Now that you have reviewed your audience persona, explored which platform may work best for you, and learned more about how you can optimize your content, it’s time to bring it all together to build a digital marketing funnel that helps you achieve your results.
What is a Digital Marketing Funnel?
A marketing funnel provides you with a step by step approach to develop attention, interest and desire within your target market for subsequent actions that lead them to become your customers. The funnel approach is important because it helps you track the steps a customer take before converting. That’s both beneficial and effective because it helps you optimize your buyer experience process, and also identifies any gaps there may be in the road map to customer conversion.
Assembling the Funnel
The topics we discussed in our previous blogs play a very distinct role in assembling and setting up your digital marketing funnel.
From top to bottom, your funnel comprises of the main strategic points that make up your digital marketing strategy – a lot like a jigsaw puzzle. Each step plays an important role in bringing your customer to you and defining their experience. Your task during this downtime is to review each step and ask yourself if any of them are breaking, because if yes, then you can step back and see how the gap can be filled to optimize your efforts to generate maximum results.
Let’s take a look at each step of the funnel, whether you’re optimizing it properly or not, and what part of your effort needs to stay or go.
Top of the Funnel: Awareness
The top of the funnel is the very initial stage when you’re generating awareness for your brand by engaging your customers, spreading word of mouth or creating intrigue within the market.
The efforts you put in during the awareness stage set up a precedent for your future plans and also create the first impression for your brand in the market. Thus, you need to make sure you’re not making the following mistakes while reviewing or setting up the beginning of your funnel:
Targeting Mismatch:
As discussed in our first blog, targeting or content mismatch can cost you your efforts, budget and even content. If your content doesn’t connect with your audience, you cannot expect to achieve the results you’re trying to get.
Platform Selection:
Your marketing platform is your home ground – the place where you can highlight your advantages and USPs to attract customers to your product. But if you’ve chosen the wrong home-ground, your business may suffer.
To make sure that you’re not making the above mistakes, you need to figure out the right execution strategy for your content in this stage.
Content Execution Strategy:
Idea, content and execution. These three components can define your marketing strategy, especially during the awareness stage. The right blend of all three can take your message to your ideal audience, but any misstep can lead to your top funnel strategy failing.
Thus, whether you’re focusing on generating footfall or engagement for your brand, the right blend of the above mentioned components can help you create an effective top-funnel strategy, which can then take your customers to the next level to generate interest and desire.
Middle of the Funnel: Interest and Desire
The middle tier of your process helps you generate interest and desire for your product within the market. This includes email or content subscriptions, lead generation, or communication initiation from the buyer’s end. The content you generate or users you target within the middle tier can convert into final customers, but for that, their interest needs to be triggered. However, any of the following may be a sign that your middle-tier approach is not working as you’d like it to:
Low Social Connectivity:
Say, you’ve successfully grabbed your audience’s attention and they’ve visited your website or liked your page. But despite that, they aren’t taking any actions that can help you connect with them. This may be because your content isn’t inspiring them, or there’s a gap in communication from your end. You need to make sure that the content you upload follows the content generation rules mentioned in our previous blog, and that your brand seems human and friendly to the user.
Unqualified Leads:
Another way to check if your mid-funnel strategy is working or not is to analyze the leads you’re getting through your social media or website. By leads, we mean messages, queries, or subscriptions. If you’re generating a good quantity of leads but the quality doesn’t match your expectations, you’re probably using a lead magnet that’s not suitable for your audience, or they’re getting the wrong impression from your content.
Using the Digital Marketing Trifecta Approach
One way to fix the above mentioned issues is to create a digital marketing trifecta that creates a blend of your content, channels and objectives to develop a strategy that takes your buyer to the next step.
he above shown trifecta combines your paid, owned and earned content and channels to create specific results that match your funnel strategies. For example, you can combine paid and earned content+channels to generate social connectivity through influencers or customer feedback. Or you can use a combination of paid and owned channels to run ads which can bring you qualified leads.
Bottom of the Funnel: Action and Retention
The final stage of your funnel is the decision making stage. Your task here is to push your customer for conversion and then retain them for the future. Because even though the bottom of the funnel seems like the end, it really isn’t. The final steps of every buyer’s journey should be feedback collection and follow up for retention so that you not only keep attracting new customers but also have a pool of loyal customers who can act as your influencers in the market.
No Follow-Ups with Customers
In a lot of businesses, leads are generated using a website or messages and then converted via call emails. Any misstep in this stage can lead to a loss of potential client. Which is why you need to make sure that you have systems in place which can either automate the conversion process or at least replace direct human contact whenever necessary. Delays or lack of follow up can cost you one or more sales prospects.
Lead Loss on the Last Stage
Lead loss due to lack of follow-ups is an internal error which can be controlled. However, you also need to be prepared to cover the buyer’s decision to not buy your product. This may be because your product information wasn’t complete, the data you provided was faulty, or maybe because they came across a negative comment from another buyer. This could also happen due to technical errors on your website like a payment gateway error or a page load issue. Preparing for such errors keeps you from losing customers and keeps your platforms updated as well.
Track your Funnel
Remember the buyer purchase journey we discussed in our first blog? Here it is:
Your digital marketing funnel should cover all the steps mentioned in this cycle. Starting from awareness till the retention stage. This helps you cover issues from the top to the bottom of your funnel and helps you track the mistakes or gaps that may occur during the purchase journey.
Some of the top platforms and tools you can use are Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel and Event Manager, and Google Tag Manager. By using these tools, you won’t just be able to track which step of the funnel the user converted or left the cycle, but also retarget them for retention or recall.
Review, Execute, Repeat
Reviewing business basics is a crucial task for everyone, whether you’re utilizing digital marketing or not. Because times change, and the current pandemic is one such example of how we should be ready with a backup plan if our current operational plan doesn’t work. Thus, make sure that you’re prepared to review all the steps of your business operations, not just marketing-wise, so that when the time arrives or as your business keeps growing, you can stay prepared to cater to your customers in any way possible.
Did our blog help you identify the problems or gaps you were facing in your digital marketing strategy? Or do you have questions about the components we’ve discussed? Leave us your comments below to get in touch.
