This article was first published on March 9th, 2020, and was last updated February 2023.
Imagine this: a relay race. You’re the third runner, coming up on the handoff of the baton. You’re reaching out the baton, straining your arm as far as it will go. Your teammate reaches back their arm, grabs on, and… the baton drops.
Whose fault is it? Yours? Your teammate’s? There are countless factors that can go into a dropped baton, but we can all agree it will cost you the race.
In business, full funnel marketing is the process it takes to win the race without dropping the baton. Let’s dive into the full funnel approach and how your business can effectively utilize it.
What is Full Funnel Marketing?
Full funnel marketing is the holistic approach of turning leads into life-long customers, made possible through a smooth handoff of marketing to sales. Visually, the funnel is wide at the top of the funnel to represent the large number of prospects in the beginning, and slims down towards the bottom to represent the number of prospects that stay engaged until the end. Very rarely do the funnels stay wide throughout the entire process.
Stages of the Marketing Funnel
There are four stages to full funnel marketing: Awareness, Consideration, Conversion, Retention. Let’s dive into learning each stage of the funnel:
Awareness Stage
This is the broadest and largest section of the funnel. Your consumer is on the hunt to find a solution for their problem. This part of the funnel helps make them aware of your products and services.
The awareness stage generates interest, awareness, and educates individuals to consider your business. Especially for those who may not be familiar with your services and products.
Consideration Stage
Customers see your business, but why should they choose you? You’ve caught their eye, but have not yet caught their trust. Now’s your chance to show them what you’re made of. Differentiate yourself in the hopes to push their teetering mind to the side of saying yes.
Consideration tools include paid ad search, email marketing, social media marketing, case studies, videos, newsletters, testimonials, customer stories, and relationship building.
Conversion Stage
This is your last-push effort to give a potential customer the peace of mind they are making the correct choice. Arguably, this is the most critical part of the hand-off. Transitioning from marketing efforts to sales, your weight will shift from one foot to the other.
Driving conversion tools that help make this switch easier include:
- Demonstrations
- Free Trials
- Phone Consultations
- Well-informed Sales Teams
- Incredible Customer Service
- Email Onboarding
Retention Stage
Acquiring a new customer can be five times more expensive than retaining an existing customer, so let’s hold on to what we’ve got. Continually striving to improve your customer’s experience will pay off in the long run.
Retention tools include:
- Loyalty Offers
- Customer FAQs
- Forums
- Fan User-generated Content
- Contests
- Viral Content
- Influencers
- Referral Programs
- Events
- Surveys
- Beta Testers
- Funnel Campaigns
- Special Bundles
Measurements to consider in the conversion stage include:
- Click-through Rates
- Web-Page Landings
- Call-to-action Wins
- Total Conversions
- Survey Responses
- Impressions
- Retention Rates
- Closed Loop Reporting
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Why is Full Funnel Marketing Important?
Each stage of the marketing funnel holds a specific job that relies on one another to succeed. Like we discussed above, all four of the stages in full funnel marketing help to make the customer experience flow easily to help complete a purchase or desired action.
The awareness and consideration stages help bring attention and brand awareness to businesses. Creating advertisements (such as video ads or display ads), commercials, or even promoting organic SEO efforts can help bring awareness and consideration to your business.
The consideration stage helps bring insight and information into why they should choose your business over another business. Adding informational blog posts to your website can be a great way to help effectively improve this part of the marketing funnel.
The conversion funnel stage helps customers make the decision to convert to your business. Adding CTAs (call-to-actions) and remarketing ads help convince customers into why they should choose and trust your business.
Without one of the stages, the marketing funnel wouldn’t work as effectively. Your business needs to put focus into each stage to help make it as effective as it can be.
How You Can “Fill” Up Your Full Marketing Funnel
Creating the opportunity is not the end goal. The lead is not the end goal. Your end goal is closing the deal. Here are some ways in which your business can learn to “fill up” your full marketing funnel to help achieve your end goals.
F – Fix Your Alignment
Misaligned sales and marketing teams are just batons waiting to be dropped. Major problems ensue when marketing teams are driven by creating leads, and not closing leads. Inversely, you will experience major troubles in closing deals if your sales team does not know how to accurately convey the marketing messages that marketing used to generate their leads.
Utilizing full funnel marketing means aligning your marketing and sales teams in order to close more deals more efficiently and more profitably. Historically, marketing focused on leads while sales focused on accounts. This shouldn’t be the case. B2B marketers need to embrace revenue responsibility, meaning we cannot shy away from our impact on the bottom line.
It’s important to align all teams needed to make the customer journey successful in a full funnel campaign.
U – Understand the Numbers
Marketers sometimes get uncomfortable looking at the revenue at the bottom of the funnel because they “don’t have control” or it’s “not their job.” With this in mind, marketers need to be embracing the end game. Marketing has an enormous influence on the end goal. Hitting those sales numbers must be included into marketing efforts and planning.
In order to make these efforts effective, be sure to take these specific actions:
- Triage your focus area.
- Budget.
- Make better decisions on where to prioritize your efforts so it’s reflective of sales.
For example, you may intentionally decrease your lead volume if specificity can generate more qualified leads that convert to actual sales. It’s important to understand your marketing channel’s numbers to help get a better understanding overall.
L – Lead Generation Through Valuable Content
Your job as a marketer is not to educate people on things they already understand. Your job is to get them thinking differently. Strive to make your reader lean back in their chair and say, “Woah, that was a piece of great content. I would pay or invest in more of that.”
Even Google is going to evaluate your content, and they’ve got it down to a science. They call it E-E-A-T which stands for Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. The more you incorporate E-E-A-T, the more likely Google trusts your content and eventually helps your content rank higher in search results. Great content leads to organic SEO traffic that ultimately drives your business revenue.
L – Loyalty and Advocating
What is the most powerful form of marketing? Endorsed relationships. That’s right, every marketing tool we’ve talked about is second to endorsement.
There is an extreme amount of power in utilizing the loyalty of your devoted customers. When people advocate for your brand, it displays the integrity of your company in a transparent, sincere, and candid light.
“Companies often give the credit to sales and marketing but the most important reason people buy isn’t marketing or sales. It’s your existing customers. The strongest reason for buying is existing customers influencing new customers” – Brian Halligan, CEO of Hubspot
You might be asking yourself, “How can I create an environment for endorsements?” Well, to begin, you have to earn it. It all boils down to the product and the customer experience. Nail those first, then move onto the next step.
Show your customers the genuine appreciation they deserve, and chances are they will return the favor. Thank them for their business.
Encourage positive reviews and thank them after leaving one. Give a little extra love to those who have stuck with your brand through the years. Understanding their value can help you keep a customer-centric focus, which in turn, will generate more happy customers.
In a world full of so much information, people turn to those close to them for recommendations and advice. Make sure your company’s name is the word that leaves their lips.
Utilizing Full Funnel Marketing with SEO
There are lots of different digital marketing methods your business can use to benefit fully from full funnel marketing. One of the best marketing tools is utilizing SEO. Learning to successfully integrate SEO into your marketing methods can be beneficial in helping you have a successful full funnel marketing strategy. Learn more about Boostability’s white label SEO services today to get started!
