3 Important Funnel Marketing Basics To Grow Your Business

When you hear the term ‘Funnel Marketing,’ what do you think of? Students going door to door selling their new-and-improved ultimate beer chugging funnel? Perhaps. But this type of funnel marketing won’t help you grow your business as much as it’ll help

you celebrate your business’ success.

Funnel marketing is a widely-used marketing technique that helps all businesses, small and large, maximize their revenue potential. It’s so widely used that we guarantee you’ve gone through a marketing funnel at least once in your life…maybe even once today.

According to the Kissmetrics blog, a funnel is the set of steps a visitor needs to go through before they can reach a conversion. The basic marketing funnel is made up of the following 3 steps:

AWARENESS > CONSIDERATION > CONVERSION

Your business needs to be aligned in a way that buyers can make the journey through your marketing funnel from awareness to conversion with as little friction as possible. You need to be the helping hand that shows them that your product is the right product.

However, and this is a big however, before you invest in a proper marketing funnel you need to make sure you have built the proper foundation for your marketing program. The foundation of your marketing program is like the foundation of your house.

Once your foundation is in place, you can start building the three walls of your marketing dream home.

STEP ONE

The awareness stage of the buyer’s journey is when a customer becomes aware of a need and seek a solution. If your job is their solution then it’s your job to gain your potential customers attention and speak to their pain points.

For example. You’re a dentist who offers teeth whitening services. Your ideal customer are people in need of teeth whitening. You need to be able to get your business and your product offering in front of these people at the time they need to see it.

Traditional marketing to create awareness would have you placing an ad in the local newspaper with hopes a reader would put down their coffee and pick up the phone to contact you about your teeth whitening services. Unfortunately, in today’s age, digital marketing is king and a newspaper ad won’t get you that business.

Since this funnel is all about the basics, we’ll tell you the 4 easiest ways to start creating awareness today.

1.Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Moz tells us that SEO is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results. This will cost you no money other than the time invested to put the SEO strategy in place.

So when that news loving coffee drinking early riser remembers the date they have this weekend and want their teeth whitened, they’re going to look for a solution. They’ll head to Google and search “Local Teeth Whitening”. With proper SEO in place and a foundational website optimized for SEO, your website will rank higher in the Google search rankings than a competitor not using SEO.

Find out how to improve your marketing with these three user search habits affecting your SEO.

2. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

SEM is the paid version of SEO, with focus shifting from website ranking to paid advertising for top search results.

For example. When we head to Google and search “Local Teeth Whitening”, we see this as the top search result:

This is an example of an SEM ad on the Google Search Network that Crest has spent money on to have it be the top search result in this area. Now, you might not have the same money to spend on ads as Crest, but this is where the help of an SEM expert will find your business search terms that will rank without breaking the bank.

3. Landing Pages

There’s a good chance that when you hear the term “landing page” you think about the home page on your website. In everyday terms you’re right, but in online marketing terms it’s something a little different.

A landing page, sometimes known as a “lead capture page” or a “destination page”, is a single web page that appears after someone clicks on a search engine optimized link or advertisement.

Take our earlier example of the Crest advertisement that pops up after a search on Google. After clicking the link, we’re brought to the Crest teeth whitening product page and not the homepage. This is because a landing page should bring you to a specific page relating to the ad that pushes you towards an offer.

This is how you put your product of service in front of potential customers looking for a solution to their problem. This is how you put your offer in the right place at the right time.

 4. Social Advertising

It’s only natural nowadays to have social advertising as a key part of any marketing campaign. Traditional advertising, like newspaper ads, took the back seat to social spending in 2013 and are projected to overtake TV spending by the end of this year.

This growing trend is due mainly in part to the everyday consumer’s connectivity to their mobile device and social network, but also the ease of spend tracking and ROI improvements.

Social spending allows businesses to track every dollar spent on digital marketing and know exactly what type of consumer it attracted. A strong social advertising strategy is a must.

STEP TWO

The consideration stage is when consumers actually start evaluating their options for purchase. This is a time to show consumers content about your company or solution. Some examples of content that will allow you to be part of the consideration set are:

• Solution Guides
• Webinars
• Videos
• Brand-Specific Guides

This content often lives on, or is accessible from the Landing Page used in the Awareness stage. You have now moved a potential customer one step further into your marketing funnel and one step closer to converting.

Now to talk conversion…

The conversion stage, also known as the decision stage, is where the marketing funnel meets the sales funnel. Customers are 60% of the way through decision making process before they ever talk to a sales rep or business owner. Increased access to information and the internal desire to be a more knowledgeable consumer is what’s driven this stat up year over year.

The conversion stage is where a consumer is compiling information about the different product options and ruling out the ones that don’t fit. The difference between the consideration stage and the conversion stage is that a consumer is now ready to buy. They’re no long considering if they want to buy, they want to buy.

 Here are some examples of content to share during the conversion stage:

• Comparison Metrics
• Free Trial Offers
• Customer Testimonials

You’ve been holding back, not talking directly about your products, with all your content in the earlier stages of the buyer’s journey, but now is the time to convert your consumer and close the deal.

Use call to actions to make it easy for the consumer to make the buying decision. You want to focus on making the customer experience a positive one. This process of this stage determines whether or not a consumer will simply be a one-time buyer, or a long-term customer. Turn that consumer into your customer over and over again.

This is how you create a funnel with your marketing to drives sales –This is Funnel Marketing.