From the course: Small Business Marketing
Marketing across the funnel
- Marketing small isn't about which tool to use, it's about building a really effective strategy that gets the job done. And the best strategies use a full-funnel marketing approach. And what I mean by this is we want to make sure that we have marketing tailored to each stage of the buyer's journey. Your competitors are already doing it and if you haven't developed your own full-funnel strategy, well, you're behind the curve. Now this doesn't require a lot of resources or capital, just a few hours of planning. Now oftentimes, you'll hear about funnel strategies referred to as top of funnel, middle funnel, and bottom funnel marketing. Let me explain. Towards the bottom of the funnel, you have a consumer who is close to making a purchase. Bottom funnel marketing focuses on identifying consumers who are in a buying decision and then converting them. At the top of the funnel, you're focused on bringing leads into that funnel. If there's zero top of funnel marketing, there's nobody coming out the other side. And as you might expect, middle of the funnel marketing is the nurturing process to keep the leads moving. Now what we've failed to take into account so far is the mindset of the buyer as it pertains to their journey. And you see this play out often in pay-per-click advertising. A consumer who does a search on Google for, say, eyeglass repair Santa Barbara is close to making a purchase. This is bottom funnel marketing. Now this isn't because the consumer is already at the bottom of our funnel. It's just that the consumer is ready to be in the bottom of someone's funnel. Now a top of funnel consumer can exist in several states. They may or may not be aware of what they want or their problem and they may or may not know of your brand. So now we are adding in a new layer of complexity to how we think about our funnel. Let's go back to the eyeglass example. Let's say that's our business. So the customer is aware of their problem and they know a solution must exist. They do a search, they see our advertisement, they're now aware of the company, but they're only interested because they have a problem. So they come into our landing page and the experience is now personalized to their needs and therefore, they're going to desire what we have and hopefully, they take action. Now they move through our funnel quickly because they were in a buyer's state of mind. But what about another example. Let's say we have a window on a busy street front. We have a sign in that window that says, "Eyeglass Repair Same Day Starting at $29." We're doing top of funnel marketing here. People walk by every day and see our sign and some of them become aware of our solution, but they have no problem yet. One day, someone who has a pair of broken eyeglasses thinks, "Wait, there's that place near my work "that does eyeglass repair," and they come into our store. Here, you had a consumer who was in a top of funnel mindset responding to your top of funnel marketing. The first example sounds most desirable. It's faster and it's more likely to yield results. But you must invest in awareness marketing in the upper funnel to keep your products and services on the minds of your prospects, even when they aren't actively looking for a solution. Additionally, awareness demonstrates a presence in the market. If someone knows you offer a product or service but doesn't recall seeing your brand anywhere, their appeal is much lower. And if they enter into your funnel with low appeal, well, you can guess the outcome.
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