Who In Your Audience Is Brand Aware?

I quit my full time job in 2015 to work for myself. I started my own agency and I had tremendous growth in my first year.

I’ve gone all in on teaching people how to do what I do for themselves. I love digital marketing, whether it’s Facebook, email, or Instagram. I’m a total nerd about all of it!

When it comes to what works for advertising on Instagram I see ads that focus on the top of the funnel converting as well as ads that work the bottom of the funnel (retargeting).

When I assess an account for a strategic partnership, I look to see if the audience is brand aware. This means: what do they know about me and do we have a pre-existing relationship whether on email or Facebook?

I also look at how I could put a message out to them that’ll resonate and get them to take an action. If it’s a cold audience, then I need to figure out how to start building that relationship from square one without spamming them.

That’s generally how I bucket out the different types of audiences and my approach to them.

I like using Instagram advertising as a channel because it has the best levels of engagement even when you’re running a sponsored post. Assuming your content is top level, then you’ll do well. If you’re not putting in the effort, of course, you’ll be ignored.

 

Working With Hot And Cold Traffic In Your Instagram Funnels

For me, I’ve found that taking a two-pronged approach to Instagram ads have been effective.  
Basically, I’m looking for people who are brand aware and already follow you elsewhere as well as people who are part of a cold audience.  
With the brand aware portion, you want to extend to them an offer that will move them forward on the customer journey. It’s likely this group will trust you enough to take action on a free offer for a lead magnet or video series.

With a cold audience, they don’t know anything about you so you have an opportunity to make a great first impression.

What I like to do is reverse engineer my core offering and create a lead magnet that will appeal to that cold audience in some way.

This could be more general than the lead magnet you offer to your brand aware audience. Often times you need to move these people an extra step on the customer journey before you extend to them your core offer.

A lead magnet that works

I also find running video ads that are less than 20 seconds of you flicking through a real life, hard copy version of your ebook (as a preview) work very well.  
Because it’s Instagram you can be creative with how you use images to attract engagement.

From the ad you link back to your website where you can offer your full-sized lead magnet.
Through the magic of pixel’s and targeting, you have the ability to track who followed an ad off the platform back to your website.

For the portion of the traffic that doesn’t convert to receive the lead magnet, you can retarget them with another ad.

At the end of the day, you’re building a pipeline for customers to move up a step in their customer journeys and relationship with you and your business.

 

Action Steps

  1. Create a lead magnet that will attract your brand aware audience and offer it to them through Instagram.
  2. Create a second lead magnet that’s more general that you can offer to a cold audience.
  3. Drive your traffic from the platform back to your website using creative carousel ads.
  4. Offer your full sized lead magnet from your site.
  5. Retarget any users that land on the website but don’t convert onto your list.

 

Result You Will Achieve

Traffic to your website from both cold leads and brand aware audience members on Instagram, by using lead magnets and ads.

Mentor: Paul Ramondo

CEO of Ramondo Media. Paul is Australia’s fastest growing authority on digital growth hacking and marketing, a sought after keynote speaker and the Managing Director of RamondoMedia.

 
This article is based on an EHQ interview with the mentor.