So, in previous part we discussed purchase flow, purchase flow stages and what do that mean for us. But the best way to see what can we do in different real world situations is take some real world situation and analyze it. What do customers want, what do seller do, and what sellers could or should do? Let us do that.

The situation

Need

So, this spring I wanted to ski in Europe. We are skipping stage 0 – the problem. The problem was work overflowed my brain. So, I wanted to ski in Europe and that was my demand. And I’ve started to look for – how to arrange that.

Solutions

At this stage as usual people use not only online-information. They ask friends, they ask experts, they use another offline mediums. But it is 2018 now. And of course people ask Google (or another engine).

It was three possibilities to arrange skiing in Europe:

1. To request services of travel agency.
2. To do everything by myself – use booking.com, aviacompanies websites and other online resources.
3. To join а company that already know everything – and guys will arrange everything.

Marketologist already can effect on customers at this stage. But during my searches I saw some ads with particular hotel offers, some ads with particular agencies tours, and of course, booking.com ads. But how can I consider tour offers or booking options if I didn’t decide where do I want to go and how I want to do it yet.

Actually I could. And sometimes I turned from my flow to see what do somebody offer. But I was not focused on that. Please understand me right, I was hot customer already – I really wanted to go away – but my attention was in another place. And I didn’t consider none of that offers seriously. So, people wasted their PPC or another budgets.

But if they would deliver me some valuable, useful content – some articles about how to arrange ski tours, wich option to choose, useful tips, useful recourses – they would capture my attention. And attention is a key to everything.

• Next, if you are travel agency you could describe me all the process, explain all issues (this is really hard, even painful process). May be provide some your pros, some comparing: this much will cost your self-arranging tour, this much costs our tour – your profit will be N Euros. Or even better, assuming I didn’t choose country yet, provide me some overview of skiing in different countries, pros and cons, useful tips. And then you can include (logically and naturally!) block with your offers. Create something interesting. For example, “French ski tours you’ll never forget”, “Special tours to extreme funs”, “Top day skiing / night having fun tours”. Be creative kinda “Capture my attention and take my money”.
• If you are aviacompany, I’ll be your client only if I’ll choose “Self searching” way. So make me direct my steps in your side. For now you can’t offer me your flights. But you can give me information how to arrange my tour by myself easy. At this stage your competitors already try to influence on me. So do the same, don’t wait. Give me instruction how to find and book apartments, some useful links. How I can transport my ski. Your competitors hide this information in impractical FAQ’s. Give me it in practical, clear form and you’ll get my gratefulness and my sympathy. It will mean much when I’ll be choosing seller. Then you can lead me to your offers and you’ll have advantage over your competitors – my sympathy.
• If you are earning by traffic arbitrage, you can deliver me some similar content to. And then direct in the way you wish.

Hope, you got main point. First you should give me something in right place / right time, capture my attention and then lead me thru your flow.

Coming back to our case, I’ve decided that travel agency give me only options they have. This is limitation of freedom. I love freedom very much. And their price include their service. I love save money to. To join a company option was not so expensive, but had even less freedom. I’ve decided to do everything by myself. Next step was to choose…

Product

Almost everything above can be applied to this stage to. You can target some relevant content and capture me, but you can’t give your offers and make me buy your tour at that moment.

By request “where to ski in europe late spring” I saw so many hotel offers, so many tour offers – paid and organic – booking.com ads, again. But there was only one overview of different countries and different resorts. Very useful, very convenient. I used to all my decision exactly that overview .

By the way, it was not travel agency website, it was not even travel website. It was some media portal. If it would be your blog, chances I’d buy something from you would be very high (more about it later).

It was three main options for me, but:

1. In Italy there was no snow already.
2. Andorra had too complicated logistic.
3. And France was ok – it was my choice.

So, I’ve chose France and Chamonix-Mont-Blanc. But till I don’t make my choice, please don’t show me different hotels and chalets at Chamonix-Mont-Blanc. You’d better give me some snow forecasts, some photo galleries, some feed backs, some viral videos.

But then I did my choice, only at that moment I start search

Seller

Some hotel, some chalet, some apartment, some residence. This your time. Now you can feel free spend your many on PPC and CPA and other things to reach me – that’s right time to do it.

So, you should already understand

Main Points

Don’t Be Harry

You should wait until client understand what he or she want. And at that moment you can bring down on him or her all powers of your marketing.

Because before that moment he or she will be not susceptible to your marketing. You could waste all your powers: your money, your efforts and most valuable asset – your time.

Second point is… you should guess…

Don’t Wait – Harry Up

Yes, you should wait with your particular offer. But at moment you can open it could happens will be another niche monster like Booking.com, which will grab all your clients and will leave you some dust. Even if you are in another niche there is always some monster there. Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple, X-Space. They are not terrible. They are wonderful and perfect. They make our life better, and everybody happy. Everybody except you.

But Booking.com, Amazon and Co can’t operate any niche. But you can. You can operate and control your particular niche. Capture client attention at early stage, intercept the thread and don’t let him or her reach point where Booking.com is a king. Direct people in the way where you are a king.

Not bad marketologist responses on market challenges, good marketologist foresees them. Excellent marketologist changes the market.

I wish you that. I wish you luck. And will see in next posts.

Almost any offline marketologist know about sales funnel (may be any one should know). This is very important concept in offline marketing – many strategies, plans, budgets starts from it. I don’t like to much than offline marketing terms comes online. There is another concept in online marketing. It looks very similar, but in fact it is different thing – because of its online nature. This is purchase flow or purchase chain.

Many business owners, and even marketologists came from offline don’t understand this thing and importance of it. Meanwhile understanding of purchase flow stages could separate very successful online business from budget wasting and even epic fail.

What is purchase flow? – It is very simple

Stage 0: Need

Everything begins from need or demand. This is alpha and omega of marketing (offline, online, any kind). When I need something I want to do something.

Let’s consider the scenario. I have a problem – I loose my hair. (This is very common problem of 40+ years old men). Actually a problem is a base of many needs. But problem itself doesn’t mean much yet. If I don’t care about that – kinda “Let it be, let it be” – there is not any need, any demand. But otherwise…

Otherwise I want to solve my problem. I want to save my hair. But I don’t know how. So from here starts…

Stage 1: Searching for Solution

I start to look for solution. In online terms that means, for example, I go to Google and start search “How to save my hair in 40+”. Wise Google gives me 3 ways. Let’s imagine:

1. Some chemical way – some shampoos, some creams, other products.
2. Some herbal way – some herbal shampoos, some herbal creams, other herbal products.
3. Exotic way – some voodoo, magic. There are almost always some exotic ways – People believes in a miracles:)

I have to make decision. So, I don’t trust chemicals too much. And, of course, voodoo is not my way. I choose herbal products.

Ok, we have pass first stage – we’ve chose our solution. I want use some herbal goods.

But there are so many herbal products available on the market. So, we need go further and perform…

Stage 2: Serching for Product

We go to Google (or some other searching system, or use another searching methodology) and analyze available products:

1. Herbal shampoo 1 is too expensive for me.
2. Herbal shampoo 2 has a bad feed back.
3. And herbal cream 1 is ok.

We’ve just chose product. And only now we can start…

Stage 3: Searching for Seller

Again, many of seller propose herbal cream 1. But:

1. Seller 2 has too high price.
2. Seller 3 has too bad reputation.
3. Seller 1 is ok – that’s our choice.

So, we have a winner. Congratulations! If you are seller 1, you’ve just sold me herbal cream 1 – may be two packs, or even three. So…

What benefits can we take of it?

That’s a theory. May be good, may be not. But theory by itself without practical aspekt gives us nothing. So, in practical way you should be:

Relevant to the stage

This is the main point.

Human brain is one-thread system (usually). And we CAN’ T JUMP OVER STAGES. We can’t choose product until we didn’t choose solution. We can’t choose seller until we didn’t choose product. And till we will decide what to choose – voodoo or chemicals – we will not consider any particular kinds of voodoo or shampoo types.

So, you should understand on which stage of purchase chain your potential client is (this is not so hard, but this is another topic) and provide relevant things: ads, landing pages, content, banners, etc.

It will be useless (at least) to tell man that didn’t choose solution (chemical or herbal way) about your wonderful shampoo 1; or tell man that didn’t choose product (shampoo 1 or 2) about your wonderful offers. Let you are selling both shampoo 1 and 2. He will not mind on you (generally). You will waste ads budget, decrease your CTR, loose your search engine rates etc.

So, you should provide relevant staff. But you CAN intercept thread. You can (actually you should) give man something relevant – for example some article about every solutions’ pros and cons – and after satisfactory explanation (with focus on your niche, of course) provide him path to content about different products – and then your offers by chain. More about that in part 2.

Second thing is difference from offline

Yes, like I said, online is different enough, very different. Offline, you are looking for customers. You’re setting your nets to catch some fish – your clients. You are using so many advertisements, so many marketing actions. Offliners call it “to warn” clietn. “Warming” is a part of some online marketing strategies. (Don’t miss with the branding – branding is strongly recommended, it should be always. But it is dedicated topic, outside this post.)

In online “warming” is not absolutely necessary. Many people comes online “hot” enougt already. They already want buy something, just don’t know what. On different stages you just need to provide them information – relevantly to the stage, off course. “Warming” actions could be too expensive, inefficient, even harmful (sometimes). On the other hand relevant and properly provided information can give you mush more. Offline marketing often is an art of sales (improperly) – online marketing very often is an art of analysis.

So, this are just few of considerations. But even them are not practical enough. Each situation is very special. There are many options available in each real case.

In next post we will take real world scenario – with real need, real solutions, etc. Using real world example it will be much easier to you to understand how can you behave in different situation. Because only practice is a criterion of truth.

Will see in next post. Can’t wait for.

Adventure Tours is one of the greatest Travel Agensy WordPress theme. It takes best from two worlds – it has nice, clean, responsive design and powerful functionality. We recomend this theme to all our clients. But if you purchased it and want to set up and customize we’ll tell you how to do it.

I hope you (or your partner) allready have installed Adventure Tours theme. You can install it like eny other Wordpress theme. Also how to install and set up Adventure Tours theme actually you can find out from oficial documentation. In this post we’ll tell you how to add and set up tours. You can also check out our video if you prefer it.

Working with the tours is one of most powerful theme’s options. And everything starts from Tour section in admin area.

So log in WordPress Dashboard of your websit and navigate to Tour section like on the image below. There you’ll see you existing (or demo) tours list. You can hover on eny tour in the list and use “Edit”, “Quick Edit”, “Trash” and “Preview” links to edit, quick edit, delete or preview your tours correspondly. To create a new tour you should use “Duplicate” link. (Notice. You cann’t use “Add New” button.)

Next you will see adding new tour screen with data from your old tour. You just need to delete your old data and input new one.

First input your tour title and description.

Now you can press “Save Draft” button to save your changes and then press “Preview” button to see how your new tour looks no. My one looks like this:

We have two general tabs on tour page: Details and Photos. You can add some additional tabs. For example, Google Map tab with Google Maps frame. To do this go to section below and press “Add More Additional Tabs” button.

In adding new tab screen, add tab title and some tab content. To add Google Maps frame click adding shortcods icon and select “External Services” – “Google Map”.

In new screen input your place coordinates and other options. And click “Insert Shortcode” button. After that save draft, preview your page and you will see new “Google Map” tab on your page.

You can add another tabs with different options via shortcodes: for example timelines or product carousels. To see all avalible shortcodes list and descriptions check offitional theme documentation.

Below you can set header options. For now you have hero image from old tour (as we are editing old data from duplicated tour). You can replace old hero image with your new one. To do that just press “Choose file” button and choose new smage. Or you can set to display photo slider in header section (you need to create some slider via Slider Revolution section under main menu). Or you can set another options – you can play with this settings.

And one of the most impotent tour settings is “Tour data”. In this section you can set tour price and another optios. This data will be used to filter you tous in tour search form.

First, go to the “Tour data” section and, in “Price” tab, input your tour price (per person). You also can specify “Sale price”:

One more importent option is Tour Attributes. This is is additional information you can specify for each tour. For example, window view, or tour duration, or lunch including. I would like to specify window view options: sea, sity center or mountains. Tour duration could be 1-3 days, 4-6 days, 7-9 days and 10+ days. Lunch could be included or not. This options could be used by your customers to find tour on their requirements later.

First you need to create attributes and their values or terms. Window view, tour duration and lunch including will be attributes. Sea, sity center, mountains / 1-3 days, 4-6 days, 7-9 days, 10+ days / yes, not – will be terms.

So, go to “Products” – “Attributes”. You will sea an attributes list – it is empty now. To add new attribute input attribute name, attribute slug (slag is special system notation of your attribute – only letters, numbers and hyphens are avalible, no spaces), attribute icon, other optoins and press “Add attribute” button.

You will sea a new attribute in the list. Now you should set its terms. To do that click “Configure terms” link.

You will sea terms list (it is empty now) right and adding terms form left. Add some “Window View” terms (name and slug).

You will see tham in the list. And now they will be avalible in the editing tour page.

So, go back to editing our Nice Tour page. Refresh page or save draft. Go to “Tour data” – “Attributes” tab. Click on “Custom product attribute” fild and select attribute name from drop down list – “Window View”. Press “Add” button.

You’ll see addind attribute value field. Click it, select your values and press “Save attribute” button.

Now your attribute will be added to the tour. It will be displaied on the tour page. And users shall be able to filter your tours by this option.

You also can specify your tour category, add / change tour main image (it will be displaied in tours list), and add / change gallery photos.

Once you’ll finish press “Publish” button. Your tour will be published on the website. Now my tour page looks like this:

In next posts I’ll show you how to set up tour lists and how to customize website home page. Believe me it’s easy.

Hope you’he enjoyed reading. Will sea in next post. And good luck. Take care 🙂

Google is powerfull organizatoin: huge, usefull sevices. Actually Google rules in Serch Kingdom. And it ask us follow its rules. Usually they provide us very usefull and important recommendations. But sometimes…

Sometimes you should be known there is not eny silver bullet. There is not solution that work in every case. And this is not Google’s fault. Thay can’t cast silver bullets to. And you should use your mind and follow your own considerations.
Here you can see a video if you don’t like read 🙂

What am I talkink about? Let’s consider the scenario – you are selling some blue things. There are different kinds of blue things avalible on the market. Some people prefer particular kind and particular brand of blue things. Some people just want high-quality / low-prise blue things (for example, somebody prefers particular sort / brand coffe, somebody simply like good coffe). So, you are coming in market with some new product and offering blue things from Canada. Very few people serching “blue things from Canada” exactly. But ones doeing it – your first clients.

You are going to Google AdWords (Google Ads soon) and fatching terms like “blue things from canada”, “canadian blue things”, “blue things from canada low price”, “buy canadian blue things” etc. You are creating ads and adding link to your shop page or some landing page. But…

But you want offer you blue things not only to “blue things from canada” serchers. You want target ads on people serching for “blue things”, “buy blue things”, “purchase blue things”, “blue things low price”. And now we have collision. Google recomends to create one Ads group per one page. But you actually have only one page – your catalogue page  or landing page (in perfect world you should have different landings for different auditory – but we’re considering simple scenario).

So, if you follow recomendatios you must have one ads group with terms:

“blue things from canada”,

“canadian blue things”,

“blue things from canada low price”,

“buy canadian blue things”,

“blue things”,

“buy blue things”,

“purchase blue things”,

“blue things low price”, etc.

But wait a moment! If I want to get high CTR I should create very relevant ads. – Yes, you are right. Tharer are less chanses that people serching “blue things” click on your ad:

“Perfect canadian blue things – High quality, low price”

People don’t know canadian blue things yet. So now thay don’t trust them. It will be better if you shall create ad:

“Nice blue things – Really worth you consideration”

and when people (they looked for just “blue things” – you remember) shall click on your ad and land on your page you’ll start to promote canadian blue things exactly.

On the other hand, if people already KNOW canadian blue things and are looking for tham – you HAVE to provide tham ad “Perfect canadian blue things – High quality, low price”. You’ll get CTR 3-4x higher.

So now. You remember – Google are cool guys but they can not cast silver bullets. Maybe yet. So, IMHO you can follow your own cosiderations and create one ad for the terms with “canadian”, and another one for terms without “canadian”. And complete tham with relevant ads (a few at least).

This is our experience. But I always sayes: “Another people’s experience is a reason to make your own researches. It is NOT a reason to make your decisions. You should make your decisions using results of your own researches”.

And Instead of Conclusion

There are another possible scenarios. If people search “blue things arizona”, “blue things cleveland” and you’re able to deliever you nice canadian blue things to Arizona and to Cleveland you can use it in particular ad groups.

Or you target people speaking another language (french, spanish, ukrainian, russian, etc.) but understanding english (french, spanish, ukrainian, russian, etc.) you can create different ads groups fou different languages keywords with different languages ads and one landing page. If you are too lazy to create different landing pages. But better create number landing pages. And you and your clients will be happy. I wish you that.