Why web advertising for e-Commerce is different from Brand Building

It’s useful to think about paid web advertising (eg.Google AdWords, Facebook advertising) as Brand Building vs. e-Commerce.

[ Note: This post was originally published on December 7, 2016. Due to the great interest of our dear readers the post is updated as of February 27, 2021.}

To recap the sales funnel is seen as Awareness, Consideration, Conversion in Google Search Advertising. The sales funnel before Internet was also known as the AIDA funnel. For simplicity, it’s good to think of the sales funnel as a three stage funnel of awareness,consideration and conversion. See how this three stage funnel is really quite similar to the four stage AIDA funnel and the buyer’s journey.

Five tips for screening sales leads for high value products and services

You start a Google AdWords campaign and you start getting leads. Lots of leads. But as you start talking with the leads they don’t seem to pan out. Worse, down the line after signing up many of the customers are really unhappy with the customer experience and tell their friends, post on social media and do great damage to your brand. Your brand that you built literally brick by brick or byte by byte- if you are a digital only brand.

Comparing the first date with the sales funnel stages

This is like saying that every first date from digital dating sites (eg. eHarmony) results in marriage. And the marriage analogy is huge in marketing theory. Our favorite is by Dwyer,Schurr and Oh (1987). They debunk the marketing myth of the”one night stand” in favor of the paradigm of”long term marriage.” Just as a marriage takes place after much due diligence on both sides, so does complex B2B and B2C purchases. Lisa Gevelber of Google explains how one customer searches 900 times, at different websites,before deciding to lease a particular car.Read: The Car-Buying Process: One Consumer’s 900+ Digital Interactions.

Customer knowledge and stage of sales funnel for complex solutions

Complex solutions and offerings are by definition well..complex…. and difficult to market.To us complex solutions are those that are difficult to explain in less than 2 minutes to a qualified prospect. Complex solutions also tend to be new to the market and sometimes new to the world. Sometimes complex solutions involve integrating several existing productsContinue reading “Customer knowledge and stage of sales funnel for complex solutions”

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