Build Your Brand 101: Advertising Solutions for Different Steps of the Buyer's Journey

We recently surveyed more than 300 digital marketing campaigns to find out the concrete effects of brand marketing at different stages of the buyer’s journey.

In short, we found out that brand marketing has a clear positive impact on sales at every step of the buyer’s journey, regardless of what stage the customer is in or how well known the brand is to begin with.

Thanks to our research, we are now increasingly interested in focusing on brand marketing during each phase of the buyer's journey—especially the final steps—with a strong focus on sales and making customers stick.

In this article, we’ll go through some of the solutions we can offer that help build your brand at different stages of the buyer’s journey, as well as some common mistakes and how to avoid them.

Let’s get started!

Building your brand to new levels

Before you do anything, it’s important to understand how well your particular brand is already known in the market. Large, global brands are already familiar to most consumers, and thus by focusing on making your customers stick and strengthening your brand will eventually yield results.

However, if your brand is not well known, more brand-building is required. Sometimes this takes a while, and no brand is built in a day. The process may take a longer time but it’s worth it.

Due to this, it’s a good idea to divide your brand marketing goals into short-term and long term goals. What is realistic in the next few months, and what will take more time to accomplish?

If you’re building your brand from scratch, it might take a long time before your customers will start recognizing your brand. Even if your brand is well known somewhere, you will need to focus on building your brand first if you wish to enter a new market like Finland.

Your product exists to help your customers

Whatever your product is, the ultimate goal is that it solves a problem. Figuring out what that problem is is up to you, but by building your brand, the desired result is to be the brand that comes to mind first when a customer wants to solve a specific problem.

A very well-known example of this is Google, where the brand itself has become so well known that it’s already the solution to the problem. How? You don’t search for answers on Google, you google the question. The brand itself is the answer, and comes to mind first thing.

Not every brand can become Google overnight, but you do want to be the brand that comes to mind when your customer wants a solution. The better they know your brand, the higher the chances are of you being that solution. For example, if your customer wants to buy a new television set, which store will they go to? In that store, which TV will they pick?

The difference is simply whether your brand is top-of-mind or not. If it’s top-of-mind, it’s the first thing that comes to mind when your customer is looking for a solution. Otherwise it’s one option among others, and the competition is tougher. Which one are consumers going to pick?

Let’s go through what kind of advertising solutions we can offer to support all your marketing efforts and build your brand while you’re at it.

Advertising solutions for the awareness stage

At this stage of the buyer’s journey, your customer is aware of the problem they have, and is thinking about solving it.

During this stage, it’s a good idea to focus on the problem-solving aspect and offer your customer relevant information that will actually help them with whatever challenge they are facing.

One useful solution for this is native advertising. In native advertising, the layout of your advertisement resembles the newspaper’s editorial content and is placed in between news stories. The ad can also be displayed between articles of a similar theme so that you’ll know that the reader is already interested in the topic.

This way, you have the opportunity to share stories in an already reliable newspaper environment, and you have space to promote your product’s problem-solving qualities.

Another thing you can try is different types of display advertisements, including conversational display ads (a form of chatbot-type ads that will e.g. ask a customer a relevant question and direct them forward for answers).

We offer a large variety of data-driven targeted solutions that can be used to reach a certain target group, as well as target group packages. Display ads work well at this stage of the buyer’s journey because you can show them to those customers that you know are already interested.

Instream advertising, similarly to native advertising, is another option focused on storytelling. In these types of ads, you can present the problem-solving aspects of your product in audiovisual form—and by combining pictures and sound, you can build and strengthen the mental image your customers have of your brand and product.

Advertising solutions for the consideration stage

At this stage of the buyer’s journey, the consumer evaluates the different options that are available to them. If your previous marketing efforts have paid off, your company is hopefully among the options that come to mind during this stage.

It is a good idea to focus on higher viewability and more frequent ads during this stage to ensure that your message is conveyed and your brand is on your customer’s mind when they’re thinking about potential solutions.

Consider doing web display ads and banners for special offers that interest your customer and target them with relevant content and offers.

Another thing you can try is outstream video advertising. Similarly to instream video mentioned above, an outstream video means video advertising displayed in a banner spot in the entire high-reach Sanoma network.

Outstream video advertising is perfect for increasing the coverage of your video advertising, but it’s a good idea to use it to remind your customers—that already have you on their mind as a potential solution—that you have exactly what they are looking for.

Advertising solutions for the decision stage

At the decision stage, the buyer has decided on a solution category, but they still need to make the final decision to buy. They’re looking to gain confidence in their decision.

A very good way to catch your customers when they’re just about to make a purchase decision is retargeting display solutions.

A lot of consumers may see your ad somewhere but even if they click on it, they might not be ready to make a purchase decision then and there. With retargeting and remarketing campaigns, we can actually identify users that have visited your website before, and offer them customized ads and offers to support their purchase decision.

Through us, your ads can be displayed throughout the Sanoma network, which consists of trusted quality platforms that reach a wide audience within Finland.

Additionally, our survey showed that the further your customer is on their buyer’s journey, the better customized and targeted content generally supports their purchase decisions.

Something that is also good to keep in mind is that Finns consume a lot of media. While in Sweden only around 20% listen to commercial radio, in Finland the respective percentage is closer to 50%. Also, according to research from 2018, 58% of Finnish people own a TV set and watch television broadcasts on a regular basis.

Thus, in addition to digital marketing, traditional marketing channels like television or radio advertisements are an excellent option for brand-building at all stages of the buyer’s journey, and can make a huge difference.

Advertising solutions for the customer relationship management stage

Your customer has already bought something from you. So, how can you keep them happy and motivated to buy again, or even better, buy more?

In addition to other types of advertisements they see on the daily and the ones we’ve already discussed, we can use your CRM data (including email addresses and phone numbers) and model it against our users. This way we can target your customers through our network and offer them even more relevant content.

This content could then be regular display ads, conversational ads, videos, or anything you can think of, and whatever best suits your product and your customer’s interests.

3 common mistakes and how to avoid them

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1. Choosing the wrong channels

Maybe you have a brand-new, awesome product that you’re selling on the shelves at a store.

Finns love listening to the radio, so you decide to launch a radio campaign to support your sales. However, your product is brand new. Do people know what it looks like? The truth is that they don’t, and hearing the name of your brand on the radio might not be enough for them to buy.

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The best way to go about this would be to support your launch with audiovisual ads, for example digital display ads or informative native advertising articles where your potential customers can both get to know your product as well as understand its value.

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2. Keeping brand marketing separate from other efforts

Sometimes we run into situations where our customers have planned their entire campaigns beforehand, and are keeping their brand marketing separate from their other marketing efforts.

Finland is different from many other markets even in the Nordics, and Finnish consumers behave in a very specific way. As experts in the field, we have a lot of hidden knowledge about which channels work best and in what situations.

It would be ideal to be able to plan these efforts in cooperation to ensure that everything we’re doing is working towards the same goal. This means combining the right channels at the right time, and making sure that all brand marketing efforts are aligned with the rest.

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The ideal situation would be to go for a multi-channel approach from the get-go, and give brand marketing efforts the right kind of push at the right time.

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3. Focusing too much on the segments that already know your brand

Building your brand in segments that are not familiar with your brand can give you a significant sales boost.

For example: You have done a survey to find out which segments of your target audience are already familiar with your company. You then center all your efforts around that specific segment to make the most of it.

However, wouldn’t it be a good idea to boost your brand awareness within the segment that doesn’t  know you yet?

In this situation, we can collect a lot of data from your website to better understand how your customers behave when they buy your product. This way, we can target specific customers with the kind of information that is actually interesting and relevant to them.

We can also run the data through your CRM to remove all existing customers, and offer new customers even more relevant, targeted marketing.

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Build your brand among those that don’t know you yet, and also market to those that do know you by offering customized content that is relevant and interesting.

Whats Next?

In this article, we’ve only touched on the tip of the iceberg when it comes to brand marketing and all the solutions available at your fingertips.

Every company is different, and different rules apply. For example, we would need to know the layout and UI of your webstore, how your specific customers behave, and so on, to fully understand what advertising solutions we can recommend.

We have the same goal: to boost your sales. We’d be happy to help in figuring out how to do that together.