By Alan Coleman on 31 May 2013
This week our PPC Infographic comes from Location3 and describes a user’s journey from making a search query to making a purchase. Understanding this journey is very important in advertising effectively to your target audience. I was at the a IIA's Content Marketing Deepdive two weeks ago and Hubspot’s Kieran Flanagan was emphasising the importance for businesses to identify buyer personas in order to focus their marketing efforts to the right audience. Buyer personas are fictional characters that represent your target customers. By keeping your target customer in mind you can better refine your marketing activities to reach them.
If you have ever attended a lecture from any of our speakers, or spent much time on our website, you will have seen the purchase funnel. One of the great things about search marketing is that you can reach users who are ready to buy and are actively looking for your product. However, it is important to be able to tell the difference between people who are ready to buy, and people who are still researching the product. Understanding your buyer personas and how to reach them when they are ready to make a purchase is vital for you online success.
This week’s infographic takes us through the 7 steps of the journey from search query to purchase:
- The first step is the search query itself. A user makes a search for your product.
- Once the user has made a search for your product, the next step is to determine if this is someone who is going to make a purchase. If so, you want your ad to show. Each time your ad is shown is called an impression.
- The user then clicks on your ad and you are charged a cost per click based on your ad position determined by the ad auction.
- The percentage of times your ad was shown and a user clicked on it is called the click through rate. CTR is the biggest factor used in determining the quality score for your ad.
- Once the user is on your landing page, there should be an action that you want them to carry out, and a good call-to-action to guide them in the right direction. Once the user performs this action (e.g. signs up for a newsletter), they become a lead. This is known as a conversion.
- Each time a user clicks on your ad it costs you money. The cost per lead (or cost per conversion) is the average amount spent for each conversion.
- Finally, the user goes from lead to sale and makes a purchase.
Seven steps in the journey means 7 chances for the user to decide not to purchase from you. Understanding your buyer personas and their journeys to purchase is very important, but it is equally important to be able to find them at the right time and communicate effectively with them. Being able to target exactly who you want to requires detailed knowledge of the different available targeting methods and time to implement them so they work for you. If you think your AdWords account could be doing more for your business, why not enquire today for a free audit of your account? 
Rob
