Before cable TV, before the Internet and before consumers started taking matters into their own hands (before Envision Works, even), the marketing funnel was easy. Businesses simply had to pour as much money as they had available into the funnel – via print, outdoor, radio and TV ads – and consumers would then go into stores to buy their products.
Times have changed. Americans now spend many hours a day on the Internet doing their own research, looking at online reviews, personal recommendations, social content and more, before even approaching a store or shopping site to make a purchase.
In other words, today’s marketing funnel is almost completely controlled by the consumer.
So what does this mean for today’s marketers? Well, at Envision Works, we find the need to use a full-funnel approach, reaching out to prospects through multiple touch points at every stage of the buying process: Building the Brand, Education and Conversion.
1. Building the Brand
Fortunately, the same media options that make today’s funnel more challenging also enable us to use a more targeted, cost-effective approach. In order to convey your brand, how your products are unique and why prospects should care, you should use a mix of online and offline strategies. Traditional media still works, but using social media, display advertising and public relations all give you an opportunity to interact with your prospects in a very targeted, personal way. It’s this social engagement – ideally something that catches the public’s attention in a viral way – that introduces you and your brand to prospects in the best possible light.
At the top of today’s funnel, it’s not about conversion; it’s about getting their attention and setting the stage for further dialog. It’s about awareness.
2. Education
Once prospects are aware of who and what you are, you need to focus on educating and influencing, often giving them to tools and resources they need to educate themselves. At this point in today’s funnel, it’s about sending them to your website or Facebook page, capturing content details, giving away free e-books and providing free samples – any deeper brand or product interaction you and your marketing team can devise.
As with the top of the funnel, it’s important to hit prospects where they live, which, these days, is online, on their smartphones and through social interaction.
3. Conversion
By the time you’re ready to convert some of these prospects to customers, they’re usually ready to do so on their own. They might just need a push in the right direction. To make sure these primed-and-ready prospects have all the information they need, you need to make sure your SEO strategy is finely tuned so they can easily find you conducting an online search. And now that you have some contact information, text or email campaigns could easily lead to conversion, and could be easily customized based on demographics, search behavior or any of a dozen other factors. At this point, any contact you make could and should be as relevant as possible.
For today’s marketing funnel, you need to take an overall, full-funnel approach to your marketing resources. The goal is to optimize your budget and maximize the impact of everything you do, at each stage of the marketing funnel.
Although this approach takes more time and thought than the approach from yesteryear, it can lead to greater success than ever.