The best way to effectively map a customer’s journey with understand what your brand has to offer is by mastering how to build a digital marketing funnel.
Digital marketing funnels are an internal, visual representation of each step a customer takes. By being able to track this information, you are able to honor and improve each touch point for a well-rounded experience and to boost conversion rates. Figure out how your brand can benefit from a digital marketing sales funnel with these 6 points!
The term “funnel” fits best for visualizing your marketing strategy because as customers become better acquainted with your brand, the same way a funnel tapers should mirror your attention and focus on customers as the progress through the stages. A digital marketing funnel is also helpful for your sales department to categorize leads, learn where there may be a disconnect in messaging, and much more! There are many types of digital marketing funnels you can apply to your business. Use these ideas to drive your sales more effectively.
6 Key Elements of a Digital Marketing Funnel
Marketing funnels are an integral part of every effectively repeatable sales interaction. Your digital marketing funnel is a template for current and future interactions, and viewing your strategy in the way gives you the edge of being able to track a process more keenly and make better choices for improvements. Traditional marketing funnels have paved the way for eCommerce and digital marketing funnels, as the digital world certainly borrows from the “real world.”
1. Tailor Your Digital Marketing Funnel To Your Brand
However, a key point to consider when tackling how to build a digital marketing funnel is the sheer scope of the audience available to you online. That magnitude that includes at least half of the planet requires planning and structure to reach as many people as effectively as possible. A sales effort is guaranteed to fail without a digital marketing funnel strategy in place to capture audience attention and sustain it to the point of sale. Therefore, remember to create a meaningful difference in experience with each rung or stage of the digital marketing funnel.
Personalization is Important
Understanding your target audience helps you understand the impact your brand has on general groups of your audience. When considering advertising outlets and tactics, ensure the first interaction is both relatable to your key demographics while still creating that sense of closeness with the individual viewer of the ad. Consider various factors about the audience and its members and remember this scope is only the first step. Taking that wide group and distilling it further with each subsequent outreach helps customers feel seen, heard, and most importantly, like they are your main focus.
2. Think of Every Interaction Point in Your Process
By building your ad campaign and marketing strategies around a digital marketing funnel, your ad spend and ROI will automatically rise because your ad spend is directed in a cascading way rather than routinely casting a wide net and hoping for the best. Your initial, broad pitch can mix SEO and PPC ad tactics, but once you’ve received the customer’s email address or other personal information, your approach can both increase in personalization as well as in methods of making offers. Simply by using a name and email address you’ve been given, you’re both drawing the person closer and increasing your email open rate by 19%. That may seem like a small percentage, but the conversion from being an ad to having access to a customer’s inbox is a jump in connection that should be rewarded with a different approach.
3. Your Funnel Should Mirror Your Customer’s Mindset
Digital marketing funnels need to reflect your customer’s thought process. In the same way that brick and mortar stores are structured to encourage both ease of finding items mixed with offers of impulse and other purchase options, your digital marketing funnel structure is anchored around emulating this experience online. The easiest way to help customers cross the threshold is by following the flow of Awareness, Curiosity, Contemplation, and Conversion.
Awareness
Via SEO tactics and other marketing avenues, making customers aware of your brand is the first step. Be where your customers are, and meet them with relatable, engaging content to help pique their interest.
Curiosity
Foster the curiosity you create with your campaign by rewarding the engagement with exclusive offers, discounts, and other enticing elements. Details about your specific product or service can inform your approach. If a high price tag is an important factor for clientele, encourage them to think about the value your brand can add (taking them to the next phase) or creating a sense of urgency for a limited-stock item could accelerate the next phase while creating the exclusivity that drives conversions. This element of the funnel will likely need the most improvement over time if your initial ad campaigns drive a lot of leads and traffic without conversions.
Contemplation
“Let me think about it.” “I’d like to sleep on it before making a decision.” As much as technology can make it seem like it, humans are not robots. People need time to absorb information, reflect, and respond accordingly. While many sales people may argue that aggressive pitches get results, that tactic doesn’t work as effectively on today’s informed audience. With so many options and limited attention and awareness, pressing too hard can end up backfiring. This area of the digital marketing requires the most care and attention, as the next step is what every marketer wants.
Conversion
If structured correctly, your funnel should make culminating in a sale feel logical and valued for taking the step. Since you’ve increased your attention and personalization gradually throughout this process, you’ve developed trust, mutual understanding, and, likely, a repeat client if you sustain the efforts with regular offers and encouragement for helpful information like reviews and shares on social media.
4. Think Like Your Customer
The idea for your brand struck you for a reason. That vision has roots in meeting a relatable need for customers. Trace that path when thinking of marketing collateral for your digital marketing funnel. If you consider yourself part of your key demographics for your product or service, think about how you would want to be treated in the process and what elements of your product or service are most alluring.
5. Funnels are Another Tool in Your Marketing Belt
A major factor in evaluating your digital marketing sales funnel is realizing this tool is yet another way to improve sales metrics with real-time data. Sales are all about relationships, no matter the level of awareness. A cornerstone of any of good relationship is communication. Instead of viewing your sales pitch as a chance to rattle off the importance of your brand, understand the sales process is a conversation. Customers have plenty of insight into how your brand is perceived and in ways to improve how your brand relates to target markets. If you aren’t leveraging the segmentation data you can glean from a digital marketing funnel, you could be missing out on 760% more revenue.
6. Don’t Be Afraid to Tinker
If your ads don’t get clicks or attention, you can tell something is missing from the messaging. If audiences are engaging with ads but tapering off at the next stage, you know where to focus your efforts. It can be easy to think a digital sales funnel is a “set-it-and-forget-it” marketing tool, but that could cost you. The beauty of the internet is the speed at which trends and information can shift. The general funnel structure can help you stay open throughout other key points of communication since your overarching goal is clear of tapering the attention even closer until the conversion takes place.
Need Help?
It can be tricky for beginners to grasp that sales pitches require so much finesse to cut through the competition online, but the internet age is all about adapting quickly in the face of change. Innovation isn’t just an aspect of the USA Link System approach; innovation drives our techniques. Let our experts help you build a digital marketing funnel that generates results. Contact us today!
Leave a Comment
Comments (0)