Are your prospects moving through the funnel or are they stuck in a tunnel?
We have been hearing it for years, your prospective buyers go through a series of stages before they become customers; awareness, consideration, conversion and if you are lucky, loyalty and advocacy. But how many of you are truly working your funnel? By this I mean moving traffic, stacking analytics against it to see what is working (or not) and ultimately making your growth (sales) numbers with happy, repeat customers!
Lets start with your basic activities around the top of the funnel TOFU. Here you are looking to build awareness around your products and services, try to reach your target personas, educate and start to fire up your branding engine.
- Content (Intent-based)
- Marketing Campaigns
- SEO/SEM
- Online Ads
- Events/Trade Shows
- PR
- Social Media
- Direct Email
- Referrals
Next look at your activities in the middle of the funnel MOFU. We know a great deal of evaluation is being done here by your prospective customers.
- Content Marketing:
- Case Studies
- White Papers
- eBooks
- Fact Sheets
- Landing Pages
- Webinars
- Drip email campaigns
Hopefully your bottom of the funnel BOFU is starting to shape up. This is where the rubber meets the road when the visitor is making some type of purchasing decision.
- Trial-to-buy(s)
- Discount/Special Offers/Promo Codes
- Testimonials
- Demos
- Consultations
So what does one of these funnels look like? Below is an example of a high-level funnel analysis I had done at a global SaaS company. Every part of this funnel was measured using Google analytics, Marketo, Hubspot, SEMrush and more. Furthermore, I even broke out the win information down to the piece of content that drove these visitors through the funnel.
A recent article that appeared in Content Marketing Institute validates this approach as well.
Lets remember, creating customer-centric content can have a significant impact on your conversion numbers. Too often companies just throw what they think is SEO-optimized content out there loaded with keywords to hopefully hook someone typing those words on search. You need to ask yourself, “what do I think the user intent is?” From here, hopefully, you serve up the right content and respective landing pages with CTAs at the right time!
Strategic Consulting Management 