Using PPC to Find Early-Adopters


Crowdfunding

Your product is new. It’s cutting edge. It’s better than sliced bread. It’s SHINY! But how do you find early-adopter customers? Early Adopter: a person who starts using a product or technology as soon as it becomes available. Rolling out a new product …

Your product is new. It’s cutting edge. It’s better than sliced bread. It’s SHINY! But how do you find early-adopter customers?

Early Adopter: a person who starts using a product or technology as soon as it becomes available.

Rolling out a new product is a difficult gamble. You may know there’s an audience for it, but how do you reach them? Press releases and social media management are two natural strategies, but there is also a rich opportunity with PPC advertising. The Facebook Ads platform in particular lends itself well to targeting early adopters with its baseline psychographic targeting.

For the sake of this example, we’ll pretend that you’ve created a new type of bike lock that works with your mobile device. Bike locks have been around for years but yours is breaking new ground by involving a retina scan.

You’ve already determined that your basic customer persona looks like this:

  • Male

  • 25-34

  • Lives in the US

This narrows your initial audience down to a potential reach of 24,000,000, which is still way too large to utilize effectively. From here, you want to begin to utilize small details to find your perfect niche.

One of the easiest targets you can add is obvious if you know it exists: “Technology Early Adopters”. Facebook captures data by analyzing Pages that are liked, articles that are shared, and groups that are joined, as well as how users access their Facebook account. If, for example, you upgraded to an iPhone 6 immediately when it came out, followed pages like Ars Technica and Tech Radar, and have recently shared articles about robotics advances, chances are good you would be filed under this general behavior group.

This audience is still in the millions, so narrow it further:

Finally, consider the device that your ideal customer may be using. If your product only works with Android, target them specifically.

This brings your audience down to a manageable size that will allow you to get exposure without depleting a giant budget.

There are other modifiers you can use to refine your audience. For example, consider targeting users who have shown an interest in your direct competitors, or products that work in a complementary sphere (perhaps a well known piece of bike tech, or something tech-savvy people are following, like the Tesla Model III).

Once you have your audience nailed down, be sure to craft offers and landing pages which will appeal to early adopters.

  • Trial offers and demos can lead to positive feedback in social channels, which can help establish your brand early on

  • Limited-time or introductory pricing can create a sense of urgency

  • Coupons and discount offers can reduce the feeling of risk with new technology

  • Contests can help with lead generation as well as increasing your brand’s social footprint

  • Partnering with a more established brand for mutual benefit can increase your visibility to a new subset of potential customers

Whichever method you choose to encourage brand adoption, make sure follow through and customer service is prioritized. Maintain your social network profiles and respond to customer inquiries. Create informative newsletters or continuing offers that will bring return traffic. Develop your ecommerce platform into one that is easy for your customer to use. Once you have your audience, it’s crucial to continue to engage with them and meet or exceed their expectations, as by nature they are likely to leave you for the next big thing.

It’s also important to be an early adopter yourself. Stay abreast of new ways to find and target your audience by testing new features as they are introduced on your most successful ad platforms – in fact, if you’re among the first to experiment with a new feature, you can reap the benefits of higher CTR before your competitors. Don’t be afraid of A/B testing in order to find the most attractive combination of copy and images for top conversions. By staying ahead of the pack, you can find the customers you’ve been looking for.

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