Adapting Content for All Customers: Content Across the Advertising Funnel
Have you ever heard the phrase “It’s not what you wear. It’s how you wear it”? It turns out this idiom applies to many scenarios beyond fashion, including Amazon advertising content.
While you may have the right Amazon advertising tools and targeting tactics selected for your campaigns, it’s all for naught if you don’t have unique messaging dedicated to each stage of the shopping journey.
The shopping journey became a concrete concept when E St. Elmo Lewis created the first purchase funnel in 1898. His funnel detailed four stages of the shopping journey: Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action (source). Since then, marketers have developed countless variations of the funnel to keep track of where their consumers are in the buying cycle.
Source: E-Commerce Opportunities: What, When, and How to Achieve Growth in the Digital Space, May 2020
Lewis developed this model because he wanted to help manufacturers not only understand consumers’ level of purchase intent and the actions they take throughout their purchase journey, but also how brands should communicate with consumers at each stage.
The purpose of the funnel has not changed much since its inception. While the avenues in which brands connect with consumers have expanded, ad content still needs to be tailored to how much the consumer knows about your brand as well as their level of desire to purchase within your category. After all, it’s not just about talking to the right consumer at the right time, but how you talk to the right consumer at the right time.
Global Overview believes in the power of full funnel advertising on Amazon, and we also believe it is critical for advertising content to resonate with consumers at every stage of their buying journey. We work closely with our clients to craft content that not only speaks to consumers who are ready to purchase, but also helps capture new customers and retain loyal shoppers. Read on to learn more about GO’s approach to the advertising funnel and the content foundations we typically implement at each stage.
Stage 1 – Awareness
What is the awareness stage?
The awareness stage is where brands first appear in a shopper’s buying journey. The consumer may know your brand, but they aren’t actively considering your category. They may also be displaying behaviors that hint at certain pain points related to your products or have attributes that align with your customer demographics.
While the awareness stage has a broad reach, it’s still a refined audience that has applicable interests and consumer patterns. At this phase, you must communicate in a memorable way through upper funnel media tactics, planting your brand’s seed in consumers’ minds and ensuring they don’t forget you.
What Amazon Ad tools should I use to grow awareness?
Amazon DSP
Streaming TV
Fire Tablet
Twitch
Audio
Online Video
To connect with Amazon shoppers who are not yet shopping your category, GO recommends incorporating upper funnel media tactics into your marketing mix. They work wonders as educational vehicles and incorporate sight, sound, and motion to excite consumers’ senses.
What content should I use at the awareness stage of the consumer journey?
There are two ways you can approach content for the awareness phase: sharing your brand’s story or educating the consumer about your products.
Telling your story is an excellent way to get new consumers to connect with your brand. It creates a favorability for your products and typically elicits an emotional response, making it hard for shoppers to forget you. In fact, storytelling can be up to 22 times more memorable than just facts alone, meaning this should be a critical portion of your ad strategy as you work to get the attention of new shoppers (source).
Product education should also be at the heart of your content as you work to engage new customers. You need to make sure your brand sticks in the shopper’s mind by illustrating your product’s problem-solving capabilities, why other consumers decided to purchase the product, and how the various attributes of the product improve consumers’ lives.
No matter which strategy you decide to implement, you should always include a strong call to action to draw consumers in.
Stage 2 – Consideration
What is the consideration stage?
Awareness is an important step in getting your brand in front of shoppers, but it won’t immediately result in conversion. In fact, customers need between 5 to 8 contact moments before a purchase is made (source). Most of these contact moments take place within the consideration stage, a phase where brands work to get consumers from simply being able to identify them to sincerely thinking about purchasing their products.
These customers are already researching the category, scoping out different products to determine which will best suit their needs. Because they are open to exploring a range of brands, you’ll want to go out of your way to ensure your advertising stands out – you don’t want to let customers slip through the cracks and purchase from someone else.
What Amazon Ad tools should I use for consideration?
Amazon DSP
Sponsored Display
Sponsored Brand Video
Sponsored Brand
Sponsored Product
GO recommends enacting in-market targeting, excluding past purchasers, and going after category & competitor terms to capture shoppers in the consideration phase. These tactics are best implemented through Amazon DSP, Sponsored Display, Sponsored Brand Video, Sponsored Brand, and Sponsored Product ads.
What content should I use at the consideration stage of the consumer journey?
Like the awareness phase, your content should be centered around educating the customer about your products and giving them a strong impression of your identity and purpose in the marketplace. We also recommend underscoring your product’s differentiation and the attributes that make you top tier within your category. This will distinguish you from your competitors and increase the likelihood that shoppers purchase from you.
Stage 3 – Purchase
What is the purchase stage?
Once you’ve hit the purchase stage, you will be connecting with consumers that are showing intent to buy your products, meaning they’ve either visited your product detail page or they have typed your brand name into Amazon’s search bar. But don’t rest on your laurels – just because they showed interest in your brand or clicked on your ad does not mean they will convert instantly. In fact, repeat visitors are 2-3x likelier to convert than first-time visitors (source). This means that some consumers may need a couple extra nudges before they truly commit to purchasing from you.
Customers at this stage have been researching the category for quite some time and they have enough knowledge to make a buying decision. Reinforce this decision through your advertising copy and tactics to increase the chances of conversion being signed, sealed, and delivered.
What Amazon Ad tools should I use to drive purchases?
Amazon DSP
Sponsored Product
Sponsored Brand
Sponsored Display
Tools like Amazon DSP, Sponsored Product, Sponsored Brand, and Sponsored Display will help you convince consumers to convert on your product. You can further encourage shoppers to buy from you by covering key brand terms and retargeting brand browsers who did not purchase.
What content should I use at the purchase stage of the consumer journey?
There should be a sense of immediacy in your advertising content when speaking to shoppers at this stage – your copy should be working hard to convince them why they can’t go one more minute without your product. The best way to accomplish this is through displaying your largest value proposition, demonstrating what makes your product irresistible and persuading shoppers to convert as soon as possible.
Stage 4 – Loyalty
What is the loyalty stage?
With businesses losing up to $1.6 trillion a year when customers leave them, it is critical that brands focus on maintaining a solid and unwavering customer base (source). This is where the loyalty stage comes in. At this stage, you will be reaching consumers who have previously purchased from you to either trade up on newer product formats or cross sell against your brand catalog to drive repeat purchase.
Consumers in the loyalty stage are typically well-versed not only with the category but with your brand. If they’ve had positive experiences with your products, they’d likely be willing to purchase from you again. Because of this, it is important to implement loyalty strategies that ensure customers remain faithful to you, whether that be getting them to sign up for Subscribe & Save (SNS), buy updated versions of products they’ve already bought, or consider purchasing other items in your portfolio.
What Amazon Ad tools should I use to drive loyalty?
Amazon DSP
Sponsored Product
Sponsored Brand
Sponsored Display
Amazon Advertising offers a wide variety of tools to help you stay connected with consumers including Amazon DSP, Sponsored Product, Sponsored Brand, and Sponsored Display. Be sure to target past purchasers to cross-sell and encourage SNS, as well as enact product targeting to protect your product detail pages.
What content should I use at the loyalty stage of the consumer journey?
Loyalty content is dependent on the context in which you are connecting with the consumer.
If you want to highlight a new product format, utilize a discount as it will be a key driver for consumers to upgrade. If the product has true innovation and uniquely beneficial attributes, this will increase the impact of the discount even further.
If you are cross-selling and the featured item complements the already-purchased item, illustrate the benefit of using the products together. If they don’t complement one another, compare the featured product and the already-purchased product to show the consumer what they are missing, making it a no-brainer to buy.
IT’S GO TIME.
When it comes to advertising, it’s not just about who you’re speaking to, but how you speak to them. Our team of content aficionados can help you craft your content to be as impactful as possible at each stage of the consumer journey. Let’s connect and find out how our content expertise can strengthen your brand’s approach.
ADAPTING CONTENT FOR ALL CUSTOMERS (series)
For more ideas on how to modify your content to be as relevant as possible for any type of shopper, check out the other posts in our “Adapting Content for All Customers” series!