A solid advertising strategy is a great way to reach customers at every stage of the buyer journey. By using the right copy, creative, and offers, you can place the most relevant messages in front of prospects at pivotal moments.
The ultimate goal is to propel customers down the funnel. They should move from a general awareness stage (top of funnel) to a point of decision. These potential customers are primed and ready to make a move. Your responsibility is to help flip the switch.
If you want to learn how to get the right ads in front of the right audiences, we can help. In this post, we’ll provide a crash course in lower funnel marketing ads. You’ll learn the definitions and logistics while also highlighting best practices for successful campaigns.
What Are Lower Funnel Marketing Ads?
Lower funnel marketing advertisements are the type of ads that people see right before they convert. They are shown mostly to prospective buyers or clients. Digital marketers must be strategic with the creation of ads at the bottom of the funnel.
Top-of-funnel ads most often introduce browsing customers to the brand. They answer the “why” question through storytelling and positive connotation. The approach to different sets of ads throughout the buyer journey should be personal and targeted.
Why Are Lower Funnel Marketing Ads Important?
For lower funnel advertising, marketers must remember the importance of pushing customers over the proverbial edge. If the customer knows about the brand, how do you give them value? Lower funnel ads should answer this question.
By creating ads for different points of the buyer journey, you honor the fact that customer journeys are unique and non-linear. Some buyers are ready to move straight to the finish line. However, ads for most other buyers should nurture the relationship, provide value or incentive, and persuade them with offers that they would not otherwise have access to.
The AIDA Buyer’s Journey
Top Tactics to Use When Producing Lower Funnel Marketing Ads
To maximize your lower funnel ad results, we’ve rounded up tactics based on the best industry standards and marketing expertise. You can use these tips and tools right away to better reach buyers who are ready to make the leap.
Discounts
Incorporate discounts into your bottom of funnel ads. Discounts work well for customers who have been in the process for a long time. They give customers the gentle nudge or incentive they need before making a final decision.
By offering a reasonable discounted price, you’re giving these customers more value than they’ve seen when interacting with the brand. This fosters loyalty and creates a sense of excitement before making a purchase.
Seasonal Offers
As seasons come and go, give lower funnel customers something that captures interest. This is particularly true around holidays such as Christmas, New Year’s, Halloween, or even the back-to-school season.
When it comes to seasonal offers, customers receive a significant amount of marketing messages. As a result, make sure your flow is systematic, thoughtful, and precise.
Season-based low funnel ads can be effective for every type of business.
Whenever consumers are looking to make a change (i.e., the New Year), capitalize on their intention and serve low funnel ads.
Personalization
There are two aspects to customer personalization: product and location.
With existing ad systems and tools, you can determine the product or service customers were considering. This allows you to get more personalized with what you’re offering in a specific set of ads or in a full campaign.
Remember, when you create wide-scale “blanket offers,” there’s very little hope of achieving the greatest conversion possible. Blanket ads and offers aren’t set up for a segment or tailored to an exact product. When a company can personalize, it’s possible to retarget at a discount, which incentivizes the customer to leap.
Location is also important to personalization. For instance, if you’re hosting an event in a specific area, start marketing about 90 days out. People who already know about your brand will receive reminders, and those that are new have time to move down the funnel.
Urgency and Frequency
This is a very important truth when it comes to ads. Stating that a sale is going to end or expire on a specific day helps increase customer conversion.
Develop a regular frequency with your ad campaigns. Urgent messages will get in front of lower funnel customers on a continual basis. If lower funnel ads are visible only once, it’s not as easy to have the impact you crave to move the needle forward.
Lower Funnel Marketing Ads – Best Practices
How to Create Your Lower Funnel Marketing Ads
Start with strategic planning. During this process, your marketing team should think about which types of lower funnel ads you can start creating today to enjoy quick wins.
Below are some of our favorite questions to ask when creating lower funnel ads. These will help you achieve major results in a short period of time.
What Are Your Biggest Customer Objections?
First, sit down with your ad team and think about primary customer objections. Common issues include price, time to get started, initial investment, or any other objection. Get clear about your customer’s pain points before you create new ads.
Does the product not look good enough to potential buyers? If this is the case, use your ad to map out every single objection that would get your customer to not want to buy.
Think on the audience’s level so that you can respond with a message that’s compelling and convincing.
Customer Pain Points
Why Did Your Customer Decide to Reach Out in the First Place?
In the lower funnel ads, remind customers of their initial point of interest. What was their first pain point? Did they want to get rid of a specific frustration?
Think about the ways that your messaging or your brand mission aligns and answers that original problem. Then, use this information to generate an ad that does the talking. Don’t be afraid to invoke emotion or consumer psychology here.
What Data Can You Map to Ads?
In the internet age, business leaders and digital markets must get to know all the data that’s available. Are you aware of how to find every email address, phone number, and customer segmentation that you have?
Leverage a “database map” to pinpoint specifics. Then work on becoming proficient at studying your consumer data as it relates to advertising. Make sure to gather quality metrics around your data, and use lead scoring to grade prospects.
Focus your digital marketing around this information. You will create well-informed ads that are bound to perform at their maximum potential.
What Can You Offer?
By now, you likely know your customer objections, pain points, data, and interactions. Now, it’s time to think about all the different (and unique) offers that you can put out there.
When creating lower funnel ads, remember that every single product or service has a supply and a demand cycle. Map your ads to the needs of the organization while creating a productive cycle that benefits both the consumer and the organization.
How to Think About Lower Funnel Marketing Ads
As you consider the finer points of lower funnel ads, break it down into audiences. Who are your converters or non-converters? How can you get to know each individual buyer in a better, more personalized way?
To answer these questions, you can turn to things like email addresses and cookies. Fine-tune your retargeting strategy. Consider what you can offer to customers who have been around your brand enough to know what they are looking for and what they want to buy.
For example, imagine you own an electronics retail store. You know that you have a curated list of 30,000 website visitors who have looked at your ‘Television’ product category. You also know that your inventory is too high, and you’d like to push those customers to make a purchase so that you can clear out your stock. A solution is to offer 20% off on the televisions you want to move to those specific people who have previously browsed.
Always remember that you are helping and serving the customer with a great ad and price that they wouldn’t find anywhere else.
Important Elements in Your Bottom-Funnel Ad
The tips above are foundational for taking your ad performance to the next level. But don’t forget to hone in on the exact elements that are useful for making your ads unique. Invest adequate time, resources, and talent into the following components.
- Copy – The copy of your ad should be on-brand, enticing, and clear.
- Creative – At the bottom of the funnel, prospective customers already interacted with your brand. Continue forging a lasting impression with the imagery and graphics you choose.
- Offer – As noted above, think critically about the offers you can provide that serve both the consumer and the business. What do you need to push? How can it solve a problem for your buyer?
- Call to Action (CTA) – Regardless of what stage of the funnel your buyer is in, the CTA must be clear and concise. Don’t leave the customer guessing about what their next steps should be.
Bringing It All Together
As a digital marketer, converting customers is high on your list of priorities. After all, bottom-of-the-funnel marketing is where many of your marketing efforts shine.
Apply the tips and tactics in this post to your next set of lower funnel ads. Remember to measure ad metrics and results. As you analyze data on ad performance, you’ll have a clearer picture of which methods resonate with specific audiences.
Use this data to continue producing ads. Create a personalized journey for all of your customers–present and future.
