Marketing is like quicksand. It’s easy to think we can just dip our toe in, sampling a bit of this and a bit of that to reach our audience and drive sales. But without focus, we find ourselves drowning. We have our ads on Google Search and social media with weekly spotlights—yet somehow our engagement is low, our website traffic still faltering, and we’re hemorrhaging our marketing budget.
That’s where the marketing funnel comes in. It takes the often granular approach to marketing and gives it meaning, pointing all our efforts into one cohesive direction. Today we’re going to look at why this funnel is essential to effective marketing strategy.
Funneling Your Audience
The year was 1898 when Elias St. Elmo Lewis, an ad executive with far too long a name, changed the marketing world. He developed the Marketing Funnel as he looked at the processes his firm was using and saw an interesting correlation…
Just like a funnel, marketing is about casting a wide net through brand awareness, slowly gathering in interested parties through engagement, and finally bagging the big fish through conversions. Of course, the funnel has been modified innumerable times throughout the past 100+ years. But one thing remains the same: it’s astounding effectiveness.
We’re going to look at all three essential functions, and why every marketing strategy needs to be hitting all three.
Brand Awareness
Building trust—that’s the name of the game at the top of our funnel. Brand awareness is all about getting your name and unique style out into the world, covering as many channels as possible with a fully realized brand image.
The goal is views. We want eyes—and lots of them—because the age old marketing rule, the Seven Times Factor, reminds us that we need to see an ad or brand about seven times before we even recall seeing it. That’s how many advertisements bombarded us every day. So we hit as many audiences and interest segments as possible, without regard for getting too specific. It’s about quantity at this stage in the marketing funnel because quantity increases the odds of future recollection.
Key marketing channels at this stage are: Fully realized Logo & Naming Design, strong Brand Guidelines, Paid Search, and prospecting with Programmatic.
Engagement
Turning trust into interest is our next objective, and that’s where we want clients considering our services or products. Engagement is the essential bridge between someone remembering who we are and actually buying what we’re selling.
The goal here is interaction. We want to get that client to turn towards OUR offering and begin weighing it over competitors. How is that done? By putting our brand in front of those most-likely to be interested. So, if we’re selling mattresses, our marketing channels need to be more focused on people in-market for our product or service.
Key marketing channels at this stage are: Organic Search marketing, strongly designed Social Strategy, data-driven Web Development & Optimizations, and audience/behavioral targeting with Programmatic.
Conversion
Turning interest into action is our final goal. Unfortunately, it is where most novice marketers begin and end. How many form-fills or product sales have we had this week? Very few, regrettably, without effective foundational work on the upper parts of the funnel.
Our objective is decision. We want action from our clients, motivated by our high level of service and strong brand values, so they convert to cheerleaders. That’s precisely why so much of the preliminary work of our funnel is essential. Without it, conversion-level marketing is TOO specific, targeting the pool of people who are aware of our brand and engaging with it. We want that pool to be large, so the payoff is large.
Key marketing channels at this stage are: UX Design & Implementation, effective Social Strategy, and retargeting customers through Programmatic.
Out of the Quicksand
There are a lot of people in the world. So many, it can often overwhelm us. But every brand has an audience, it’s just a matter of finding them.
The Marketing Funnel helps us find our audience. Through data-analysis we as marketers can create a pool of people specifically aligned with the spirit of a brand, sifting through all the quicksand until we find something valuable in this marketing desert.
This tool isn’t just a lifeline to drowning people, it’s so powerful it filters the world, finding the perfect match for brand and audience. That’s what we do at Stinger Studios: create a strategy that sifts through the dirt for you, finding the diamonds to champion your brand.
Written by Taylor Bair