Do you oversee your company’s marketing efforts, or the internal team, contractors, or agency that does? Print ads, TV, radio, outdoor advertising, sponsorships, social media, blogs, podcasts and websites are all great tools to build brand awareness, but they’re costly in terms of budget, resources, and time. Poor results are frustrating, but troubleshooting may be as simple as evaluating and fixing your marketing funnel.
This post will offer a refresher on the basics of using a marketing funnel. Along the way, ask yourself – where are we driving traffic, and is that traffic ultimately converting into buyers? Are our marketing campaigns successfully meeting our objectives? If they aren’t, what can we do before we’ve depleted your budget?
Utilizing a simplified marketing funnel is essentially like moving prospects along a path… or down a funnel! This journey starts with them discovering your brand, their problem, and your solution – creating Awareness. This leads them to Consideration of your product or service, and then encourages them to make a Purchase. When tailored to your brand and audience, the marketing funnel will motivate your audience to buy.
Key Performance Indicators (or KPIs for short) are metrics that will help you to understand how effective each part of your marketing campaign has been. When coupled with your marketing funnel, KPIs offer transparency as to how effective your campaign has been in moving prospects along the path through Awareness to Consideration to Purchase. This allows you to make adjustments to your funnel to increase the number of prospects who go on to make a purchase instead of getting to the end of a campaign to find you didn’t reach your goal. As you read on, think about the KPIs you’re currently reviewing or getting from your internal or external marketing team, and if they’re providing visibility into your successes and challenges.
Marketing Funnel Step 1: Awareness
When people have a “pain” or problem, they take action. The Awareness stage is all about capturing the attention of people in search of assistance, helping them to understand what is causing their problem, and potential ways they could solve that problem. This stage of your marketing funnel is not about pushing sales, it’s about beginning a relationship and providing valuable information that draws in prospects. Focus on positioning your brand as a trusted resource.
If you are a personal finance consultant, for example, you might start with publishing a series of Awareness articles on your website like “Good vs. Bad Debt,” “Why is My Credit Score So Low?” and “How Much Should I Invest for Retirement?” These topics would attract people searching for financial advice and the articles would simply answer the questions and point to potential solutions. Of course, finding a qualified personal finance consultant would be one of those solutions, and a call to action button at the end of each article would encourage new readers to sign up for your newsletter to learn more about finances.
The goal at this stage is to educate visitors about the problems they are experiencing and motivate them to solve those problems. Hopefully, they will decide to stick around for more helpful information by opting-in to your newsletter or lead magnet, moving into Consideration.
Marketing Funnel Step 2: Consideration
During the Consideration stage, buyers with a problem are aware of their pain and actively evaluating the available solutions and comparing them. They will look at what you offer and see if it fits their needs, wants, and budget. They will compare you to other companies in your industry and look at reviews, price points and branding.
During this stage, the prospect may be getting your newsletter or following you on social media – you want to make the answers to their questions easily accessible. Drive them to landing pages or blog posts on your website specific to their issues, offer a free trial or to set up a complimentary consultation. If your price fluctuates based on the customer, you might share content about the price range and the factors that impact pricing to give your prospect an idea of the investment she would be making. If you build pools, for example, you can explain how different sizes, materials and add-ons impact cost.
Create content that helps people compare your brand to others including features, options, packages, and possible results. Highlight your customer reviews and do the comparison of your company to competitors for your prospects. Remember, one other option that your prospects may consider is doing nothing at all – help them to understand the consequences of taking no action. Next, you’ll want to invite her to take the next step, making the Purchase.
Marketing Funnel Step 3: Purchase
Once the comparisons are done and the Consideration phase is completed, the lead will choose to Purchase or walk away. Help your prospect to move forward. Offer to answer questions in real-time by phone, through online chat, or by scheduling a discovery call. Depending on your pricing strategy, you might offer limited-time coupons, sales or value-adds (gift with minimum purchase), this is especially effective for recovering abandoned carts.
70% of online shopping carts are abandoned* before checkout is completed. A large majority of shoppers cite unexpected expenses as the reason for their change of heart. Be very clear with additional fees and costs like shipping to avoid surprises. Other reasons for not finishing the purchase stage may include:
- A sluggish or poorly designed site that doesn’t funnel efficientlytowards purchase
- A backed-up calendar or sold out inventory that delays fulfillment
- The return or satisfaction policy isn’t well defined
- The prospect doesn’t feel informed enough about what to expect
- Little sense of urgency and the prospect gets sidetracked
- The prospect isn’t sure your product or service is the ideal solution.
An efficient funnel will draw in leads at all points and keep them moving naturally towards Purchase. Think like a private eye when investigating your funnel. If you’re unhappy with your results or looking for improvement, evaluate your funnel for well-defined steps, messaging, and where you’re losing prospects. You can’t get to the Purchase stage if prospects aren’t aware your business exists, or they’re aware but move on before considering you.
Marketing Funnel Results: Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Key Performance Indicators are metrics that are “key” highlights indicating the overall performance of your marketing campaign. Most entrepreneurs don’t need to micro analyze their marketing reports – that’s what marketers are for. They need to see their marketing analytics broken out into broad strokes that show them what’s working and what isn’t so that they know what needs to be adjusted, typically in the form of a Scorecard.
Choose the metrics you need to measure for each platform you’re using in your funnel and add them to your Scorecard. These are your KPIs. At the start of each month, fill in the numbers for each KPI to get an idea of how your marketing campaign is performing.
If you’re unsure of what to measure, think about the results you’re looking for from each platform. For example, how many people are visiting the landing page you’re promoting, and how many are actually going on to opt-in or buy? If you’re running Facebook ads, how many people are seeing the ads (Reach) and how many are actually clicking on them?
The benefit to tracking KPIs isn’t just getting a sense of your success – it gives you the opportunity to work backward and see where your marketing isn’t working. For example, if you’re trying to increase online sales, do you have adequate traffic visiting your site? If not, what can you do to make your online marketing more successful? Another example, if you’re running Pay Per Click ads – are people seeing the ads but not clicking? You may need to adjust your message or your creative assets (visual design). Or, if people are clicking but you have few visits, your site may take too long to load. Capturing and evaluating these metrics will help you find where your funnel is broken or inefficient so you can make improvements.
Growing your business is challenging – let us help. Contact us today to schedule a complimentary consultation to learn more about how Always This Good can help.
*https://baymard.com/lists/cart-abandonment-rate