How can you use search engine marketing to target customers at different stages of their journey?

Understanding the customer journey is crucial in effectively leveraging Search Engine Marketing (SEM). This journey, from initial awareness to the final purchase, varies in length and complexity based on the customer's need and urgency. For effective SEM, it's essential to map out this journey, identifying the key stages, questions, and actions specific to your product or service. By doing so, you can tailor your SEM strategies to meet customers at each critical point, enhancing the likelihood of conversion and ensuring your marketing efforts are as targeted and effective as possible.

In search engine marketing, you can reach customers at different stages of their journey by adjusting your approach: 1. Awareness Stage: Use informative ads with broad keywords to catch attention. 2. Consideration Stage: Highlight benefits with more specific keywords. 3. Decision Stage: Offer discounts and use precise keywords for users ready to buy. 4. Retention and Advocacy Stage: Target past visitors with remarketing and encourage reviews. 5. Location-Based: Customise for different locations with local keywords. 6. Ad Extensions: Add extra info with extensions like links or location. 7. Ad Scheduling: Show ads when your audience is most active. 8. Negative Keywords: Exclude irrelevant searches to save money. Etc…

The customer journey is a series of steps that consumers navigate as they move from being unaware of a brand or product to becoming loyal customers. It typically consists of these stages: Awareness: The initial stage where customers realize they have a need or problem. They might not be thinking of purchasing yet, but they're beginning to explore. Consideration: Customers are actively researching and comparing solutions. They're considering various brands and products but haven't decided. Decision: This is the point of purchase. Customers have gathered enough information and are ready to buy. Retention: Post-purchase, the focus shifts to keeping the customer engaged, ensuring satisfaction, and fostering loyalty.

SEMrush will add search intention to your results, so you can see how close to purchasing the searches are. Also check out Monthly figs in your Google Adwords search. There may be fluctuations that show planning times for seasonal businesses.

Make sure you're using the right type of pages when targeting different keywords. For example, targeting that same keyword, "how to lose weight" would make sense to have a blog post targeting that keyword. If you're targeting a keyword "fitness equipment for weight loss", it would make more sense to use an ecommerce category page to target that keyword. If you're questioning what type of pages you should be using to target a keyword, type it into Google and see what page types are already ranking, and use a similar page type, but a unique angle.

Target customers at various stages of their journey through strategic keyword selection like - Awareness Stage: At this stage, customers might not know what they need. Target broad and informational keywords. For instance, if you sell organic skincare, you might target keywords like “benefits of organic skincare”. Consideration Stage: Customers have identified a need and are evaluating solutions. Target comparison and feature-based keywords. Loyalty Stage: For existing customers, you might target keywords that upsell or cross-sell. Advocacy Stage: Customers at this stage love your brand and might be looking for more in-depth information. Keywords such as history or community events can cater to these super fans.

Try to map every keyword to either a stage in your sales funnel or the micro-moments you are optimizing for. Once that is done, any future SEO activist (competitors analysis, performance monitoring, content creation) can be cleary mapped to a specific stage in the customer journey.

Another way to view this is like a sales funnel. Consumers that have yet to understand their want or need are at the top of the funnel. These searches typically consists of short tail keywords. For example, a consumer looking to remedy a toothache may start their search with toothache remedies. As the consumer begins to realize professional dental care is the best remedy their query’s shift from home remedies to professional dental care, eventually using more precise searches showing intent to book an appointment, as they get lower in the funnel. Understanding and leveraging this behavior can be advantageous in driving the consumer to convert.

target customers at every stage of their journey, from - 1. Awareness: Ad: New to product type? Discover the top-rated product! Landing Page: Comprehensive guide introducing the product, its benefits, and significance in the market. 2. Consideration: Ad: Compare the best products of 2023. Features & prices! Landing Page: Detailed comparison chart of different products with reviews, benefits, and pricing. 3. Decision: Ad: Ready to choose the best product? Exclusive offer! Landing Page: Emphasize the value proposition, showcase user testimonials, and offer a time-sensitive discount or bonus. 4. Retention (Post-purchase): Ad: Maximize your product experience! upgrade today. Landing Page: Highlight add-ons, upgrades, or complementary products.

Once you have categorized your keyword in different stages of the customer journey, look at the SERP features and the ranking websites. You will likely notice that keywords early in the funnel require easy-to-consume content like infographics or explainer videos. Keywords deeper in the funnel will probably require more in-depth text content. And keywords very late in the funnel are likely to focus on trust, safety, and anything else needed for a conversion. Plan and create your content accordingly.

You're also inevitably going to start picking up and showing up for other keywords that you're not necessarily targeting. Regularly check your Google Search Console impressions to see which keywords are getting impressions. This can guide your strategy even further. You can then decide if you should target those new keywords you're showing up for with the specific page that's showing up in the search results, or even create a new piece of content dedicated to those new keywords.

Search engine marketing is not always the best tool to reach customers at every stage. Especially for awareness, you might see more success with display advertising, podcasts, or other content formats. Use the insights form your keyword research to make informed decisions in every marketing channel