Looking for a perfect way to succeed in your business? It’s time to adopt the new digital marketing funnel.
According to a concept by Google, the traditional digital marketing funnel doesn’t work anymore. Instead of following a direct path towards purchasing a product or service, users take unique journeys.
Ready to learn about modern digital marketing sales, funnel? Keep reading to see how the new digital marketing funnel works, reach consumers in each stage of the funnel and move them towards the purchase.
You can also get professional help from our award-winning team of digital marketing specialists. With our advanced artificial intelligence software and customized strategies, we’ve driven billions in revenue for our clients in the past years.
Explore how the iPropser Marketing team can help you enhance your business by calling us or contacting us online!
What Is a Digital Marketing Funnel?
A digital marketing funnel describes each consumer’s stages to move from being a prospect to a customer. There are multiple sales marketing funnels, which include stages focused on
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Purchase
- Retention
The businesses can use any sales funnel to monitor their marketing efforts.
New Vs. Old Sales Marketing Funnel
Whether you’re familiar with the previous digital marketing funnel or not, it’s worth reviewing how the two are compared. This way, your team can learn how to adapt a strategy to meet current consumer behaviors.
For example, the old marketing funnel includes four stages (AIDA) – Awareness, interest, desire, and action.
Here’s a quick comparison of new vs. old digital sales marketing funnel:
- New Digital Marketing Funnel
- Old Digital Marketing Funnel
- Focuses on a non-linear experience
- Focuses on a linear experience
- Consists of up to 10 steps
- Consists of up to 4 steps
- Thinks about the behaviors driving a user
- Thinks about universal user behaviors
Generally, the new marketing funnel focuses more on each user than the old funnel. While moving to a non-linear journey, it poses more challenges to businesses, allowing your company to provide a more satisfying experience to the target audience.
Why Did the Digital Sales Marketing Funnel Change?
Whether you’re running a national or a local digital marketing campaign it’s a known fact that the rise in technology made changes to the digital marketing funnel. Internet users are increasing more than 4 billion now and have the ability to search on-the-go. With this, the user can research, find, and buy products anywhere, anytime.
With an immense amount of information available, the consumers can read reviews on social media, watch videos on YouTube, browse articles, etc. This allowed users to create a custom and non-linear shopping experience.
That’s why the online sales marketing funnel needed to change.
Why Does the Digital Sales Marketing Funnel Matter?
Learning and implementing a digital marketing funnel helps your business in the following several ways:
- Understand the reasons that drive your target audience to search and purchase.
- Find out the strategies, such as content marketing, to help your audience the most.
- Realize why strategies like downloadable content work only at certain stages.
- Build an effective marketing plan for users at each stage of the funnel.
- Reveal how and when you can nurture relationships with leads and existing customers.
When you take enough time to research the marketing funnel and the buyer journey, you can improve your marketing strategy. Try to use your data to build a data-backed campaign for attracting and nurturing new and current customers.
Types of Digital Marketing Funnels
Today, the marketing funnel captures the non-linear journey of shoppers, i.e., from businesses to consumers. As every consumer takes a different path, there are multiple versions of the new online marketing funnel.
Here are the 3 forms of the online marketing funnel of 2020.
1. Hourglass Marketing Funnel
This online marketing funnel takes a thorough approach to the customer journey by emphasizing the importance of maintaining and building customer relationships. The hourglass marketing funnel’s system is behind the funnel’s hourglass shape.
This funnel’s pre-purchase stages include engagement, education, research, evaluation, justification, and purchase.
The post-purchase stages of this marketing funnel include adoption, retention, expansion, and advocacy.
The post-purchase stages are linear; however, the pre-purchase stages allow the users to enter at any time.
For instance, a customer might identify a problem first, rather than the brand. Or, may discover a brand while evaluating a competitor’s product.
2. Looping Digital Marketing Funnel
This marketing funnel adopts a less-structured format with six stages that allow flexibility for every user’s journey to purchase.
The looping digital marketing funnel stages include Awareness, consideration, research and discovery loop, purchase, post-purchase experience, and loyalty loop.
No matter your industry type, you can use the looping sales marketing funnel for your business due to its flexibility and efficiency.
Micro-Moments Marketing Funnel
According to a concept developed by Google, the micro-moments internet marketing funnel takes inspiration from micro-moments. With this digital marketing funnel, your business can focus on the motivations attracting a user to enter the funnel.
These marketing funnel components include the want-to-know moment, want-to-do moment, want-to-go moment, and want-to-buy moment.
The micro-moments marketing funnel doesn’t discover users’ actions following a micro-moment; instead, it helps your business brainstorm what your target customer may do when they have one of these funnel moments.
Tips for Reaching Customers in Any Stage of a Sales Marketing Funnel
There are a variety of digital marketing funnels available today, so it’s usual to think which one your company should use or how you can use a particular funnel to reach your target customer.
Here are 5 go-to strategies for your customer acquisition strategy online marketing funnel include:
1. Offer 24/7 Assistance
Consumers always look for help or assistance, so if you want a user to become your client, then provide them with 24/7 customer support. You can assist by including resources such as guides, chatbots, FAQs, etc.
Decide which resources would offer the best value to your target market by exploring your audience.
2. Focus More On Metrics
For digital marketing, data is essential. With data, your team can gain incredible insight into your internet marketing strategy’s performance, giving you a chance to learn extra about your target customers.
For the best results from your marketing efforts, consider your user intent, data, user interactions, gross margin, profit, and revenue.
Also, if your team is developing a content marketing strategy, social media campaign, or website redesign, you need to focus mainly on these metrics.
3. Use AI and Machine Learning
In this world of the digital landscape, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are critical.
They help your team analyze an immense amount of data, thus helping your organization develop fast data-backed campaign improvements.
This technology helps your company in many ways, including:
- Predicting user intent
- Identifying user experiences
- Discovering content and keyword opportunities
Representing connections between separate pieces of data, like business goals and user behavior.
If you want to manage your online marketing in-house, you can purchase third-party software to get AI and machine learning power.
Companies that partner with a digital marketing agency, like JetRank Agency, might already have access to AI and machine learning.
No matter how you approach online marketing, use technology to improve your buying funnel.
4. Market to The Ideal Customer
According to a search engine like Google, an ideal way to improve your marketing funnel focuses mainly on narrowing your target audience. Generally, you may want to promote and market your business to every possible person in the target market; however, you can achieve benefits only by targeting the most valuable members of the audience.
Google explains that some customers spend more, and many spend less. Therefore, improve the ROI (return on investment) of your digital marketing strategy by concentrating on the customers that offer the most value to your business.
Modify your online sales marketing funnel to the audience that maximizes your short and long-term success.
5. Leverage Brand Value
A brand carries immense value. So, to gain success in your digital marketing strategy, use your brand to your advantage. Prove the users at each stage of the buying funnel that your company understands their pain points and unique needs and shares their values.
With this, you can maximize your sales, conversions, and revenue. You can also improve brand awareness and loyalty, which can contribute to the lifetime spend and value.
- You can influence your brand’s value with the following tips:
- Research what your audience wants from your products and services.
- Learn what your audience wants from your company.
- Decide how your products and services benefit users and fulfils their needs.
- Decide how your company aligns with user expectations.
Once you finish all the research, your team can brainstorm how to include your branding into the content on your website and other channels.
For instance, you may develop new content ideas for your social media and blogs.
Ready to learn how to reach the consumers in the top, middle, and bottom of the sales marketing funnel?
How to Reach TOFU (Top of The Funnel) Users
For businesses, consumers in the TOFU offer the most opportunity. They’re not ready to buy, but they’re ready to explore and find their next purchase or a solution to their current problems.
That’s why you can reach the top of the funnel users with numerous digital marketing strategies, like:
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is an excellent online marketing strategy for reaching customers at every stage of the purchasing funnel. With SEO, you can improve your business’s visibility in search engine results relevant to your business.
For instance, a landscaping company might want to appear at the top of results for answers like:
- importance of landscaping
- landscaping company near me
If you’re looking at the search answers behind these queries, you know that ‘landscaping company near me’ comes from consumers closer to the funnel’s bottom.
This methodology helps your business reach consumers in your target market, looking for relevant information.
Also, SEO allows your team to build brand awareness, as you can become an accessible resource for users in the early stages of buying.
2. Content Marketing
Content marketing is essential in today’s modern digital marketing funnel. Around 70% of users learn about a company through articles, instead of reviewing ads.
More than 60% of consumers prefer businesses that create customized content, from infographics to blog posts.
With an intent to user-focused content marketing strategy, your business should be able to develop relevant content for those looking to find an answer to their problems.
You can also optimize your content with SEO. Optimizing the content is essential, as 80% of consumers start their product research online. So, if your content doesn’t appear in the relevant search results, it’s nearly impossible for users in the top funnel to discover your company.
3. Social Media Marketing (SMM)
An average user spends 28% of their Internet time on social media networks. It’s a fact that shows the value of social media marketing. It’s an excellent digital marketing strategy for reaching TOFU users.
Social media is one of the most trusted platforms for building brand awareness, so it’s more suitable for the TOFU section of the marketing funnel.
Use influencer marketing for better results with social media marketing. With influencer marketing, you can make direct and quick contact for your company with top of the funnel users. You can also gain the trust of an influencer to improve a consumer’s first impression of your business.
How to Reach MOFU (Middle of The Funnel) Users
Users’ action varies in the middle of the digital marketing funnel. While some focus on a specific product and others compare brands.
MOFU is a stage with many actions and proven strategies that help reach the middle of the funnel audience.
You can use these trusted Internet marketing strategies to reach MOFU:
1. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
For MOFU, your company can also use SEO. Your team should focus on the target and exploratory keywords that logically follow those initial keyword searches.
For example, you can target keywords that answer ‘why’ questions for the users in the middle of the funnel.
By using SEO practices for MOFU, you can also reach consumers that missed your business earlier. Capture their resumed journeys, as it’s not rare for consumers to start and pause their shopping again.
2. Content Marketing
You can also use a content marketing strategy for the middle of the digital marketing funnel.
Create content that answers’ why; questions. It’s also helpful for companies to develop in-depth content, like online guides, as consumers become serious about buying.
Companies may even develop gated content such as white papers, videos, and articles in some cases. Creating gated content helps your business earn email sign-ups from a valuable audience, helping your company connect with this audience on a more frequent basis.
3. Email Marketing
Help your team reach users ready to learn more about your services or products with email marketing. These are users that have signed up to receive emails from your business.
Some reasons why users’ sign-up for an email newsletter are updates, exclusive content, and promotions.
Get ready to achieve the best results from your email marketing strategy by dividing your MOFU audience.
How to Reach BOFU (Bottom of The Funnel) Users
Under (BOFU), users are ready to call your business, buy your product, or visit your location.
That’s why companies use digital marketing and paid advertising to reach users.
Reach the audience at the bottom of the marketing funnel in these ways:
1. Email Marketing
Email marketing is an established strategy for BOFU users. It can generate 50% more sales than any lead generation method. So, make use of your email marketing campaign to drive consumers to make a purchase.
It’s worth segmenting your BOFU target audience.
For instance, maybe the audience is ready to pre-order your most recent product but needs a gentle notification when available.
In response, your team should issue a reminder email, which can include a coupon code. This campaign can inspire shoppers to complete and return their purchases.
2. SEO
You should focus mainly on actionable words during the funnel’s bottom as essential for your business growth.
For example, use keywords that feature ‘buy’ to indicate buying intent.
An SEO strategy that focuses on the bottom of the funnel is often competitive, i.e., your competitors might want to reach those consumers. That’s why every company optimizes its website for high-value keywords.
Therefore, your business should expand its focus beyond the bottom of the sales funnel.
Targeting each stage of the website funnel can help your company to reach more users with less competition.
Make your digital marketing sales funnel work for your business.
3. PPC
Nowadays, companies use PPC (pay per click) advertising to attract customers that are ready to buy.
This strategy is beneficial for users in a ‘want-to-buy’ micro-moment. PPC can still help you reach users that have conducted in-depth research into your products and brands. You can also use PPC to remarket the users that visited your website earlier.
Conclusion
Looking for help to develop a digital marketing strategy that works with a new online marketing funnel?
With many years of experience, JetRank Agency can help. Our high-quality team of digital marketing specialists can use your strategy for today’s customers, helping your business grow its team and its revenue.
Call us today or contact us online to learn more!
