When developing a PPC strategy for your health/wellness/fitness business, it can be helpful to start by building out personas. What is a persona, you may ask? Here’s Hubspot’s definition:
“A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.
When creating your buyer persona(s), consider including customer demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals. The more detailed you are, the better.”
Below are a few buyer personas that I’ve outlined for our fitness industry clients, as well as some strategy tips for reaching each one.
Personas
Personas can be a great way to organize your marketing efforts in the health and fitness industry. You may think about your different personas in a way like the following:
Nancy The Fitness Novice
Who are they?
These are the people who are just getting into the health and fitness world. They have little to no knowledge, and are probably looking for information to get started.
Strategy:
Introduce this audience to your brand with high value information and resources. This group will value blog posts, whitepapers, infographics, webinars, and the like. Once they are familiar with your brand, then start to introduce them to products or services valued by beginners. There is usually a big boom in this persona group in January (think New Year’s resolutions).
Your targeting for this group will be high level, top of funnel search terms. Think of your “how to” queries. This audience may also want to start small in terms of purchases, so maybe don’t show them the top of the line treadmill just yet.
Mary The Maintainer
Who are they?
This person already possesses a baseline level of fitness and knowledge. They may already be healthy and fit, but are interested in maintaining.
Strategy:
Maintainers may already be vaguely familiar with your brand. They could be in the consideration phase of the buying journey. As such, they could already be searching for you. Try setting up a remarketing funnel to show them new content every so often.
Brock The Busy Lifestyle
Who are they?
These folks value health and fitness, however they don’t have much time to do it. Think of busy business professionals, those with young children, people who travel often, etc. They value efficiency, so get to the point.
Strategy:
When designing ad copy, be sure to point out why your product or service can make their lives better. Can they use your equipment to build a home gym to avoid commuting for a workout? Do you offer some meal planning services or advice to help them save time on prepping food? Tell them!
These users will be searching for fast workouts, easy meal prep, how to stay fit while traveling, and other searches in that realm. Try finding them on the display network or setting up a high funnel search campaign if you have the budget for it.
Frannie The Fitness Fanatic
Who are they?
These people eat, breathe, and sleep health and wellness. They stay up to date on current news and trends, and already have a great deal of knowledge. They’ll be on the lookout for the latest and greatest.
Strategy:
To keep these users engaged with your brand, offer them a newsletter sign up, whitepapers, webinars, etc. These are prime candidates for cross selling as well. If they’ve already purchased something from you, consider what else they might like to buy and remarket accordingly.
These users will likely be frequenting health and fitness blogs and websites, which can make great display managed placements. Display is a great way to introduce them to your brand and get them in the funnel.
Search & Remarketing Structures
For each of your product lines, think about the buying funnel. There are many versions of this out there, but here is one example:
Search
Your upper funnel campaigns will be focused on getting the user to be aware that your brand / product exists. Focus on “how to” or informational queries. You’ll likely be targeting people who fit into the “Nancy the Novice” category, but it’s definitely possible you’ll also get some other personas searching for something they’re unfamiliar with.
Display
Of course there are topics, interests, and keyword targeting methods available:
There is also an option called custom affinity audiences. When you choose this option, simply type in some keywords (interests) and websites that your target audience would visit.
Google will give you a quick snapshot of estimated demographics for your chosen targets.
Display Remarketing
Get creative when building our your remarketing audiences!
When I build out remarketing lists I create a table with the following columns:
- Time Frame (Cookie window)
- Pages Visited
- Conversions
- Ad Copy Messaging
- Landing Page
Use remarketing audiences to your advantage to move users down the purchase funnel. For example, if someone downloaded a whitepaper to get information, remarket to them with a product they might find useful, or a discount code. This is the time to introduce relevant pieces of content to your audience at the right time.
Remarketing for Search
RLSA is your chance to bid on terms that you normally wouldn’t in a standard search campaign. Think terms like “how to build a home gym” or “healthy eating” to attract those users back to your site.
Target users who viewed a product, say a treadmill, by using keywords like “treadmill reviews”, “best treadmills”, or “home cardio equipment”. These may be too broad for you to bid on for a new user, but someone that already knows who you are might be a valuable quick.
Wrap Up
One big takeaway here is to use the assets you have available and tailor them to your audiences. Instead of focusing solely on getting a sale, utilize white papers, webinars, and other offerings to attract customers to your brand. Information is valuable in this industry, and consumers will be loyal to a brand that gives out quality, free information.
Take some time to think through the personas you want to target with PPC, and plan out your campaigns accordingly. If you’ve already got campaigns running, how well do they align with personas and the buying cycle? Are you showing the right message at the right time?
