Introducing a very candid series by SQUIDGY, “From Top to Bottom.”
A no-nonsense guide to navigating the dos and don’ts of marketing funnel-filling efforts.
This series is born from a love of marketing and is based on everything we’ve seen, heard, and learned from prospects, clients, and pals in the industry. We get to witness firsthand, on a big-ish scale, the ever-shifting landscape of digital marketing, observing trends come and go, channel favouritism, and those ill-informed bandwagon jumps.
We don’t plan to sugarcoat it.
_
In this series, we are going to help you question each of your marketing decisions and how to get the best out of every single one of them. This means that whether you are running Meta Ads, investing time in bulking out your website content, or laboriously building site-backlinks, you should be questioning every single thing you are doing, to make sure that they are working hard for you to fill up your marketing funnel.
While the marketing funnel is technically a conceptual framework, it represents the stages that a potential customer/client/lead goes through before making a purchase or taking the desired action pretty well.
You will have seen it a million times before; sometimes, there’s a few more levels to it, but it’s often visualised as a bit of an upside-down triangle. The whole concept is that as you move down the funnel, the number of potential customers/clients/leads decreases, but the level of their intentions and engagement increases.
So before we crack on with the series, here’s the general framework that we are going to be referencing, and it looks a bit like this:
Awareness: This is the broadest part of the funnel. At this stage, you are theoretically recruiting people to become aware of your brand, product, or service. The whole purpose is to create visibility and capture attention. Once people are aware of your brand, you want to generate genuine interest. This is where you provide more information about your offerings, showcase your value proposition, and start building a connection with your audience.
Any digital channel action that creates visibility, captures attention, or generates interest fills this part of the funnel. It’s often the part of the funnel we are all guilty of oversaturating because it’s the most creatively pleasing and often the easiest to fill or fail to understand what quality looks like.
Consideration: This is where you are going to find your potential clients/customers who are actively considering your product or service. At this point, you’d expect that they are comparing you with competitors, looking at reviews and trust signals, and seeking more in-depth information.
Any digital channel action that establishes trust works to fill this part of the funnel. It’s often the part of the funnel we struggle to flesh out, especially if we are new, an SME, or a challenger brand.
Purchase: At this point, the theory suggests that the potential customer settled here has a strong intention to make a purchase. This is often the stage where you’d hope to see actions like signing up for a trial or demo, adding items to the basket, or even requesting a quote from you. The bottom of the funnel is where the actual transaction takes place. The individual becomes a customer by making a purchase or taking the desired action.
Post-Purchase: It’s easy to forget that the marketing funnel doesn’t end with a purchase. Post-purchase engagement involves efforts to retain the customer, encourage loyalty, and potentially turn them into advocates for you.
Now that we have the framework, the next step is figuring out the subtleties of when to act and what to action and what results you need to focus on to hit different stages of the funnel.
It is an acquired skill.
The good news?
It is definitely a skill that you can learn.
So, whether you’re a seasoned digital marketer or just dipping your toes into the digital water as a small business professional plate-spinner, we are going to revisit the basics and remind ourselves of why we all got into marketing in the first place.
One last thing, let’s just be brutally honest from the get-go.
If it doesn’t add value to your funnel, it’s time to hit pause.
If it doesn’t let you be effective, end it.
