Finding Details in an Ad Funnel Breakdown – What's Working in Marketing?

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• Uncovering ad allocation across the marketing funnel for an outdoor deck brand, Trex 
• Three tweets about five types of marketing awareness, a Tweet strategy you should try on TikTok and TikTok's new keyword insight tool

How Trex is Targeting the Digital Advertising Funnel

Trex is a home and building company that predominately provides composite decking materials for contractors or DIYers hoping to build their own decks. 

Let's jump into how they're allocating ad budget across the awareness, consideration and conversion funnels. 

Advertising Trends

From October 2021 to December 2022, Trex invested $1.3M into ads.  

Awareness ads saw an investment of $565K. 

Consideration ads saw the lowest investment at $153K.

Conversion ads saw an investment of $651K. 

Platform Trends

OTT saw high ad allocation in awareness (47%) and conversion (84%) campaigns. 

Paid Search saw the majority of its spend in consideration campaigns (70%).

Facebook occupied spend in each funnel, with the highest allocation in consideration campaigns (13%).  

Display and Instagram only represented an average of 5% and 2% of the ad spend across funnels.

Advertising Tactics

Awareness Ads

Trex provides visibility to the viewer about the brand through emotional campaigns linking family bonding to time spent on backyard decks.

Suggestions to Test

• Win Big: Trex participates in the HGTV Dream Home, where viewers can enter to win a property with a Trex backyard. The landing page features an image gallery and information about the initiative. 
• Create Memories: Ads like this allude to memories that a deck can help create for prospective buyers. OTT ads connect raising a child to eventually hosting their wedding on the backyard deck. Search ads use the simple “Much More Than a Deck” title. These aim to connect with the viewer on a deeper and emotional level.

Consideration Ads

Trex aims to connect building a deck with plannable actions such as filling out a material cost calculator. 

Suggestions to Test

• Tangible Campaigns: 66% of the budget went to campaigns like cost calculators, colour selectors, and even a deck-building academy to help guide the creators from the comfort of their laptops.
• Intangible Campaigns: 34% of the budget went to intangible campaigns focusing on familiarizing potential buyers with partner retailers, product sets and offerings as seen in Partner Highlight, Color Introduction and Competition campaigns.

Conversion Ads

Trex directs the viewer to retailers to buy products or find Trex-licensed contractors to build for them.

Suggestions to Test

• CTA Switch: 84% of the budget featured videos similar to aspirational content in awareness campaigns, however, videos included “Lowe’s” or a “Home Depot” CTA at the end with a dedicated brand landing page.
• Funnel Follow-Through: In consideration campaigns, color selector and detail campaigns are used to make prospects aware of their options. The ‘order a sample’ conversion campaigns follow through on those interests by encouraging buyers to test the product.

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Here are three tweets you should check out this week:

 1. Five types of marketing awareness

 2. Try this Tweet strategy on TikTok...

 3. TikTok's new keyword insight tool

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