The current coronavirus situation has made many businesses reconsider and restructure their digital marketing. Some traditional businesses struggle to transition to 100% online presence, while others realised their approach to digital advertising or customer acquisition was flawed and definitely not pandemic-proof. With search volumes down and social media channels flooded with ads, many marketers have to find alternative and creative ways to drive high-quality traffic.
While running successful marketing in times like these could be challenging, there are creative ways to use and recycle everything you know about advertising and stay ahead of competitors. Here are some tips on how you could start driving new traffic using old data right now:
Try multi-channel (re)marketing. Using different marketing channels is a no brainer - it should be a part of most businesses' regular marketing strategy. Utilising different channels allows companies to tailor their message to different audiences and stay in front of their customers through cross-channel targeting and remarketing. The key to success is consistency, personalisation and tailored messaging - as your client moves through the sales funnel, your marketing should update and offer a new, relevant message which is directly applicable to them.
It's not just about remarketing and sales funnels, especially if you are new to using more than one channel. For businesses running exclusively social media and display campaigns, Google search ads is an excellent way to reach new audiences, actively searching for your product. How to make sure those are new visitors and not the ones you successfully market on social media? Exclude your current client base and website visitors from your ads. Before you do that, make sure this is the right strategy and you are not losing on valuable traffic to save resources on cost per click.
Instead of excluding people who came across your brand, you still might want to remarket to them instead. A good strategy for social-only advertising and remarketing is to target those who have engaged with your page or ads - offer them a discount or remind them how your product is better than what your competitors offer.
If your business runs search ads only, you could try social media, display or affiliate marketing. Those alternatives to search ads are usually cheaper and have the potential to capture new clients or tap into a brand new demographic you didn't know was profitable. On top of that, your existing visitors are likely to return if you stay in their mind while they browse social media or read content relevant to your products. To increase chances of converting returning visitors, analyse your account for patterns and build a buyer persona. Look for what most of your current converters do, intent behind their searches, who they are or when they are most likely to convert and apply the data you already have to your new campaign.
Introduce a referral scheme. A simple way to increase brand loyalty or encourage referrals is by reaching out to existing customers and offering a freebie, a gift cards or other rewards.
The Harvard Business review shows that customers obtained through referrals were both more loyal and more valuable than other customers.
Think of your current clients as affiliates or brand ambassadors. It is very likely your clients' friends have similar interests and would consider a recommendation by someone they trust. New valuable audiences could be just a few recommendations away.
Spy on your competitors. Make sure your ads campaigns are not missing out on high-intent keywords or entire audiences. Sometimes driving new traffic by using existing data might mean digging into your auctions report and bidding on competitors' brand names and their terms.
Your direct competitors may have a different approach to targeting keywords or clients - make sure you know exactly what they're up to and that you are not allowing them to dominate the market, especially if they utilize channels or keywords that you don't.
If you are using Google ads, a great way to find out how heavy your competitors are bidding on certain keywords is by using your Auction Insights report - this way you'll find out how much a certain advertiser overlaps with your campaigns, whether they bid higher than you and what search impression share they're getting. Facebook allows anyone to see the ads library of a certain page too, as long as the ads are currently enabled.
There are multiple tools to find out how much your competitors spend on Google, check out their ad copy, social media ads as well as figuring out their marketing strategy. Some great tools include SEMrush, Google Ads auction insights reports, Facebook Page Transparency and ad library, as well as your competitors' websites. Do they blast you with remarketing, if so, what's their messaging?
Use lookalike and similar audiences. Social media and Google ads offer excellent tools to target people who display similar interests or behaviour to your current clients. The best way to use those audiences is to add them as another condition to your existing targeting. Alternatively, you could use lookalike or similar audiences as your only criteria, for broader outreach campaigns, especially when your campaign goal is increasing brand awareness or driving traffic to your website.
Pretty much any ads account could utilise LAL or similar audiences, whether you're a retailer, a lead generation business or a home improvement service. The more data an ads account has, the bigger and better the new audience will be.
It is important to tailor your message to different stages of the client's journey, as well as ensuring you target the right people. Otherwise you risk coming across as spammy and wasting resources on users who would never convert.
Audit your search terms. This could be very useful to marketers using Broad Modified Match keywords. Depending on your data, you could be able to identify entirely different intent or new audiences behind searches. This is about brainstorming as much as it is about working with data. If you identify search terms to use as keywords, think about what else ties in with those terms and if there are additional keywords you could add to them.
Audit your placements & social platforms. If you run display and social media ads, chances are some websites convert much better than others. Make sure you exclude websites which burn your budget or social channels which don't convert as good. You can find this valuable information under the Placement section of your Google ads. On Facebook, you can break down performance by Delivery and then Platform.
Adding converting search queries will also allow you to bid more efficiently on those terms and optimise your campaigns for them separately, control and allocate budgets, as well as giving you the option to remarket or exclude repeat visitors and audiences on specific search terms.
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