How the buying cycle stage should drive online ad creative strategy

Wheels Within Wheels

A classic problem for many marketing, advertising and design pros is how to determine which tactics, if any, should change in various campaign parameters for online advertising. This generally breaks down into three buckets.

1) Acquisition of new to file customers. These are people who have either never heard of your client before, or have heard of them, but have never shown much inclination (i.e., a site visit) to buy. Ideally, you should have the ability to split this group with your creative segmentation, but ideals aren't always reality. In any event, this will be your largest audience, and the one that marketing pros care about the most, since new to file tends to be the metric most cited in reviews.

Basic creative strategies: These placements should receive the biggest amount of branding in your online advertising creative arsenal. The story needs to be told before they will become ready to buy, and the old school rule of five impressions before trust still applies here (if not in greater numbers, due to some special challenges faced in online advertising).

If you have an evergreen offer (i.e., one that is "always on"; the most common of these is free shipping after a certain price point) that can be communicated effectively, that's pretty much all that you need to consider in terms of a header in these placements. You should research what competitors do in your space, match the site for branding, and think as much about reach and frequency as you might response.

Advanced creatives strategies: If you are combining acquisition with retargeting, a "pump priming" approach can be best here. These generally involve taking into account some advanced functionality (working search box, category deep links, etc.) that will help future ads have better dynamic recommendations. Keep in mind that your distribution will need to be sharp with its behavioral targeting bona fides (no past buyers or other noise in the mix), and that prime publisher distribution (no remnant inventory that is subject to a strong percentage of traffic that is not seen by a human) may be necessary to avoid viewability issues. If the rates from your ads are dramatically out of step with other campaigns, it's almost always the distribution, rather than the creative.

In short, if you are going to do specialized art for an acquisition only audience, make sure that the pain and suffering that you are going to go through (not to mention the creative time spent!) is worth it.

2) Retargeting of recent past shoppers, including those that abandoned a cart. Depending on how many individual products your client serves, retargeting with dynamic elements may be pointless or mission critical to an optimal campaign. What's also important to keep in mind is that each consumer category will have a varying degree of effectiveness in terms of time away from the site. Someone who is, for instance, in need of a seasonal purchase with a drop-dead due date in the 0 to 7 day window will not be an effective prospect past 15. The point is to think about what's right for the consumer in that moment, rather than adhere to a rigid brand or offer structure.

Basic creative strategies: In short recency, a simple reminder communication might be your most effective approach, though my experience has shown that strong "cyberstalking" approaches rarely work out well for anyone. Just show the product with an offer, make sure the distribution is good, and maybe work up some iterations to determine optimal design choices through testing; there's no need to reinvent the wheel here. For longer cycles, changing the message and overall unit might be necessary. Depending on how aggressive your competitors are, a stronger offer and more products that might be beyond the last item viewed could be warranted.

Advanced creative strategies: Depending on how lucrative the consumer category, larger ad units, expandable pieces, video and a separate mobile approach could be in the mix. You might also want to consider upping the frequency caps, or even using additional vendors to overlap distribution. Keep in mind that the same rules mentioned above, in re premium publisher distribution being preferable to remnant inventory, apply.

Finally, there's been a fair amount of "native element" creatives seen in retargeting in recent months, as that sort of approach has been getting more traction. If you have a direct relationship with a prime publisher, they might even offer to make some for you; if not, consider your social media output to be a primary source of new ideas. You should, of course, always test new work against a control. Native elements might also run afoul of your branding needs.

3) Reactivation of lapsed buyers. Ideally, this is a house list approach where you are trying to get past buyers to get back in the mix. As you might guess, it's the least important of the three primary online advertising list segments, mostly because the distribution numbers are never up to snuff with acquisition and retargeting. However, that doesn't mean it should be ignored, or given sub-optimal creative.

Basic creative strategies: You *might* be able to get away with your retargeting art in reactivation, but only if the buying cycle is more than three months long, and overly long consideration is common. Otherwise, you should be either modifying the art to go "hard" with your best winback offer, or "soft" with native elements, social media entry points, and content approaches that get the prospect to see the brand in a new and better light.

Advanced creative strategies: Seasonal reactivation creative can be very effective for calendar-based purchases, along with sweepstakes, social or email sign up offers ("X off when you join Y" can work wonders). Reactivation can also be a fine time for tell a friend offers, "faux dynamic" ads with top sellers, or testimonial approaches. It's a good idea to get ideas from the front lines in projects like this, as what worked on a sales floor to get a lapsed prospect to finally buy, might be something you can replicate here.

Notice that in all of these approaches, considerable liberty has been taken with branding elements, mostly in the favor of tactical features that can be isolated in test cells. That's intentional; the ideal test doesn't just get you a winning creative, it also gets you one that you can exploit in future tests. Finding flexibility with branding standards can result in more successful campaigns.

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You've read this far, so by all means, connect with me personally on LinkedIn.You can always email me at davidlmountain at gmail.com. And, as always, I'd love to hear what you think about this in the comments.