The world is observing a major shift taking place in the paid search industry, with an important move towards relationship marketing. Brands can no longer be available to customers only when they’re ready to convert. Advertisers must now be ready and willing to provide value to their customer’s days, weeks, or even months prior to a conversion taking place.

The key to successful relationship marketing is to take customers on a buying journey, follow and be with them at every stage. An effective paid search must create brand awareness, generate demand, implement a buying decision, and finally inspire brand loyalty and advocacy.

Let’s take a look at some strategies for effectively leveraging paid search and social in a way that builds sustainable relationships, which ultimately drives ever-increasing amounts of revenue and profit:

1. 1. Always be there for your customers

The first step toward building sustainable relationships is being where customers are either searching for information or consuming content. Learn where your specific audience is consuming content, and gain an understanding as to what phase of the buying cycle they’re in while on those platforms.
For instance, if a customer is on Facebook but in the awareness or consideration phase, prepare messaging that focuses on a product’s benefits, and lead them to a landing page that provides useful information that leads to a buying decision at a later date.
Asking for the conversion too soon can scare customers away, which ruins credibility and eliminates any chance of converting them at another time through alternate tactics such as remarketing.
Customers also consume content on multiple devices such as smartphones and tablets. Creating device-specific campaigns is a powerful way to leverage paid search and social to drive additional business.

1. 1. Get more specific with micro-targeting

Micro-targeting reaches people at a deeper level. Deeper customer connections result in stronger loyalty to your brand, which increases the chances of winning business through your paid advertising efforts.
A few ways to micro-target are:

1. 1. • Demographic targeting: Many businesses have data that tells them which demographics make up their core customers. Creating campaigns with messaging based on demographics creates a hyper-targeted opportunity to reach your core audience.
      • Location: The key to effective geotargeting is to mine locations with the purpose of targeting smaller sub-locations. The more specific the sub-locations, the higher the probability of that traffic becoming paying customers, due to convenience in finding a place.
      • Interests: Are you trying to reach customers through their interests? For instance, if your business sells outdoor gear, are you targeting just general keywords like “outdoor gear,” or are you targeting people’s specific interests, like “fishing” or “water skiing?” Connecting advertising messages with people’s interests reaches them on an emotional level, which removes significant barriers to conversion.
      • Ad scheduling: Another way to think about ad scheduling is creating campaigns based on time of day. For example, creating a “lunch” campaign provides flexibility to just focus on lunch or another campaign on another meal offer. Ad scheduling can be used to as a micro-targeting tool to bring in the right customer at the right time.

1. 1. The right kind of ad messaging at the right time

A recurring theme throughout this article is aligning ad messaging to where customers are in their buying cycle. A successful message moves people to respond on both an intellectual and emotional level.
This concept is known as the elephant and the driver. The elephant reacts purely on emotion, while the driver uses intellect to make decisions. Effective ad copy is one that targets to both the emotional and the rational level which is the kind of messaging that drives people to convert.

Conversion paths maybe longer and more complex than ever before, but providing value throughout the buying process is critical to success. Being there for your customers regardless of whether they’re in the “buying mode”, builds a loyal following for your brand based on trust.
Keeping you up to date with the latest trends in search engine marketing in Dubai, Igloo helps you multiply the effects of your paid search, social and overall initiatives in digital marketing in Dubai, for a profitable 2017.

By Bassem Saber Digital Marketing Expert