B2C Marketing Campaign Goals: What You Need to Know
The goal of any marketing campaign is to get a conversion. For B2C campaigns and eCommerce merchants, that conversion typically means a sale. But there are many steps in between points A to sale! that you need to consider for increased ROI.
In this post, we’ll cover the various B2C marketing campaign goals and the strategies and KPIs behind them you’ll want to deploy for maximum success.
What is B2C marketing?
B2C marketing stands for business to consumer. In contrast, B2B means business to business, and D2C means direct to consumer.
In B2C marketing, you’re typically pushing for a sale with more emotional language and lower-level involvement. So compared to B2B offerings, B2C offerings are usually much lower stakes.
While the B2C marketing strategies we’ll outline below may also work for B2B brands, they will need significant adjustment for the different audiences. For example, B2B audiences and B2C leads usually use different social media channels.
In B2B, you’ve got to get in front of and convince the right decision maker at the company. The good news for B2C marketers is you only have to convince one person to buy.
Common B2C marketing goals
The most common B2C marketing goals that eCommerce merchants set are often related to the following metrics:
- Building brand awareness
- Increasing customer engagement
- Getting more leads
- Increasing customer loyalty
- Generating more sales
- Boosting customer retention
- Lowering customer acquisition costs
Ultimately, each campaign goal will aim to increase sales and revenue long-term. This is true whether you’re a B2C, B2C, or D2C merchant.
Marketing strategies for B2C entrepreneurs
B2C marketing strategies will center around the specific campaign goal, whether it’s to build brand awareness, generate more qualified leads, or something else. The different B2C marketing strategies also help merchants prepare for sales, track progress, and anticipate customer queries.
It’s critical, however, that you have a good grasp of your campaign goal and its strategy. Otherwise, a bad campaign can seriously tarnish your online reputation. It’s much easier to generate goodwill among your customer base right off the bat than to reverse engineer a good reputation after it’s been harmed.
Given this risk, we recommend exploring as many B2C marketing campaign goals and strategies as possible. Use your marketing KPIs (key performance indicators) to track your progress and ensure you’re on the right track.
Marketing campaign KPIs
KPIs or key performance indicators are trackable targets that use data and numbers to indicate if a campaign is meeting a goal or not. For B2C marketing campaigns, the most important KPIs you want to track are the following:
- Site traffic — Site traffic KPIs convey the health of your website and where people are coming from online. Usually, B2C merchants track total sessions, bounce rates, referral traffic, and organic traffic KPIs.
- Conversions — Conversion KPIs tell you when a website visitor becomes a paying customer. Common conversion KPIs are sales conversion rates, subscriber conversion rates, and coupon code use.
- Shopping cart abandonment — Abandoned shopping carts are a huge problem for eCommerce brands. With shopping cart abandonment KPIs, you can find precisely where people are abandoning their carts in the buyer's journey. This can give you insight into why it’s happening and how to fix it.
Remember to always test everything. What works for one B2C brand or even a specific campaign might not work for you.
The sales funnel
All businesses, including B2C brands, must understand the sales funnel before crafting any campaign. The sales funnel also informs the buyer’s journey.
- Top of funnel — This is the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey and is when you’re introducing your brand and products to the audience. At this stage, people aren't familiar with your brand and might not know they need your products.
- Middle of funnel — This is the consideration stage. Here, your customers know they have a problem and are looking for a solution. You want to center content around how your products are the solution.
- Bottom of funnel — Finally, we come to the conversion stage. Once prospects reach the bottom of the funnel, they’re primed to buy. All they need is a little push in the right direction with some sales techniques like FOMO or discounts. Social proof and reviews can work in your favor here to get a conversion.
Let’s get into the most effective B2C marketing strategies and the goals that tie them together next.
#1. Prioritizing searcher intent in SEO
Getting leads is not enough. You need to get qualified leads. In essence, simply generating leads is just a vanity metric. Instead, you need to ask yourself if those leads are in your target market and are primed to buy.
That’s where searcher intent comes into play. Unfortunately, many eCommerce merchants fail to consider searcher intent when crafting their content for SEO. This requires you to understand the buyer’s journey and where people are in it when they visit your site.
Essentially, searcher intent refers to the why behind someone’s Google search.
For example, it’s late at night, and you’re starving. You don’t want to cook, but you’ve got a hankering for Mexican food. So, you Google Mexican restaurants near me.
Let’s flip that around. It’s early in the afternoon, and you want to save some money. So you decide not to eat out but instead cook dinner at home. So you Google easy burrito recipes.
The difference between these two searchers indicates the intent behind them. In one, you’re looking to compare options and buy something. In the other, you’re searching for information to solve a specific problem.
Create content for each phase
Ideally, you must create content for people in each phase of their buyer’s journey. Prepare content for people that are information-gathering at the top of the funnel. In the middle of the funnel, you’ll want to make content with comparison charts and articles so customers understand their options.
Articles that showcase your expertise are great for people who are already aware of your offerings and are close to making a purchase. In addition, content that presents your offerings as a way to dive deeper into the customer’s interests and fix a problem they're having is critical for gaining bottom-of-funnel conversions.
You have custom-designed material for each segment when you break down your content based on the target audience’s intent. You’ll be surprised — in a good way — by how well this particular marketing strategy works to meet your goals of generating more qualified leads and conversions.
#2. Run a retargeting campaign
Retargeting leads and past customers may sound expensive and complex. But the concept behind a retargeting campaign is relatively simple. And if done correctly, the initial investment into a retargeting campaign can quickly pay off with a handsome ROI.
Here’s the basic premise behind retargeting:
A customer makes initial contact with your brand, like visiting a particular product page. When the lead does this, a sequence is triggered. The next time they visit Facebook or log into their Gmail account, they’ll see an ad for your business.
Chances are, they won’t be ready to buy the first time they see an online ad from you. But seeing the ad keeps your brand and offerings top of mind. In addition, it helps them remember your company in the future when they are finally ready to buy.
#3. Social media marketing
Social media marketing is an excellent avenue for connecting with your target audience. Whether you go the organic or paid ads route, social media marketing can help you drive increased traffic to your website and boost your conversion rates.
Organic social media marketing is an excellent way to humanize your brand and connect with your customers emotionally. While it costs more in time invested, it’s usually cheaper upfront to deploy compared to paid advertising.
Organic social media marketing examples:
You’ve just opened a new Instagram account for your jewelry business. Congrats! Here’s what you can do immediately to start marketing on social media and build an engaged following on a budget:
- Follow 10 people a day who are interested in your offerings
- Make a brand hashtag and use it on all of your posts
- Include new, related hashtags every day to your posts
- Host an exclusive Instagram contest
- Share educational, how-to content
- Post inspirational content to build a community
While this example strategy will work for Instagram, it will also translate well to other social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter.
Grow your business with B2C marketing campaigns
Strategic B2C marketing campaigns will significantly impact your revenue and grow your customer base. No matter your strategy, you’ll drastically improve your business’s competitive edge and reach more paying customers.
Connect with your audience on a human level. Talk to them like they’re your best friend and not just a walking money bag. Creating content geared toward the searcher's intent will generate more website traffic, qualified leads, and conversions.
Ready to start your next marketing campaign? Get in touch with the eCommerce marketing experts at Lingble today, and let’s level up your conversions.