Let’s think through a hypothetical purchase journey. An individual is in the market for an air purifier, and she starts off by searching for [best air purifiers] in Google.
Your ad shows up in results, and she clicks on it, impressed with the mention of being rated No. 1 in product rankings as well as the promise of a 10% discount code. She completes a purchase, and a few days later, the new air purifier arrives on her doorstep.
That’s all a perfect brand/customer relationship story so far, right? Your ad messaging and targeting worked perfectly to reach a prospect at the right moment.
However, the story doesn’t end at the point of purchase. Just over six months later, the air purifier stopped functioning.
She then goes to your website to see how she can contact customer service. After a fruitless, painful attempt to engage an AI chatbot that won’t provide anything further than generic responses, she picks up the phone and calls the number on the website.
She’s then faced with a lengthy sequence of recorded messages and the need to push a few buttons before she finally gets put on hold to talk to a rep. Half an hour later, she finally talks to a “real” person.
After describing her problem, she’s informed that, unfortunately, since it’s one day past the date the six-month warranty expired, and she didn’t pay for an extended warranty, the company will not replace the air purifier.
Beyond frustrated, she then proceeds to write negative reviews for the company all around the web, and tells all of her friends and family never to purchase from them.
We’ve all likely faced similar horror stories in dealing with brands, leaving you with a negative taste after you have to deal with customer service, despite any positive initial interactions.
Even with the best-run ad campaign in the world, unhappy experiences after the point of purchase will make or break a brand in the long run, particularly in an age of free and open sharing across the internet.
According to Zendesk Benchmark data, 3 out of 4 consumers are willing to spend more with businesses that offer a good customer service experience, and 60% of consumers have purchased from a brand entirely based on expected service.
Let’s dive into the importance of building connectivity between customer service and paid media efforts.
Ensuring Truth In Advertising
If you make a promise in your ads, your company should be able to make good on that promise. Think about messaging points in the ad copy that tie to customer service:
- Money Back Guarantee.
- 1 Year Warranty.
- 24/7 Service.
- No Fees.
Screenshot from search for [heating repair], Google, January 2025Are you honoring a warranty or nitpicking over minute issues?
Do you indeed have staff standing by for emergency service after hours?
Are there any potential hidden fees customers may encounter despite the promise of “no fees”?
Additionally, think through the list of offers that you currently have in the market.
If you mention a discount in an ad, will customer service staff be familiar with that discount and know how to apply it without hassle? Internal training across the organization is crucial to the effectiveness of ads.
Gaining Ideas For Ad Copy
Feedback from actual users can be one of the most valuable sources for quotes and benefit points to mention in ad copy.
Customer service teams are on the frontlines, hearing from users about what they like (and don’t like) about your products or services.
Perhaps you can listen in to a few customer calls periodically, or you can look at survey data compiled about top items of discussion.
Here are a few questions to think about when reviewing the data:
- Are there points of confusion about what your product does that could be better addressed upfront in ad copy? For instance, if you sell software focused on small businesses and enterprise businesses are still signing up while finding it limiting, can you make “Small Business Software” a clearer part of ads?
- Are there positive experiences you can call out from onboarding processes? For instance, if you have people work with customer service to customize your software for their unique business application, you can monitor the average time involved in the setup and call that out in ad copy if it is a reasonable amount.
- Are there additional features you offer that people aren’t aware of until brought up in customer conversations? You can watch for these and work into ads where it makes sense.
Encouraging Reviews
Positive reviews can be a powerful selling point, and your customer service team is vital in the process of encouraging satisfied customers to leave reviews.
This can happen after phone conversations or email interactions, and people may be more likely to be willing to leave a review after a constructive conversation.
Once you have reviews available to use, you can incorporate these into multiple places, such as your ad copy, imagery, or landing pages.
For ecommerce sellers, you can include store ratings with ads. Microsoft Advertising can also include review extensions from select sites.
Screenshot from search for [shoes for sale], Google, January 2025These can work well as trust signals, alongside mentions of brands that these people work for if selling B2B.
First-Party List Building
As privacy restrictions and limitations on tracking continue to affect how accurately advertisers can target, building your own first-party data can be a crucial piece of marketing.
Encouraging customers to opt into communication can help you build a list that you can then sync to various ad platforms. Your representatives can be key to incentivizing this process of signing up as they deal with people post-purchase.
From that point, you can use the list to create lookalike audiences (see Meta’s or Google’s instructions), in order to target those with similar characteristics to current customers.
Additionally, depending on the size of your list and the fields available in your customer relationship management (CRM), you can segment out lists for categories such as high-value customers, those who have bought select products, etc., and build different lookalike audiences to which you can target relevant messaging.
You also may have the opportunity to upsell customers on other products or features they may be eligible for.
For instance, if you sell industrial printers, you can target a list of purchasers who have not yet opted into a printer servicing program. These ads can align with efforts on representatives’ parts to reach out to customers directly about this program.
Start Connecting The Dots From Customer Service To PPC
If you haven’t made much effort in the past to align customer service learnings, start doing what you can to bring alignment with what you’re doing on the ad messaging front.
Depending on the size of your company and your position, you may have more or less a say in how the actual relationships with customers pan out, but you can be a voice for honesty in ads and only make promises that are backed up by real experience.
Next, work toward communicating with your customer service team to gain feedback that can tie into ad copy, as well as reviews to feature throughout the ad journey.
Finally, see where customer relationships can encourage list building for future targeting and lookalike seeds.
The more you can connect to the work of an organization outside of just being in the bubble of “running the ads,” the more effectiveness you’ll see from your paid media efforts.
More Resources:
- 25 Best Examples Of Effective FAQ Pages
- The Small Business Guide To Reputation Management
- Winning At Retargeting: Tips To Reconnect & Convert
Featured Image: PeopleImages.com – Yuri A./Shutterstock
