Considering the Buyers Journey When Advertising

By Lora Kellogg, CFE, Curious Jane

When franchisees want to grow their local businesses, many turn to Facebook advertising because the ads are affordable and Facebook makes it easy to reach your target audience. Franchisors and their preferred marketing vendors often offer local marketing packages using Facebook ads because of low cost and targeting options.

However, there’s more to building Facebook ads than just demographics. You also need to know where customers are in the buyer’s journey.

The buyer’s journey typically has three distinct stages: the awareness stage, the consideration stage and the decision stage. You want to let your customer know about your product or service and how it can help them solve their problems before they will buy. 

Facebook offers ads that address all three stages for local marketing. Here are the stages, along with what can be done to enhance your marketing:

1. Awareness Stage

Do your potential customers know your brand or product? Are you new in town? If customers don’t know you, then you likely would need a Facebook “Reach” campaign.

Reach ads are ideal for brand awareness. Because the messaging is broad and ads are not extremely targeted, Reach ads automatically cost the least.

You can run these ads on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and throughout the Facebook Audience Network.

2. Consideration Stage

Do your potential customers know who you are but need to understand more about what sort of solutions you offer? Then you might choose a “Traffic” campaign.

Traffic campaigns are designed for a narrower audience. They cost more than Reach campaigns because they encourage users to click on the ad, which sends them to your website. Facebook serves Traffic ads to users in your target demographic who are most likely to click on the ad.

You can run Traffic ads on those same various networks.

3. Decision Stage

Have you engaged with users who are ready to sign up for your services or purchase your product? If so, a “Conversion” campaign can help you close the deal by encouraging an interested buyer to convert.

In a Conversion campaign, Facebook’s algorithm targets users in your demographic who are most likely to buy from your online store or submit information through a form on your landing page. Because this campaign is very targeted, it is among the most expensive campaign options. Thanks to Facebook analytics, however, you will be able to track exactly how many conversions came from your ad campaign so that you can determine the price-per-conversion.

These campaigns perform best when set up to run for a longer period of time. They require a larger monthly ad budget.

Of course, your advertising budget is an important consideration in determining which ad campaign is right for you. As you move along the buyer’s journey, ads will become more expensive. Franchisors can help their franchisees by creating local packages that bundle different types of campaigns to reach users at various stages. Knowing your potential customers — and where they are in the buyer’s journey — will help you choose which Facebook ad campaign is best for your franchise location.

Lora Kellogg, CFE, is President and CEO of Curious Jane, an ad agency specializing in franchises. To find out more about Curious Jane, click here.