A lot of planning goes into running paid advertising — "Where should I run my ads?," "What audience should my business target?," and more.
But perhaps the biggest question you’ll need to ask yourself is, “What is my
offer?”
Your campaign's objective and the relationship you’ve formed with your audience play a huge part in deciding what type of offer to make.
Every campaign you run should have a specific objective, whether
it is to:
- Introduce your business to an audience who has
never heard of you
- Convert a visitor to a lead
- Up-sell or cross-sell current customers
Based on those objectives, you can already begin to see that
each has a different level of familiarity. Introducing your business to someone new means they’re strangers. If they’ve visited your website but haven’t
converted, they’re acquaintances. If they have already purchased from you in
the past, they’re your friends.
This type of relationship forming has a name for categorizing your audiences. They’re broken down like this…
- Strangers = Cold Traffic
- Acquaintances = Warm
Traffic
- Friends = Hot Traffic
Each of these different “temperatures” of traffic will respond differently to different offers. By identifying which category
your target audience is in and what your objective for your campaign is, it’s
easy to see which type of offer will work the best to achieve the best results.
Offers for Cold
Traffic
Cold traffic refers to people who don’t know you or your business. This is where you find new blood for your business. If you’re just starting your business or list building, you must start here.
The goals of cold traffic campaigns are to:
- Bonus: Segment them
(Depending on the variety of
products or services you offer, you can tag specific pages so you know exactly which
product interests a specific visitor. Then make them a more relevant offer
later.)
In order to make initial contact, build trust and provide
value to these new people, you need to create an “offer” that matches the level
of trust they have with you.
Some good offer examples for cold traffic include:
- Lead Magnets
(While it is possible to ask cold
traffic for their information, the offer needs to be very, very enticing.)
Offers for Warm
Traffic
Warm traffic are people who may have visited your website or
have shown some interest in your business in the past.
These people are familiar with your business but weren’t interested
enough to buy at the time they read your blog article or watched your YouTube
video.
Goals of warm traffic campaigns include:
- Lead generation
(Get them to contact or engage
with your company.)
- First sale
(Don’t go straight for your core
product or service. These are often too big of a purchase for a first-time
buyer. Start with a something small.)
Now that these people are aware of who you are, it’s time to
make a move to turn them into leads or sales.
Here are some good examples of offers for warm traffic:
While some of these are repeated from the cold traffic examples,
if you have a more difficult sale, they can be used to further your
understanding of your prospects or just to continue engaging them and moving
them down the pipeline.
Offers for Hot
Traffic
Hot traffic is typically your customers. They know who you
are and trust you enough to buy, maybe more than once.
The goals of hot traffic campaigns are:
- Ascend them from a single buyer to a multi-buyer
With hot traffic, they know you pretty well at this point.
You don’t have to sell quite as hard to get them to buy again.
Here are some examples of hot traffic offers:
Conclusion
The buying process is fluid. You can’t just jump from
freezing water to boiling without warming it first. Your audience must go
through the process of getting to know your business before they jump right in
with a high-dollar purchase.
When setting up your paid advertising, keep in mind whom you’re targeting and at what temperature they are when deciding what type of
offer to present.
If you’d like help discovering what types of offers could
work for your business, call Sales & Marketing Technologies today at (407)
682-2222 for a free consultation with one of our marketing experts.