The Consumer Journey: How To Build A Media Funnel
When you’re launching media campaigns, it’s important to keep the consumer journey in mind. You need to consider whether the individuals you’re advertising to are familiar with your brand, and if not, how to convert them from someone who simply viewed your ad on a social media platform to a loyal customer.
To do this you need to create a media funnel. A media funnel has three main components: Prospecting, Retargeting, and Replenishment. On the first step of the journey, you familiarize new audiences with your brand. In the next step, you focus on the people who visited your website and are considering making a purchase. The final step is to target those people who made a purchase, and turn them into loyal customers.
Below we will go into more detail into each step in the funnel, and get you on the path to turning leads into lifelong customers.
Prospecting
Prospecting is the act of reaching out to a cold audience that does not know your brand. It’s all about testing. You are trying to identify the right audience by testing different interests and profiles associated with your brand. So, for example, if you are a beauty brand, you may want to test your prospecting ads on audiences that include interests on makeup artists or self-care. If you are a sustainable fashion brand, you may want to target people who are interested in environmentalism.
You also want to test different messaging in this step of the journey. Certain copy appeals to some audiences over others. To go back to the beauty example, you may have two prospective audiences that are associated with your brand. Let’s say bargain buyers and an environmentally conscious audience. Bargain buyers may go for more “sales-y” wording, as opposed to an audience who would prefer hearing about the natural and sustainable aspects of your beauty brand.
Retargeting
The prospecting ads generate visits to your website and once these people land there, you can retarget them. These people are considering your brand, your ads have sparked enough interest that they’ve started interacting with your site, but they may not be ready to buy yet.
You may want to run some promo-driven ads to your retargeting audience to generate a greater sense of urgency to buy. In these ads, people need a little more reinforcement, so you need to try a few different approaches to push the needle.You may want to run some promo-driven ads to your retargeting audience to generate a greater sense of urgency to buy. Some people may be looking for different things from your brand. You may want to hone on the specific benefits your products deliver that appeals to your audience’s self-interest. Using the beauty brand example, you can demonstrate the effects of your products on the skin, like anti-aging, etc. Retargeting is also a good time to use social proofing ads, showing the positive reviews about your brand from customers and publications (if applicable). You can try to hit these points in separate creatives, or all in one to push them closer to the sale. Retargeting can also go one step deeper and identify people who have already added items to their cart, and you remind them to complete their purchase.
Replenishment
Your replenishment audience is your existing customers. They’ve made a purchase, but you need to make sure you continue interacting with them to instill a sense of brand loyalty. For this audience, you want to inform them about new updates like product launches and promotions. You also want to remind them to replenish their products after a certain time frame.
You want to use your creative ads and messaging effectively when you’re running media campaigns. Customers will be on different steps of the journey of completing a purchase and need guidance along that path. When you are just starting out, it’s crucial to identify the right audience in your prospecting campaigns, which then you can push along down the funnel in retargeting campaigns with benefit-driven and social proofing advertising. Once they’ve made a purchase, you need to keep the conversation going to turn one-time buyers into repeat customers.
Some tools that can help you on your way to build a consumer journey:
Use Facebook ads library to study your competition's advertising content.
If you want to step up your retargeting/funnel game, Shoelace is a great customer journey management tool.
