ROI Boost: How To Marry Buyer Personas With PPC Campaigns

PPC has to be personalized. Generalist campaigns just don’t get ROI in a world where shoppers just don’t trust brands. We’re marketing to real, live people who lead complex lives. It’s time to create PPC campaigns that stand out from the static and engage with customers. 

While you can create a personalized campaign from the ground up, it’s easier to personalize with the proper groundwork. Buyer personas are a critical cornerstone of effective, personalized PPC campaigns that get results. 71% of businesses that exceed their revenue goals are using buyer personas. In fact, high-performing companies are 3 times more likely to invest in buyer personas and customer research. 

Buyer personas are a tool that every business should use when setting up a marketing campaign, and especially for PPC campaigns. Many businesses use personas for content marketing, but overlook their application for PPC. 

Why do I need buyer personas?

A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your current customers. Think of this as a dating profile that lists your customer’s identity, demographics, hopes, fears, and needs. The purpose of a buyer persona is to keep you grounded in the customers’ head while you’re creating PPC campaigns. 

In other words, buyer personas give you a competitive advantage because, instead of assuming what your customers want, you’re actually listening to them. 

Buyer personas are great for PPC because they:

• Help you quickly pull customers at the top of the funnel through to later stages. 
• Make your team empathize with the customer, leading to a better user experience. 
• Preserve ad spend by targeting the most relevant audiences. 
• Improve your PPC targeting by homing in on a very specific population. 

You probably already have an idea of who your customers are. Your team should still create buyer personas because they’ll serve as a shareable framework you can integrate in your workflow. If you need help creating a persona, check out the HubSpot Make My Persona tool. 

How to use buyer personas in PPC

83% of B2B marketers expect to use buyer personas in the near future, or have already created personas. Unfortunately, only 30% of all marketers are actually using their buyer personas. The issue is that marketers are unsure of how to apply buyer personas to the marketing process. 

Implementation is key, but it can feel like a challenge. It’s easiest to implement buyer personas in PPC when you add them during your campaign setup. This way, persona targeting is the automatic basis of your entire campaign. 

Kick off the next stage of your PPC campaigns with personalized, specific, and targeted campaigns. Use buyer personas to write effective ads, landing pages, and more. Follow these 3 tips to put your buyer personas into action. 

• Home in on your targeting

First of all, it’s important to put your buyer personas into your PPC platform. Otherwise, it’s going to be difficult to target the right buyers. If you’re using Google Ads, you can use the Audience Builder tool to upload your customer persona demographics. 

You’ll need to use tags to build your audience. From there, you can use Google Tag Manager to link Google Ads with your Google Analytics site data. This will give you a holistic view of your existing personas, as well as the tools to sift through the different personas that will be clicking through to your site. 

• Organize your campaigns carefully

Campaign settings and organization is another easy way to use your buyer personas. Keep in mind that each customer persona goes through a different journey to purchase. Organize your campaigns to appeal to each persona’s unique journey. 

Create your campaign and add one ad group per persona. Depending on your needs, you might want to create totally separate campaigns for each persona. By separating each persona from each other, you have more control over your ad targeting and messaging, personalizing the experience. 

Remember to add an ad group for Awareness, Consideration, and Decision stage buyers for each persona. This will help you tailor your ads to each persona’s needs as they go from the top of the funnel to the bottom of the funnel. 

After all, you could get your buyer persona correct, but if you approach a customer with a hard sell from the beginning (even if it’s personalized), they still won’t convert. Parsing out your ad groups in this way helps you personalize; it’s also great for attribution and tracking. 

• Keywords and messaging

Buyer personas help you tap into customers’ pain points. Once you understand what the customers need, you can tailor your campaign’s keywords, ad copy, and landing pages to reflect a customer’s deepest needs. 

Choose keywords related to customer pain points. For example, if customers buy your pain relief salve, you might assume it’s for muscle soreness. Your buyer persona research, however, shows that customers use your product for sore feet. Instead of targeting keywords like “muscle pain” you can target keywords like “foot pain relief.” 

When it’s time to write your ad copy, marry the customer’s pain points with your solution. For example, your Google Ads headline might say, “Sore feet? Take it in stride with Sore Away.” 

And make sure your keywords and ad copy are reflected on your landing pages. Try to create one landing page per persona, per funnel stage. If you have 5 personas, that means each persona has 3 ad groups (for each funnel stage), for a minimum total of 15 landing pages. This might require more upfront work designing these landing pages, but it will equate to more clicks, engagements, and sales down the line. 

The bottom line

Buyer personas ensure your advertising campaigns don’t fall on deaf ears. As a brand, you have to be the one listening to your audience—if you want anyone to listen to what you have to say, you need to open your ears first. 

Improve your online advertising performance by prioritizing your customers’ pain points. Differentiate your offer in a cluttered online world with ads so good, it seems like you’re a mind reader. 

Buyer personas give your business a stronger foundation for advertising ROI. Humanize the advertising process to bridge the disconnect between brands and consumers. 

You don’t have to go on this journey alone. Trust a team of experienced advertisers to manage your buyer personas and marry them with your PPC campaign. Get in touch with Logical Media Group now for a free PPC brainstorming session.