Most consumers visiting your website aren’t ready to engage – let alone become paying customers. The stages in your sales funnel represent opportunities to reach out to and nurture your leads. Successful ad campaigns depend on solidly built sales funnel stages.
This is a crucial digital marketing aspect where you send brand messages relevant to your potential customers at each stage of the funnel. Hiring an advertising agency can ensure you maximize your marketing funnel to convert more leads into paying customers. This blog is a guide on digital advertising tactics and how to execute them along your sales funnel.
Top of the Funnel: Awareness and Interest
At this stage, consumers haven’t encountered your brand. Your main goal is to let them know of your existence. Top-of-the-funnel advertising helps you build trust, rank organically, and develop assets for your sales team. Aim to attract as many web visitors as you can through relevant and engaging content.
Focus on strategies that increase your brand’s visibility. Advertisement companies can help you establish brand awareness through blogging, search engine optimization (SEO), paid search, social media marketing, video marketing, email marketing, digital PR and news releases, plus influencer marketing.
To create further interest in your brand, you can promote a giveaway or contest, guest blog, start a referral program, and take part in brand partnerships. Also, at this stage of your marketing funnel ensure that you have a compelling call-to-action (CTA), implement email capture, and monitor key performance metrics.
Middle of the Funnel: Consideration and Intent
At this stage, your target audience is familiar with your brand. They are conducting research and most likely considering between you and your competition for a solution to their problem or pain points. Here advertisement companies will focus on converting as many website visitors as possible into known leads and nurturing these leads.
While some visitors may sail right away and convert, most visitors aren’t ready yet. They have to learn more about your brand and develop trust. As such, your main digital advertising goal should be to generate demand for your offerings.
Mid-funnel advertising tactics to refine your leads include search and display ads, remarketing ads, and middle-of-the-funnel content such as in-depth blog posts, case studies, white papers, and competitor comparisons.
You can also utilize lead magnets and gated content. Lead magnets are downloadable digital content such as PDFs, eBooks, infographics, reports, and videos your visitors may download in exchange for an email sign-up. They may also include free trial offers, scarcity announcements, and discount coupons.
Bottom of the Funnel: Evaluation and Purchase
At the bottom of your sales funnel, you can focus on converting your nurtured leads into paying customers. Your main goal at this stage is to nurture the decision-making process and convince your “hot” leads to make a transaction. This can be a purchase, subscription, donation, etc.
Content at the bottom of your funnel is different from that in the earlier stages. Your content strategy should aim to highlight your products and services more directly. Case studies, infographics, and blog posts that communicate key product/service features come to mind. An advertising agency will help you develop specific buyer personas to ensure your content is personalized and highly relevant.
Paid advertising is essential at the end of your funnel. You can leverage paid ads with strong CTAs to retarget consumers that have interacted and expressed interest in your brand (from your email list). In this late stage, discount offers, promo codes, limited-time offers, free trials, and product bundles via email and remarketing ads work best to nudge your leads to take the final step.
How an Advertising Agency Can Put Your Marketing Funnel into Action
Competition, economic headwinds, sales growth pressure, and other factors demand creativity and constant optimization when it comes to your marketing and sales funnel. Overall, your top-of-funnel efforts focus on building your brand and middle-of-funnel efforts provide value to visitors and build trust.
Your bottom-of-funnel efforts persuade leads to convert into customers or clients. A reputable agency, such as WSI Next Gen Marketing, has the expertise, experience, and tools to help you map out your model customer journey and communication in such a way that you speak to your prospect in consideration of their stage in the journey.