Buyer Journey: Mapping Digital Channels & Metrics

My previous post on "Measuring the effectiveness of paid digital campaigns" inspired me to write this post. In fact, i encounter this question from my colleagues a lot that - What is an ideal channel mix for a digital campaign? Well, my answer to them is that it all depends on the campaign objective & the attributes of your target audience. It may not be necessary that all individuals in your target audience are in same phase of their buyer journey or not all might be progressing in a similar way. Some of them might be already aware of your brand, some might be considering other brand options just because they read a negative review about your brand and a fraction of your target audience could be on the verge of buying from your brand and are waiting for that final trigger. And hence, it may not be appropriate to just consider one or two ad units/channels for your digital campaign.

To answer the question on an ideal channel mix for a digital campaign, one should have the capability to segment the audience on the basis of where they're in their respective buying journey & then map various digital channels and their respective ad formats to those segments. On the basis of my experience & learning, i've created an illustration that maps channels & their respective formats with various phases of customer buying journey (Awareness, Consideration, Purchase & Engage).

Digital Channels: Buyer journey

NOTE: You may use channels mentioned in 'Purchase' phase in 'Consideration' phase as well, the illustration above is a subjective view on what formats work best in which phase. Regardless of the channel, the messaging used on these channels plays a crucial role & must align with users in respective phases for eg. a discount code migh work well for audience in consideration & purchase phase.

Now, once the campaign is over you might want to measure its performance. In my previous post - Measuring the effectiveness of paid digital campaigns i mentioned key metrics that should be considered for measuring the overall success of a digital campaign. In addition to that you might also be required to report digital metrics for customer buying phases. I prepared below table that lists down channel wise key metrics for each buying phase:

Digital Metrics: Buying cycle

Hope you find this information useful. i will look forward for your feedbacks in comments section below.