You launch the campaign and the results are…underwhelming. What went wrong?

You’re probably not reaching the right people. Or maybe you are, but you don’t understand what catches their attention. 

In 2025, you can’t afford to make assumptions about your audience. Audience personas (aka buyer personas) take the guesswork out of who to target and how to meaningfully connect with them—which can be the difference between a winning campaign and a dud. 

Audience personas are detailed profiles representing the people you’re trying to reach. In many cases, they’re based on your ideal customer—or, they could be based on someone who’s less than ideal, but has worthwhile potential. They contain everything from basic demographics to highly nuanced information about decision-making, motivations, barriers to using your product/service, and other behavior. There’s no one right template for creating audience personas, but you must carefully consider the information you’re including since it will inform your customer journey maps and help drive your marketing strategy. 

Demographics: This includes basic information about things like age, marital status, location, gender, education level, children, income, etc. 

Habits/Lifestyle: What does this person value? What are their hobbies? Where do they work? What are their TV-watching habits? What keeps them up at night? What do they eat? Do they exercise? These kinds of questions help us understand what motivates someone—and where to reach them. 

Goals: An audience persona should include information about what drives the person. It might be seeing their children succeed. It might be work related. Maybe it’s buying a high-powered jet ski. When thinking about goals, you want to try and relate them to the product/service you’re selling. In health care, a potential goal of your persona might be finding a doctor who actually listens.  

Barriers/Pain points: What issues are this person facing? What’s keeping them from using your product or service? Most important: How can you help them solve their problem? From a healthcare perspective, the problem might be an inability to quickly see a specialist. Or transportation to appointments. How can you fix that? 

Purchasing Choices: Whose opinion does your persona value? Do they read Google reviews? Do they listen to other parents at PTO meetings? You also have to understand the content your persona is consuming—and where that’s happening. (I.e., Are they on Instagram? What about Reddit? Do they trust social media? Where do they stream movies—and do they pay extra to avoid ads?) These factors all influence buying decisions.  

One of two places:

Unsolicited Data

This is information gathered from customers indirectly and aggregated into broad channel metrics. Website analytics are a big part of it (e.g., page views, bounce rate, click-through rates, time on site, etc.). So are measurements of social media engagement. Unsolicited data also includes relevant search information about your product/service. In health care, this means info on what kinds of healthcare-related searches are happening most frequently in your area. 

Direct Customer Interaction

While this data is often anecdotal, it can also be quite valuable. Direct customer interactions include things like customer surveys, focus groups, and documentation of face-to-face interactions. 

Your personas don’t just need to be memorable, they also have to be relatable. This helps them stick in your mind when creating a strategy and interacting with customers that fit within your personas, which gives useful cues about how to best serve them. Here are a few things you can do to help your personas stand out:

It can be easy to create personas based on uninformed assumptions—in other words, just filling in the blanks. Resist the temptation; rely on the data. And while anecdotes can be helpful for context, don’t put too much weight on one person’s opinion or experience. 

Don’t create too many audience personas. This will convolute your messaging and objectives. While there’s no magic number of personas to make, chances are good that if you’re creating dozens of them, you’re doing too much. 

Finally, don’t be content with your personas for too long. Adapt them as necessary. They must change over time to realistically keep up with evolving needs/wants/habits—because that’s what happens with real people. 

Now it’s time to think about creating patient journey maps. Learning how to use them the right way—and how they work together with buyer personas—is paramount for giving your target audience the solutions they want. And for making sure your next marketing campaign is saying the right things to the right people, driving action, engagement, and measurable success. 

If you need help creating patient personas and patient journey maps, we’ve got you. Reach out to us today and let’s get the conversation started.

Use quality ingredients, get a better tasting meal. 

Put in premium gas, enjoy better engine performance — at least that’s what our dads tell us. 

Our marketing engine gets much better mpg (meaningful performance gains, of course) with quality client onboarding. 

We find that the better we get to know you, the better work we can do for you. That doesn’t just mean the basics, though those are important too. We want to know things like your broader business goals, who your stakeholders are, and your quirky brand preferences. 

We asked members of our team what information they would like to know from a client when onboarding  in order to do their best work. See what they said below. 

When onboarding a new client, I start with understanding four things:

Once I understand the scope of the project, I’d begin to drill down and ask about brand guidelines and assets, competitors, key channels, etc., specific to the project. Finally, I’d like to know your preferred communication style so we can efficiently stay connected.

I would ask the client about their brand’s personality and voice, so that any new copy I write doesn’t seem disconnected from what came previously. For the same reason, I would request examples of previous advertising.

I would ask the client who their main competitors are, so that I could see examples of that advertising (and then do something different).

I need to know what the target audience’s pain points are, and (in plainspoken terms) how our product or service is going to soothe that pain and make their life better. What does your product do better, or faster, or longer? Beyond the tangible, rational benefits, does using your product or service offer our target an emotional benefit and/or move them closer to a higher-level aspirational goal?

I need to know what conclusion we want our target audience to reach and what action we’re calling them to perform. And lastly, I need a deadline. And probably a cup of coffee.

With websites, my goal is to create a site that not only visually represents your brand, but delivers the experience your users need. I would like to know: 

I agree with others that goals, objectives, key audiences, and competitors are important to understand as we get started on a project. 

Specifically for media/community relations, it’s vital to learn about their current relationships with the media and stakeholders. It helps set the bar for what a client knows about public relations and shows us the opportunities where we can lead and advise on the best strategy for their organization. I would ask the following questions:

In order to deliver a fully functional and feature-rich website, I would need to know some details about your current hosting and server  environment, as well as expectations on how the final product should function and be utilized by its users. The key questions I would need answered are:

Keep these questions in mind next time you’re writing a brief for your agency partner or putting together an RFP. Providing this level of information gives us the right fuel to make sure you get the best possible work. 

Already know these answers for your next project? Let’s get to work. 

That’s because people keep improving on it—which is exactly what’s happening with AI. We just happen to be in the stone-wheel phase. But not for long. 

AI gets better through repetition, training, and experimentation. It’s like a wheel that creates deeper treads and reinforced sidewalls on its own because a human told it to. Which means it requires thoughtful input from a human brain to improve.

Tools powered by AI are becoming more helpful—and relevant—to the work we do. And their implications on creating forward-thinking marketing strategies, smart websites, sharp designs, and more, are huge. Here are five AI tools we’re excited about (and you should be, too).

Figma is an upcoming web interface design/UX tool that’s changing how designers, copywriters, strategists, and programmers collaborate. It allows multiple people to work on a design simultaneously. With AI integration, it can:

Copywriters always want more time to work on big ideas. By eliminating tedious writing tasks with something like Quillbot, they can put time back in their day to do just that. Quillbot can:

SEMrush helps digital strategists create and optimize SEO and SEM campaigns. It’s all about “visibility management” when it comes to your online presence, and can be an important data-gathering and trend-mapping tool. It can:

Cursor is an AI code editor that can do extraordinary things for developer efficiency. Similar to how Microsoft Word or Gmail will autocomplete sentences, Cursor will autofill code using predictive AI editing. It also can:

If you work in account service, you probably take a lot of notes. Otter uses AI-powered transcriptions to make note-taking much easier (and help you pay better attention to the conversation), but that’s just the start. Otter also can:

Wheels, just like AI tools, are all about speed. Used the right way, AI does more than make you fast: It’ll free you up from tedious tasks so you can concentrate on doing smarter work. But it won’t replace the human element required to get there. 

Using AI tools to their max potential takes a strong foundation of knowledge and lots of experience—i.e., well-trained human brains. If you aren’t sure where to start with AI marketing tools, don’t spin your wheels. We’ll show you how to pop the clutch and take off.

Let’s talk about your goals today.

A few thoughtful tweaks, like color choices that pop for everyone, can make a world of difference. With inclusive design practices, we’re committed to creating festive experiences that everyone can enjoy. ’Tis the season to check your designs (twice) and make sure they are accessible across channels. 

Accessible design makes sure everyone—including those with visibility challenges—can view, navigate, understand, and enjoy digital content. In the online world, this means we’re talking color contrast that pops, a font that’s actually readable, and alt text for those that use screen readers. At Well Done, we follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)—the trusty rule book to keep designs friendly, festive, and inclusive for everyone.

Outputs may look similar, but designing for screens isn’t quite the same as designing for the printed page. Once the ink dries, print content doesn’t change much. It’s still important to consider colors and fonts, but it’s not quite as complex as digital assets. On the other hand, digital content appears different based on different devices, screen sizes, and lighting conditions (like midnight holiday shopping scrolls). With all these variables, accessible design becomes a must-have to give your audience the best experience, whenever and wherever they interact with you. 

Contrast is key to keeping your festive colors merry and readable! In this case, contrast refers to the difference in brightness, or “luminance,” between two colors, like text color and background color. This brightness difference is expressed as a ratio:

For example, black text on a white background has a contrast ratio of 21:1, meaning black is 21 times brighter than white, providing strong visibility and readability. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG AA) require a minimum contrast of:

Holiday hues like green, red, silver, gold, and blue need the right balance of contrast to stay accessible. Pair dark green with gold, or blue with silver. Use white text for dark red or green backgrounds for a classic holiday look that’s easy on the eyes. Check it twice with tools like WebAIM’s Contrast Checker to make sure your colors pop in all the right ways.

Love that red-and-green combo? So do we—but it’s not ideal for color-blind users. To keep everyone in on the holiday cheer, make sure these colors have enough contrast, or try pairing them with other festive shades that have the right amount of contrast. To improve accessibility, it’s probably best to avoid using red and green together in digital content.

Textures and patterns aren’t just for decorations—they’re a great way to make design elements stand out without depending on color alone. Plus they add a little extra flair, making your design visually interesting and festive.

Readable typography is the unsung hero of accessible design. Sure, holiday-themed fonts bring festive flair, but their tightly spaced letters and fancy swirls can be a bit of a nightmare to actually read. These fonts are great for a sprinkle of holiday charm in headings, but for longer text, opt for simple, easy-to-read fonts.

Go for high-quality, festive images that bring on the holiday cheer without causing sensory overload. Choose visuals that meet your goals but aren’t packed with distracting details. This way, everyone can enjoy the holiday vibe without needing to squint or search for meaning. 

Alt text is a must for those who need screen readers to engage digitally. Screen readers read the alt text out loud to users with visual impairments so they can understand what the image is showing. Craft alt text that sets the scene, like “A snowy village with twinkling holiday lights” or “Festive wreath with red and gold ornaments.”

Accessible holiday design isn’t just a box to check—it’s all about spreading cheer and making everyone feel welcome. Since implementing these accessible design practices, we’ve seen increased engagement, positive feedback from users with vision needs, improved readability for all users, and a notable boost in conversions. With thoughtful design choices, you too can create a more enjoyable and accessible environment for all your audience members. If you’re curious about more ways to keep your designs accessible, or if you need a hand bringing these ideas to life, we’re here to help! Here’s to a season full of warmth, joy, and accessible designs that everyone can enjoy.

No, we’re not in a Terminator scenario. But artificial intelligence and technology is in almost every element of our lives—and it’s not going away. 

I recently attended the Inbound Conference from Hubspot, and while it may be a marketing conference, there was no shortage of AI talk. The two are a real power couple, and I learned just how powerful their potential together is. 

AI isn’t here to replace us; it’s here to work with us. But it’s also changing everything. So, how do we keep up? How do we stay relevant when AI is rewriting the rules of marketing? Here’s what I learned and how we can combine our human creativity with AI’s efficiency to confidently move into the future. 

First, we have to understand that AI won’t magically solve all problems. It isn’t a replacement for human input, creativity, or strategic thinking. Instead, think of AI as a car, and you are the driver. 

AI tools like ChatGPT or Copilot are mechanisms we can use to be more efficient at what we already do well—but only if we give them the right inputs and guidance. Their outputs are only useful in the context of what we do with them. 

This type of mindset might be a shift from how we have come to think of AI. Yes, it is incredibly intelligent (whether artificial or not). But as organizations, Kipp Bodnar and Kieran Flanagan of Hubspot shared that it would be better to think of it as a junior-level employee. These softwares need training and guidance to understand what we want from them. “Onboard” your AI and give it feedback as you go so it can learn. 

Speaking of the feedback you give your AI, George Thomas of Sidekick Strategies shared that context is crucial. With other humans, context grants us better understanding. Context adds clarity and allows us to build deeper connections. 

With AI, context grants us more accuracy. The more information we can give to our technological “sidekicks,” the better. For marketers, this could include things like characteristics of your ideal audience, components of your brand, your marketing goals, or even previous examples. 

It’s not just any information, though. Despite AI’s power, you don’t want to just throw spaghetti at it and see what sticks. It matters how you share that information. (Safety note, please don’t throw pasta at any machines. That seems like a waste of pasta.) 

AI interaction starts with a prompt. As a human, we need to give AI context and instructions for what we want it to do. The good news is that if you’re a good communicator with people, you’ll be a good communicator with AI. 

Here’s what to keep in mind when you’re crafting your prompt:

Think of it this way: We may be working with machines to create things, but those creations are ultimately meant for consumption by other humans. AI is a middleman in our connections. Don’t lose sight of humanity on either end. 

While there is plenty of good and bad that can be said about the rise of artificial intelligence and technology, there’s a reason why we use it. It offers strengths that humans just can’t. 

On the flip side, we bring a lot to the table that machines can’t compete with either. As a team, each of our strengths complement each other and make for a powerful force. 

Humans excel in creative thinking. We bring empathy and establish trust through relationships. We set a strategic direction and drive innovation. In turn, AI enhances execution. It consistently and quickly interprets data to deliver insights at scale. 

Following this logic, it makes sense that humans and AI should have different roles in your processes. Despite its ubiquity, AI isn’t a good fit for any and everything. The parts of your process that require creativity, empathy, and human nuance need a human. For a marketing agency like Well Done, that looks like the initial concepting of a campaign or understanding an audience journey and the sentiment throughout. 

The parts of your process that are repetitive, data-driven, or very time-consuming are perfect to pull in AI. At an agency, this could look like proofreading copy, drafting keyword-driven ad headlines, or analyzing website performance. Of course, these tasks still need human guidance and oversight. But when humans are AI-assisted, it unlocks another level of efficiency and frees up our brains for the important stuff.

Constant AI advancements can be overwhelming, and honestly, sometimes scary. But like most monsters in the movies, it really just needs a bit of understanding. Approach it with curiosity and an open mind and you might just find that it could be your new (virtual) best friend. 

We’re only at the beginning of this AI era, but it’s already giving us plenty to talk about. The Inbound Conference was a great 3 days learning how to use this powerful tool to do better, smarter work for ourselves and our clients. If you’re ready to learn how it could help you, let us know. 

For creatives, AI is opening new doors for content creation, storytelling, and design. UX designers can use AI to improve user experiences with better data insights and personalized designs. Digital strategists can make smarter decisions with AI, helping them target audiences more precisely. For copywriters, AI assists in generating ideas and outlines, refining text, and optimizing content for specific audiences, speeding up the writing process. Marketers can use AI for personalized campaigns, data analysis, and audience insights to enable more effective and targeted strategies that drive engagement and results. I’m excited to share what I learned! 

The keynote session highlighted the importance of getting to know more about hybrid intelligence. In graphic design, hybrid intelligence can help designers come up with ideas faster and speed up the design process by combining AI’s quick data analysis with human creativity and intuition. For example, a designer might use AI-powered software that suggests color schemes, layout adjustments, or design variations based on data trends and user feedback. The designer then reviews these suggestions and applies their own creative touch, ensuring the design aligns with the project’s goals. 

Reinforcement learning was another key topic that explained how AI learns by trying different actions and getting feedback to improve itself over time. This process can be particularly valuable in graphic design and copywriting, where AI learns from continual feedback on design elements and writing styles. This approach ensures that AI supports human creativity without taking over, allowing for a more efficient workflow and a refined final product that still feels creative and authentic.

From improving content creation to addressing bias in machine learning to conversational AI, there were several other standout sessions at The AI Conference that highlighted how AI is transforming industries.

The AI Conference underscored how marketers can stay ahead of trends by using AI to elevate marketing efforts with advanced tools and responsible strategies. By using AI to automate repetitive tasks, I learned that I can work smarter, faster, and with greater precision across various tasks and projects. By integrating AI into my workflow, I can dedicate more time to creative work that truly connects with audiences and drives meaningful results for my clients.

Here are some additional conference takeaways that will help you get started with your own AI journey:

Whether it’s streamlining content creation, personalizing customer experiences, or automating routine tasks, AI offers limitless opportunities to optimize your processes and drive results. As a full-service marketing agency, our team can help you explore AI tools and integrate them into your strategy. Together, we can enhance creativity, improve decision-making, and deliver impactful, data-driven campaigns. Ready to talk AI? Get in touch. 

No matter your advertising goals, if you’re using terms like “election,” “voting,” or similar politically charged language, you’ll find multiple hoops to jump through to get those ads running. Digital ad platforms do allow political ads, but that doesn’t mean they make it easy. Navigating these challenges can be daunting, but with the right approach (and the right partner), you can ensure your ads meet platform requirements and avoid pitfalls. 

Before you start creating your ad, you’ll want to ensure you meet the verification criteria.

Each channel has its own criteria for running political ads, but the first step across the board is identify verification of the advertiser. Below is a breakdown of the verification processes for a few major platforms:

META (which includes Facebook and Instagram), has a few requirements for advertisers to run any type of political or social issue campaign. First, you must verify your identity. This process begins with META sending a code to your physical address (yep, good old-fashioned snail mail), which you must verify upon receiving. Once this step is complete, you’ll need to upload your ID for review, a process that typically takes up to 48 hours. Given the time required for verification, it’s essential to start early. We recommend starting the process 90 days in advance of when you want your ads to start running. 

Running election or political ads on Google involves a more detailed verification process. Your billing address must be within the United States, and you’ll need to provide Google with proof of your identity or your organization’s legitimacy through a list of acceptable legal documents. These may include things like government-issued IDs, incorporation documents, or proof of residency. Verification can take several days, so it’s important to plan ahead and submit your materials well before your campaign’s start date.

For political advertising on Snapchat, the process begins with filling out a form that collects information about your organization, your personal details, and specifics about your campaign. Snapchat’s verification is more streamlined compared to other platforms, but it still requires careful attention to detail. The platform reviews your submission and may request additional information or documentation before approving your ads.

Once you’ve navigated the verification processes, the next step is crafting your ad’s language. Political ads are highly scrutinized, and even small missteps in wording can lead to disapproval or, worse, damage to your campaign’s credibility. 

It’s important to avoid language that could be perceived as inflammatory, divisive, or misleading, as this can lead to your ads being flagged by platform moderators or even being reported by users. For example, phrases that imply absolute outcomes or exaggerated benefits (“This policy will solve all our problems!”) are often viewed skeptically and can lead to pushback. Words that seem innocent in everyday conversation might carry a different weight in a political context, so take extra care in your ad verbiage.

Platforms like Facebook, Google, and Instagram have strict guidelines about the content of political ads, and violating these can result in ads being disapproved or accounts being suspended. Make sure you focus on clear, fact-based statements that are both persuasive and respectful of differing viewpoints. The goal is to inform and engage without alienating potential supporters.

Each digital platform has its own set of rules and nuances, and understanding these is key to a successful campaign. Here’s a closer look at some of the major platforms:

Advertising in the political sphere on digital platforms is a complex, multi-step process that demands careful attention to detail and advance planning. Being able to navigate these requirements and put them together to create a successful campaign takes an expert hand. 

Well Done has been running political campaigns for years and we have jumped through every channel’s hoops (probably more than once). Let us help you with your future politics-related campaigns and get your message in front of those who need to hear it most. We’ll worry about the complexities of political advertising while you continue to do the work that makes an impact. Connect with us today to learn how we can best help you. 

“Get closer than ever to your customer. So close, in fact, that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.”

Whatever your opinion about Steve Jobs, we can probably agree on this: He was a genius when it came to figuring out what customers need. And that last word is really important. Steve wasn’t as worried about what customers want—after all, the general public can be pretty irrational when it comes to the stuff they buy. So he gave people what they needed.  

That takes a nuanced understanding of, well…your people.. Without that, your brand will never come off as authentic or relatable. So you’ve got to get what makes people tick. Wouldn’t it be great if you could really and truly get to know your audience with questions like:

You get the idea.

Going beyond surface level demographics (stuff like age, education level, location, etc.) with these kinds of questions help you deeply understand your people. And whether it’s a third arm to carry more groceries or a text reminder for a dental appointment, the answers give you the first clues into what they need. But unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), you can’t hire a thousand interns to follow strangers around asking a zillion questions about their lives, preferences—and all the potential touchpoints with your brand. That would be expensive and weird.

There’s a better way to target an audience—and really get to know them.  

A customer journey is a visual representation of how people perceive and interact with your brand as they progress through the stages of marketing: awareness, engagement/consideration, conversion, retention, advocacy. While it highlights positive interactions, it also shows your customers’ (and potential customers’) pain points. These could be anything from a delayed order to a late email response to a complicated buying process. 

There are many different customer journey models, and just as many ways to go about creating them. But generally speaking, every customer journey model has two key parts – buyer personas and journey maps

Buyer personas—when done the right way—help you target an audience by giving you an accurate representation of the people you’re trying to reach. There are many buyer persona examples, but yours should include the same information, ranging from basic demographic things to answers about much more nuanced questions—including the kind of stuff alluded to in the list above. In some persona exercises, it can be helpful to write a short narrative giving insight into daily habits and tendencies. You can create visual identities for buyer personas—and even their families—as well. Some models encourage you to give your personas names. We’re barely scratching the surface here of what you can do when creating personas to make them realistic, but check out the example below to get a better idea of what one might look like.

Your buyer personas will only be as good as the research that backs them up. You need to do extensive target audience analysis—and that starts with data. But where does that data come from?

Unsolicited sources. This refers to data you gather from people without directly asking them for it. It could be information about how they interact on your website: time spent on the site, bounce rate, page views, etc. Or it could be data related to how often and when they make purchasing decisions. You could look at whether they’re reading the newsletter emails you’re sending—and for how long. Unsolicited data sources are almost endless, and can provide crucial insights.

Direct interaction with customers. This includes everything from focus groups to customer surveys to documentation of interactions with employees at your company. Much of this research can be anecdotal—and that can be valuable, especially in developing a narrative when creating customer personas.  

Once you’ve built buyer personas, it’s time to map out their customer journeys. This is where it’s crucial to have a detailed understanding of all the potential touchpoints and communications your customer might encounter—everything from a billboard to your website to a word-of-mouth conversation with a buddy at the gym. Some of your buyer personas may start with a strong familiarity with your brand while others may have never heard of it. The goal is to create a theoretical journey that details how each persona might discover, learn about, interact with, and ultimately become a customer of your brand. And to document their emotional state along the way. You can see for yourself what an example of that might look like below. 

A truly successful customer journey doesn’t end with a purchase. It creates a lifelong advocate—someone who does the hard work of telling others how great your brand is. But of course, not everyone who interacts with your brand will get there. In fact, most won’t—and if most of your journey maps end in a lifelong brand advocate when you’re done with the exercise, you’re not being realistic.

The stages of a customer journey can typically be translated into five phases:

Awareness. This is your customer’s first exposure to your brand or product. It’s a chance to make an initial impression and educate them about what you stand for.   

Engagement/Consideration. This stage is your first chance to interact with your customer. It’s where they’re thinking about what they want to do, and likely comparing your product or service to similar offerings. And it’s your opportunity to convince them you’re the right choice.

Conversion. Actually making a purchase is a huge step in building a lifelong customer. There are plenty of ways to incentivize a first purchase, which can include a discounted rate, free trial, or helpful demonstration.  

Retention. Now it’s important to show your customer why they should keep coming back, and why you have lasting value. Keep in mind: Retaining a customer is much more expensive than finding a new one.

Loyalty/Advocacy. This is what it’s all about. A satisfied customer will tell others about their good experience, driving those people to the awareness stage to start a whole new journey.  

In short: To help plan your business strategy and customer relationship model going forward by understanding consumer behaviors. If your journey maps are accurate—and totally transparent about potential pain points and hangups—you’ll quickly get insight into how to streamline and improve your customers’ experience. And how to design new experiences that are exactly what they want. You can even use buyer personas and customer journey maps to identify and go after an entirely new base of customers in addition to helping retain the ones you already have.

There’s more utility, yet. Some organizations have lots of partners/vendors or subsidiaries within the company. Understanding the customer journey can help all of these partners get on the same page while giving them a better understanding of the people they serve. This builds unity as the organization works collectively toward a bigger goal.

Just about any organization that wants to grow and create more long-term customers. But the experience that’s created—depending on your industry—can be very different.

For example, a customer journey map for a healthcare network might include touchpoints like YouTube preroll spots, a sponsorship sign at the local fair, online scheduling portals, front-desk interactions, in-person doctors’ appointments, etc. In other words, the cohesive brand experience told as a linear story. As you might guess, doing the same thing for an audiobook subscription company would result in totally different—but equally valuable—journey maps.  

The last part of what Steve Jobs said: “…tell (your customers) what they need well before they realize it themselves” is where the true power of doing a customer journey exercise lies—and the ultimate goal. One needs to look no further than the iPhone to understand the incredible impact reaching that goal can have.

This primer on customer journeys is just a starting point—and you probably want to know more. We’re going to answer all of your questions about steps of a customer journey, the customer journey cycle, target audience types, and more as we continue to create additional insights on these topics. But if you don’t want to wait for those…let’s jump on a call to talk about your customers’ journey today.  

I didn’t really need new sandals for summer, but now that you mention it, Instagram, I could use a new pair and you’re right, I do love that brand. It’s like magic. 

Except instead of casting spells, we call it targeting. 

When advertisers put money behind a campaign on social media, they can set parameters for who is shown the ad. These parameters are likely to reflect the company’s ideal customer. The ad network takes those parameters and combines it with their own user data, runs it through some calculations, and shows the ad to users who are most likely to act on it. 

It’s a little art and a little science and most of the time pretty darn accurate. It’s not perfect, though, and advertisers are constantly working to refine that targeting to make their ad delivery as effective as possible, Well Done included. Part of better audience targeting is understanding the experience of that audience. And what better way to do that than to join the audience ourselves. 

Our Marketing Team asked five of our coworkers to do some research in their own feeds. In either TikTok or Instagram, we asked them to open the app and see how long it took them to get served an ad. They shared what the ad was for and how relevant they felt it was to them. 

We asked: 

Let’s see what they said. 

Senior Copywriter Evan was first up. He scrolled through his Instagram to find his ad. 

It took Evan 16 posts to find his first ad for a halloween-themed T-shirt. He rated it’s relevance as a 5/5 and we wouldn’t be surprised if he showed up to the office wearing it tomorrow. 

Watch Evan’s full experiment. 

Digital Strategist Rebecca took to TikTok for her research. 

After only 5 videos, she was served a paid partnership video for a summer dress available on TikTok Shop. Rebecca rated the ad a 3; she wasn’t necessarily in the market for the dress but would consider adding it to her wardrobe. 

See Rebecca’s results.  

We asked Senior Account Executive Amanda to check her Instagram feed for her ad. 

After 125 posts she had a sore thumb and a promoted giveaway to win one of two Amazon gift cards on Prime Day. She rated the ad a 3.5 as she clicked ‘Add to Cart.’ 

Watch Amanda scroll. 

Web Developer Eric checked Instagram to see what ads he might find. 

He saw 21 posts before being served an ad for a clothing store that he had purchased from before. He window shopped (get it?) and gave the ad a 4. 

Watch Eric’s full experiment. 

Finally, we asked Graphic Designer Macey to see what ads pop up on her TikTok feed. 

She saw 10 posts before seeing what we all go to social media for: dog videos. This ad was for pet insurance and Macey rated it a 4. 

See Macey’s results. 

Based on our very scientific data, we can confidently say that the results are…decent. On a scale of 1–5, our coworkers averaged a relevancy rating of 3.9. 

Audience targeting can be tricky, especially in today’s world of increased online privacy and the decline of third-party cookies. Social media is in the unique position of having robust first-party data on its users, meaning  platforms like Meta and TikTok are more likely to serve highly targeted ads. 

Digital strategist Rebecca Mckivitz explains, “Paid ads on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram target users based on their interests, accounts they follow, the content they engage with, and websites or profiles they have engaged with in the past. This is why if you click on a brand’s content once, it’s hard to escape further ads for their product or service. In the world of paid advertising you are now a highly targeted user because you are more likely to convert than someone who has never interacted with the product or service before.” 

We saw this in our experiment with Eric, as he was part of a remarketing campaign on TikTok as a previous buyer. That brand does not want to lose Eric from their sales funnel so they are spending ad dollars to stay top of mind.

Sometimes it seems like every other post on social media is an ad. Hence why we were a little surprised that between Instagram and TikTok, it took our five participants an average of 35 posts before they saw an ad. 

We credit part of that to the age range of our staff. Employees above the age of 40 were targeted with fewer ads, while users under the age of 35 are considered “prime candidates” for paid advertising due to their buying behavior. Studies have shown that the largest demographic of users across social media channels fall within the ages of 18–44.

Regardless of age, it’s important to remember that users don’t particularly like being advertised to on social media. Even if you have great ad assets, don’t flood platforms with them. No one likes love bombing. 

As organizations spend more and more of their marketing dollars on social media ads, the key to seeing a successful ROI is understanding your audience and effectively targeting them. 

“Social media platforms have a lot of data on you, and if a brand can set up the right recipe for targeting, it has a pretty strong likelihood of gaining your business,” summarized Mckivitz. 

Beyond our personal scrolling, we’ve spent a lot of years developing, iterating, and perfecting our marketing strategy when it comes to paid ad success. Let’s connect and talk about the people you want to reach. 

Here’s more on our experience with this Google  campaign type and our takeaways!

Performance Max uses Google’s machine learning to automate ad placement and drive more conversions for the advertiser. The program has access to all of Google’s Networks and can place your ads across the various locations. It will ultimately choose which ad placement has the highest probability of accomplishing your campaign goals with your target audience. 

Performance Max can serve ads on:

Using the assets you supply, PMax will mix and match to build ads that are most likely to resonate with your audience. It will use your audience signals as a starting point to adjust and calibrate ads and placement to accomplish your campaign goal.  

We started our Performance Max Campaign two months before 2024 Primary Election day here in Indiana, with the  goal of increasing traffic to the Indy Votes site. We fed the campaign “Indy Votes” imagery, headlines, and descriptions with key dates and general voting information. Our CTA encouraged users to “Learn More” by visiting the Indy Votes site. 

Our setup parameters included the following two focuses:

Here is how our campaign ultimately performed under the direction of Google’s machine learning.

We compared this performance with benchmark campaign performance across industries and found that our campaign’s CTR was 4% higher than average and our CPC of $0.31 was much lower than the average of $0.68.

Performance Max pushed the following combination of assets the most, due to high engagement.

With access to all of Google’s Network, their AI chose the following placements for our campaign.

Once the votes were counted, these were our biggest takeaways from using this new software:. 

Overall, we’re fans of Performance Max and believe it’s a great option to increase the reach of your campaign. However, we do recommend taking the time to review your PMax performance alongside your Google Analytics performance to make sure it is indeed working toward your goals. Google’s AI can make smart decisions for your campaign, but no AI is perfect, and a human eye is needed to catch mistakes.

Our team has pretty good mistake-catching eyes and a knack for high-performing digital ads across channels. If you’re ready to put Performance Max to work for you, get in touch.