Attract, Nurture, and Close Deals with New Customers According to Strategy
Full-funnel marketing is where your long-prepared strategy comes to life. It drives your efforts to produce profitable returns, instead of falling into being the dreaded inopportune, blindly-stumbling marketing campaign that we need to avoid. In today’s competitive market, every spending dollar needs a calculated and intentional direction.
With digital marketing in place, you can make sure to nurture leads as they come in and continuously funnel them closer and closer to the sale. And it’s called a funnel for a reason: Think about the shape of one from top to bottom. At the top, you’re marketing to the largest segment of your audience, with fresh eyes on your product or service. But as the later stages throughout the funnel require more engagement and participation from your lead, the size of your audience decreases.
Here is each stage explained, with details on how guiding a visitor through a strategic marketing funnel can effectively turn them into a customer:
With digital marketing in place, you can make sure to nurture leads as they come in and continuously funnel them closer and closer to the sale. And it’s called a funnel for a reason: Think about the shape of one from top to bottom. At the top, you’re marketing to the largest segment of your audience, with fresh eyes on your product or service. But as the later stages throughout the funnel require more engagement and participation from your lead, the size of your audience decreases.
Here is each stage explained, with details on how guiding a visitor through a strategic marketing funnel can effectively turn them into a customer:
TOFU
Just like actual tofu, the first time people are exposed to your brand isn’t necessarily the “meat and potatoes” of your full-funnel marketing strategy (I know, not my best—you don’t have to laugh). The top of the funnel is where you’re going to have your widest audience, but with the least intent. In order to establish this audience, it’s important to have various marketing campaigns in place that drive those who click to a landing page. A Facebook ad, for example, can be used to get people interested.
The messaging for these ads needs to be broad, introductory, and catch the attention of your target audience by addressing a problem they may be experiencing. Offer a piece of thought-leadership content, such as a blog, podcast, or guide, that they would be willing to provide their basic contact information for (depending on what your immediate goal is; for example, website visitors versus lead generation). This is where the first event of contact conversion will occur.
Then, make sure to put effort into optimizing this content and having it be easily found. This can be done through SEO (Search Engine Optimization) enhancements and effective paid media strategies. Keep in mind: These viewers might not be very likely to convert right now, but you’ve made them aware of your brand.
Content to offer: thought-leadership blogs, podcasts, guides.
MOFU
Say hello to nurture campaigns. The middle of the funnel is where you now have an audience that is already (at least slightly) familiar with you. Still, use this opportunity to capture their information in exchange for content, but this time, focus the piece on being more specific to your solution, such as webinars, white papers, templates, or calculators.
With this, you can categorize your leads into MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads) and SQLs (Sales Qualified Leads), based upon their engagement and apparent interest level. Especially in this stage, email campaigns are very beneficial. Usage of paid advertising is still very important, particularly to capture email addresses in the first place. But people are twice as likely to sign up for your email list as they are to interact with you on Facebook. Additionally, open rates for personalized emails shatter click-through rates for targeted ads.
Once again, it’s all about spending your money on the methods that work.
Content to offer: webinars, white papers, templates, calculators.
BOFU
Now, here we are at the bottom of the funnel, the actual “meat and potatoes” of your strategy. You’ve nurtured your targeted audience into opportunities, and now it’s time to close the sale. At this point, they are in the decision-making part of the buyer’s journey. The bases are loaded, and it’s time to knock it out of the park by showing that you have the right product or service to solve their pinpoint. This is where you offer a personal approach that might be necessary to secure the detail and explain how your solution outranks your competition.
One of the most important things to know about your full-funnel approach is that you have to set up your BOFU tactics first. By working your way up from the bottom to the top of your funnel, you’re making sure to have a place to push your audience through. If you had started with your prospects at the top and they engage but you have not set up the middle or bottom-funnel assets, they can easily drop out of the mix and look at a competitor before you’re ready and have the rest of the funnel to guide and nurture them through.
So if you’re limited on budget, start from the bottom and work your way to the top. You can work on familiarizing people with your brand with organic methods first if the money is unavailable when you start.
Content to offer: Schedule a live demo, a meeting, or a free consultation.
Other Tips
To help you with the process, include a few other strategies along the way.
- Think of your closed deals as new customers and treat them like a lead, nurturing them towards another sale.
- Make sure your sales team is aligned with your funnel’s ins and outs so they’re brought on board and in contact with the customer not too early, and not too late.
- Take advantage of the technology that exists to help you, like CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools and marketing automation platforms.
So, here’s our offer: We’re ready to get your full-funnel campaign up and running. Schedule a free strategy call with us today! (Quiz yourself: What part of the funnel are we targeting you at?)
