How To Craft A Full Funnel Marketing Strategy That Works

 

Picture this. You just moved into a new apartment and the showerhead in the bathroom just isn’t’ the best. As someone who’s 6’ 5”, you’re a big guy and need more than a short stream of unpressurized water and a shower head that sits at 6’ tall to get the job done. 

So you start shopping around, looking online for something that will stand tall and produce a stream of water with a good-sized diameter. Through the Googling and online search, you can’t seem to find one that’s just right.

 

The Start of the Funnel

Three days later, you start seeing ads on Facebook for a showerhead made specifically for you taller folks. Hmm, seems interesting—you’ll keep it in mind.

Then, you see another ad and then another one from the same brand, same product. After the third ad you come across, you decide to look into the brand a little bit more. On their website, you find that they have a great blog full of helpful information, but you don’t have the time to read through it right now. As you go to exit the site, a 10% off promotion pops up—all you have to do is enter your email address. Cool! You do it, exit, and are off to do other things.

Later that day, you check your email and find that 10% off code in your inbox along with some quick snippets of information and links to blog posts to ‘Learn More.’ You click and read through the blog What Happens When You Don’t Have the Right Shower Head For Your Body Type. Turns out that your hygiene can really suffer if you’ve got a crappy showerhead—who knew? You’ve got to run again, so you close your email and leave the purchasing consideration for later. 

As you scroll through Facebook later on and check your inbox once again, you see another ad and another email. The email says, “Don’t forget! 10% off … do it for your hygiene!” They finally got you. You can’t go around with smelly pits and bad hygiene, you’ll never get a date! So you add this showerhead to your cart, only to find that they’re offering 3 months of free top-of-the-line body wash and shampoo if you add their shower rack to your cart at checkout too. Fine, shower head company, you win!

 

What funnel?

Did you know you’ve just been through a full funnel marketing strategy by this brand? The marketing sales funnel is a way to visualize the process of turning potential customers into buying customers. It has three stages: 1) The Awareness Stage, 2) The Consideration Stage, and 3) The Conversion Stage. 

 

Top of Funnel / The Awareness Stage

This is where you get your brand in front of potential leads at the very beginning. At this point, these people probably don’t know your brand at all, so you’re getting your stuff and the overall picture of what you’re all about in front of them.

 

From the example above the awareness stage came into play when you saw that very first Facebook ad. The brand targeted potential customers who were in the market of purchasing a new showerhead that was made for taller people.

 

Middle of Funnel / The Consideration Stage

At this point in the marketing funnel, you’ve found some potential leads through your top of funnel strategy and now want to nurture those leads a bit more. You want these people to keep your brand in the back of their minds and begin considering your brand over the competition.

 

From the example above the consideration stage came in the form of retargeting you as a customer through further Facebook ads and through that initial email sign up. This brand did a great job of leveraging a discount to get you to sign up for their email list. Then once they had your email in hand, they sent you informative information to help sway your purchasing consideration further in their favor.

 

Bottom of Funnel / The Conversion Stage

At the bottom of the funnel, your strong leads already know who your brand is and you’ve done some work educating them and influencing them to make a purchase. You’re really working on encouraging that purchasing action at this point, doing whatever needs to be done to rock them in the decision-making direction your brand is rooting for.

 

From the example above the conversion stage was the combination of that final ad and that final email. “Don’t forget! 10% off … do it for your hygiene!” was just enough to make you think, I need this thing. 

 

The funnel actually doesn’t end there either. In our above example, this brand went the extra mile to get you to do even more! They encouraged you to add that shower rack to your cart too in order to get some free stuff—nice full funnel strategy, guys!

The overall point is that as you move down the funnel, marketing efforts become more focused on generating and nurturing real, good leads—the ones that already exist and have a good chance of turning into customers. 

And as the funnel continues to repeat itself, then comes the time to look back and see what’s working and what’s not. If email marketing is bringing a ton of customers through the door (or online door in this situation) but that extra promotion at the end is a little too pushy, learn from it and adjust from there.

 

A Full Funnel Example

Now that you’ve been through the hypothetical showerhead situation, we want to give you an example from a brand or marketing point of view and give you a look into the back end of how full funnel marketing strategies really work—analytics, trial-and-error, and all.

** Full Disclaimer: This brand is not a real client of ours but IS based on a real-life client. Gummy bears are cool, so we’ve decided to go with that—who doesn’t like bears in gummy, candy form?

Bear Hugs: A Hug For Your Gums, is a healthy gummy bear brand that sells delicious candy that’s packed full of ingredients that are great for gum health. As their product is packed full of good-for-you ingredients and nutrients, their brand itself focuses on educating their audience on the overall benefits of good gum health—why healthy gums are a staple in healthy teeth and preventing bad breath and gum disease.

OK, now to the full funnel marketing strategy that they followed.

 

Top of Funnel

Bear Hugs found their top of funnel strategy would be best focused around getting in front of parents and kids, creating a fun and exciting atmosphere around their brand. Because they cared so much about educating people on the importance of gum health, Bear Hugs led with that concept full force.

To build that brand awareness and get potential customers in the top of their sales funnel, they began targeting people on social media who cared about the hygiene and health of their kids’ teeth, as well as developed commercials intended to target children would they felt would be thrilled to eat cute gummy bears that their mommys and daddys would encourage them to enjoy too (a kid’s dream, really!). 

They also worked hard to get on health-focused TV shows that parents were likely to watch. They featured their brand and talked about the benefits of gum health with those TV healthcare professionals. 

 

Middle of Funnel

Once these kids were begging their parents to buy them Bear Hugs and the parents were aware of the Bear Hugs brand, it was now time to take that educational piece to the next level. Bear Hugs found that the best way to deliver further education to their top of funnel people was to get them on an email list and continue hitting them in the face with gum health content.

This brand developed a strategy around gaining those email contacts and then another strategy around delivering content that these people would want (and information that would help that conversion process too).

 

The Email List Strategy: To gain email contacts, Bear Hugs focused on three main tactics:

1. They added a 10% off a first order when you enter your email address on their website.
2. Long-form content was created in the form of fun downloadables about gum health that people could access for free by giving their email.
3. They created a program where people could share their experiences with gum health and the wonders it has done for their hygiene. These people could submit their stories, along with their emails and a photo of their beautiful smiles. They’d then be featured on Bear Hugs’ social media pages and the brand had their emails too.

 

The Gum Health Education Strategy: The content marketing goal for this stage of the sales funnel was to push the education and importance of gum health, NOT push the product on people. Bear Hugs did this by writing quality content that had subtle CTAs for purchasing Bear Hugs products throughout it. They shared this content on social media, blasted it out via email marketing, and really tried to develop a tribe of gum health-seeking people.

 

Bottom of Funnel

At this point, Bear Hugs was deep in the funnel with these potential customers. They knew all about Bear Hugs and the importance of gum health, they were familiar with the brand and what they were all about, and were on the edge of pulling the trigger (or clicking the ‘Purchase’ button in this situation).

The strategy here came into play through email marketing once again. Bear Hugs reminded customers of their 10% off discount that was waiting for them, delivered even more educational content to help sway a decision, and even incorporated other customer testimonials for these people to review. This was all done through an automated email series, or a drip campaign.

And it worked! These three components and continuously seeing the Bear Hugs brand over and over again made a huge impact on the conversion rates the brand was seen. People were buying from them and really became loyal to the brand and what it was standing for.

 

Don’t Stop There!

If Bear Hugs wanted to make the most out of your full funnel marketing strategy, they had to use the full funnel. 

A retention strategy is just as important to implement than any other funnel marketing strategy. The retention strategy that Bear Hugs used after their customers became buying customers (after they made their initial purchase). 

Like we said before, email marketing really worked for them, and Bear Hugs predicted that it would continue to work even after a purchase is made. And, in fact, they were right! Bear Hugs saw around 15% conversions per email—that’s pretty dang good! The brand continued focusing on their email marketing efforts to existing customers too, sending more informational content, opportunities to participate in local events, and offered holiday discounts when it was appropriate. 

 

The Takeaway

Trackable sales, clear strategy, pay attention to analytics (they will lead to a marketing strategy)—that’s what this brand excelled at. They utilized the entire sales funnel and tailored their content and marketing efforts toward each area of the funnel. Well done Bear Hugs, well done!

Now, if you need a hand with your full funnel marketing strategy, Bareknuckle’s your team. We always start with a constructive conversation over a cold one to get to know what’s working and what’s not. Then we can come up with a plan to fully utilize each stage of your brand’s marketing funnel. So let’s get to it! Schedule a Buy Us a Beer with Bareknuckle today.