So, we agree by now on data driven marketing, and in 2018 most marketers are aware of ROAS and CAC. Everyone is putting pixels on their website and optimizing for conversion, creating lookalike audiences and target interest and behavior. But here’s the bummer – what if your products or services are expensive.
- Most likely you only have a few conversions a day (unless you are Net-a-Porter) and optimizing for conversion won’t give you a lot of benefits as you won’t be getting sufficient data for an algorithm to learn over a short period of time
- Everyone loves Gucci but who can afford it? So, reaching people who are interested in Gucci based on activity such as liking Pages or clicking on ads might not drive quality traffic.
- Lookalikes and Similar Audiences are very algorithmic and based on user demographics and past online behavior. If you don’t upload thousands and thousands of emails of your existing customers the algorithms will struggle again to build good matches for you.
- You can retarget your visitors till you are blue in the face, but until you give them a good enough reason to buy from you and not the next person, then you aren’t going to make any sales.
- Dynamic Product Ads are cool but it’s not cool to keep showing your prospect a product which isn’t available in their size.
So, ppc isn’t working let’s just do influencer campaign? There’s still hope.
First, let’s brush up on good old funnel.
Awareness. Non-visitors, non-customers, are not aware that you exist
Where do your customers hangout? Selected restaurants? Golf courses? Selected properties? Geo target those with a hack – not 1-mile radius but very precise down to a specific building/venue.
Serve them beautiful (I mean BEAUTIFUL) videos – first optimize for reach then for engagement. Good thing is you target very small interconnected community. If they like your creative, then they will share with their community and that’s the network effect!
Interest. Those who viewed your video. Show your product feed or product catalog. Test blending in with demographics and interest targeting.
Exclude: bulk shoppers, those who like coupon sites, who like discounts. Use AND binding while excluding to make sure you indeed exclude bargain hunters not (for example) a founder of coupon site who likes their page.
Selling leather bags? Include those who like fashion & shopping and luxury brands but exclude vegans and environmentalists.
Don’t just think about who your customers are, you also need to know who they are not.
But test, test, test – best practices are just the starting point!
Is your onsite experience of a Gucci level? If it’s more of a H&M, then show more of your products on a platform itself.
https://www.facebook.com/business/learn/facebook-create-ad-carousel-ads
Optimize for product views.
Onsite content is the king (and the queen too). Empathize with your users. They don’t really want to know if the bag is 43.5×21.7 cm,they want to know if a laptop fits in it.
Consideration. Those who viewed your products.
Retarget. Yes, size matters! If I wear shoe size 39, It doesn’t matter how much I love the shoes in the ad you are serving me if the only size available is 37.I’m not going to buy them although I’m likely going to click and you are going to pay for me clicking. Include size parameter into your product feed.
Social proof – yes, reviews, they are. Not just the product quality but the size – is it a tight fit or feels like the size should?
Optimize for add to cart.
Intent. Cart abandonment.
Upsell, down-sell, cross-sell. Special offer only today. Vouchers. Cash back.
Tap into psychology:
- Create urgency – special offer ends tomorrow – and scarcity – only 2 left, 20 users looking at the product now.
- Price match guarantee
- Remove “pain of paying”. That includes removing the currency sign ($), implementing one step checkout to minimize the “pain” a user would go through while giving up their money, adding positive reinforcements after each part of checkout is completed.
- Land people on “pre-complete” pages to give them the sense of progress even before they started
People tend to continue the endeavor once they started something.
Purchase. Checkout funnel.
Remove all barriers to buying.
Promise: free delivery and returns, 365 days refunds, all legal forms of satisfaction guarantee.
Don’t be cheap: you don’t want to charge $2 cash on delivery for $1000 purchase, do you? Some customers don’t want to give you their credit cards details because they don’t trust you yet, not because they want you to make extra effort collecting cash.
Optimize for purchase.
Repeat purchase. Those who previously bought.
You have their data now – analyze, slice and dice.
Create price clusters. People who bought accessories might only afford accessories.
Classify and test. Those who bought classics might not be interested in the latest trends but maybe they do. Test, test, test.
Consider what users viewed before buying.
EXCLUDE products which a user just bought from showing. Don’t be that guy.
Optimize by reach.
Set up referral program. A worthy one – not $20.
Final word of wisdom, be special, be unique, remember why and for whom you started this business in the first place!
This article is contributed by our partner, Unmarketd, an analytics and technology driven online marketing consultancy. It is built and run by geeks and experienced venture builders, based primarily out of Dubai, UAE.