Insights From Our Experts

Takeaways:

• The more relevant your messages, the more successful your funnel will be
• Constantly gather information and update your approach when needed
• Find ways to reconnect with promising leads who have exited the funnel

Many small businesses approach marketing in search of the magic bullet — the single campaign or tactic that is going to catapult the company’s sales forward exponentially. Unfortunately, pouring lots of money into a solo campaign – no matter how great the exposure – is never as effective as a campaign of strategic, repeated engagement over time. 

As thrilling as that Hail Mary pass into the end zone might be, profitable companies know that sustainable growth is built on consistently moving the ball down the field. In business, that approach has come to be known as a marketing funnel.

By walking slowly and intentionally down the road with your prospects you can build a long-term relationship that leads to higher sales, lower acquisition costs, and greater retention – all yielding a healthier bottom line. 

The Marketing Funnel

Picture a cone with a wide opening at the top that becomes narrower in the middle, leading to a small tube at the bottom. A marketing funnel attracts potential buyers into the top of the funnel, gains their interest and trust in the middle of the funnel, and then persuades them to buy at the bottom of the funnel. At each of these stages, people who are not interested or not ready to buy self-select out, leaving you to focus on only the best, most high-value prospects.

Of critical importance throughout the funnel is relevancy. The more relevant your messages or content, the more successful your funnel will be at both attracting the right prospects and converting a high percentage of them into customers. 

Start at the Top of the Funnel

At the top of the funnel, your goal is simply to increase name recognition of your company. Some of the most common marketing tactics to move potential buyers into the top of the funnel are brand advertising and content sharing. Brand advertising is designed to plant the name of your company in your prospects’ minds, to make them aware that you exist and to connect you with a problem they want to solve. Content is also a very effective awareness-building tactic, because it provides useful information that helps a buyer begin to rely on you as a source of help. Content can include blog posts, articles, and free digital downloads designed to educate at a high level.

But there are other touchpoints as well, or places where your prospect can connect with you. On the digital marketing side, these include your website, your social media channels, search ads, display ads, and email marketing. Traditional marketing touchpoints can include direct mailers, sponsorship opportunities, podcasts, even billboards.

Encourage Action in the Middle of the Funnel

Once your prospects are aware of your business, your goal is to have them qualify or disqualify themselves based on their level of interest. There is no point wasting time and money on people who are unlikely to buy. Marketing funnels are designed to separate the wheat from the chaff, by sparking engagement and triggering some kind of action. Middle-of-the-funnel tactics invite the prospect to take some sort of action, such as clicking on an ad or a link to receive more information, such as a white paper, industry report, or newsletter subscription. 

A webinar is a popular engagement tool in the middle of the funnel. By presenting a webinar, you can provide more specific information about your business and its products and services, as well as invite questions from attendees that may reveal any barriers to buying. 

Tracking Engagement

In each case, you are seeking relevancy – messages and information that are clearly important and interesting to your prospect. How do you know? The great thing about digital funnels is instant feedback – you know almost immediately whether your message was relevant or not, depending on how many prospects open the email, click on the ad, read the post, or visit your site. 

The funnel should become an information-gathering and revising process that never ends. At each step, you want to offer your prospect something of value that is relevant. As you gather more information, you can use it to tweak and revise the content you’re serving up to be sure its relevance is constantly improving. 

At the top of the funnel, potential buyers may consume content on your website or social media account, or view an online ad while information-seeking. Although you don’t have a way to identify who they are at that stage, you can use ad retargeting to send them more of the same type of ads.

After viewing ads, you might then offer a higher-value piece of content, such as a product comparison sheet or buyers’ guide, in exchange for the prospect’s name and email address. Once they provide their contact information, they have moved toward the bottom the funnel, where they are typically considering a purchase.

Drive Prospects to the Bottom of the Funnel

From the start of your marketing campaign, your goal has been to get your potential buyers to the bottom of the funnel, to a point where they know your company, understand what it sells, are clear about the features and benefits it provides, and are ready to make a purchase decision.

Marketing tactics at the bottom of the funnel generally involve sales outreach, such as a phone call or email from a salesperson to answer any remaining questions or concerns your buyer may have. Communication is two-way at this stage.

The goal at the bottom of the funnel is to close the sale. Some of the more popular ways to do this include product trials or discounts, because, at that stage, the individual is on the cusp of buying. You just need to give them a reason to decide to do that now rather than put it off.

Relevancy Leads to Sales

While your funnel is constantly winnowing down your pool of prospects to the most likely buyers, it’s also worth including outreach in your funnel to reconnect with promising leads who seem to have left the funnel, or have stopped responding. Your marketing team should develop a “win-back” branch of your funnel to try to encourage those prospects to re-engage. Win-back tactics often include a survey or quiz, which serves the dual purpose of sparking engagement and yielding valuable information on where your initial marketing messages lost relevancy to this group of prospects.

Digital marketing’s biggest advantage is the ability to continue to gather information about potential buyers as they move down through a funnel, making the odds of a sale at the end more likely as time goes on. Businesses looking to make cost-effective marketing investments should be using a digital marketing funnel. At Liger, we focus on helping our clients develop successful digital marketing funnels; reach out and let us know if we can help you leverage this valuable marketing strategy.