products and services. Do you get referrals to your website from Facebook or Instagram? Are people using mobile devices to research your products and services? How many prospective customers use voice search to find businesses near them that offer the service or product they want?
If you’re using Google Analytics, you have access to a gold mine of information about how people find your website and what they do once they get there. So, now that you know who your audience is and how they go about searching for your product, you can create ad campaigns that lead them right to your door.
Check out Media Caffeine’s favorite social media marketing tools!
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SEO: Leave a Light in the Window
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an essential part of every digital marketing plan. Your business should be using the relevant product, branding, and location keywords throughout your website. It is well worth the investment to have a professional copywriter craft your website copy, including several landing pages related to specific products or services. A professional writer who specializes in SEO will produce engaging content while helping to boost your search engine results rankings.
Let’s look at how SEO helps your business get noticed and give people a reason to give you their money.
Why the Right Messaging Matters Even More in the Digital Age
Conversations around inclusivity and diversity abound on the internet. And still, digital advertising remains woefully behind when it comes to representing people who don’t fit the white, cis-gendered, and able-bodied mold. When was the last time your marketing team audited your creative assets to ensure that your entire audience is represented?
While you want your message to speak your audience’s language, you should avoid using slang, especially when trying to reach non-white people. Rather than conveying inclusivity, using slang often comes across as cultural appropriation and can end up hurting you rather than helping you.
Let People See Themselves Using Your Product
Whether you hire a photographer or use stock photos, you’ll want to make sure that the people in these images represent the full spectrum of the audience you want to reach.
Let’s look at the yoga studio one more time. If the images show only thin, young, flexible Caucasian people, it conveys that yoga is only available to people with a particular body type. But what happens when you use images of people of differing ethnic backgrounds, ages, shapes, and sizes, and using yoga props such as a chair?
When people see themselves reflected in your website and advertising imagery, they’ll see that they are welcome. And then they’ll be more likely to visit business.
A/B Testing: Proving ROI in Real-Time
A/B testing (also called split testing) provides valuable, actionable information you can use immediately to determine your digital advertising ROI.
Combined with tracking tools such as Google Analytics and Facebook’s pixel, A/B testing allows you to experiment with creative and messaging in your advertising without spending large sums of money. As you monitor each ad’s performance, you can quickly tell which one is delivering the best results and then immediately pivot your campaign to reap the greatest benefit.
A/B testing is also a cost-efficient way to boost an underperforming website page. Rather than undergoing a full-scale site redesign, you can make smaller, incremental adjustments to your content and design and monitor your site data to see how users respond.
Connecting to People and Building Your Audience
Now that you:
- Know your target demographic groups
- Have created personas that reflect your audience
- Have created landing pages loaded with professionally crafted SEO content
- Have started experimenting with your ads to see what delivers the best ROI
You’re on your way to building an audience of people who see themselves reflected in your digital advertising.
If your team is new to digital marketing, it’s a good idea to get professional help developing your SEO strategy and website content. When you need assistance creating a digital advertising strategy that mirrors your audience, help is only a couple of clicks (or a phone call) away.