Use appropriate media tactics at each stage of the funnel
This Visual Paradigm diagram shows how you need to tailor your marketing efforts to each of the specific stages of the funnel:
At the top of the funnel, you try to reach as many people as possible, to make sure the market is aware of your brand. Big brands can do this through TV advertising, and startups through social media advertising, more affordable. When a user takes an action that indicates they're in the market for your products, you want to make sure they know you on comparison sites and search engines during the mid-review phase of the funnel. . And, once it engages on your site, your bottom funnel tactics will take over with things like digital retargeting ads and email tracking.
But getting them to buy is only half the exercise, now you want to get them to buy again (through your email promotions and by joining your customer loyalty program). And you want to ask them for positive reviews about your products and share their love of your product or brand with their social media followers, making them brand ambassadors. As you know, it is much cheaper to acquire clients through positive and free word of mouth than it is to try to acquire clients through an expensive advertising top funnel.
Use the appropriate measures at each stage
One of the biggest mistakes a business makes is using the same metric of marketing at every stage of the funnel. For example, she compares her cost of acquiring a customer(CAC) to that of each of its marketing tactics. If it did, it would immediately skew the lower funnel tactics, as the CAC of lower funnel buyers in the market will only be a fraction of the non-market upper funnel prospects. This bias can help them get an immediate ROI on their marketing spend, focusing on the most profitable tactics, but it would hurt them in terms of investing in the top funnel and building brand awareness. brand in the long run, which would allow them to better size the business in the long run.
In my opinion, your funnel top is measured according to a measure of cost per impression (CPM) or cost per visitor (CPV), your intermediary funnel is measured according to a measure of cost per lead (CPL), and your lower funnel is measured by a cost per acquisition measure (CPA). If you set the right metrics for each step, you'll have a better chance of growing your business in the long run. It may be a little less profitable in the first few months of “building the funnel”, but in the long run your business will be much bigger and more profitable than if you focused solely on the lower funnel.
Modeling the Right
I prefer to grow my business profitably, and not by taking market share at all costs to "own" the market in the short term and make long term profits (after years of huge losses). That's why, based on this principle, I typically divide my media mix: 20% for top-funnel branding, 30% for middle-funnel development, and 50% for bottom-funnel conversions. This gives the profits a short-term "chance of success" a few months after the campaign is launched.
But the mix can be very variable depending on the sales cycle of your customers. Suppose you are selling luxury cars and your customers only buy a car every 5-10 years. So it will take a long time for your top funnel brand to pay for itself. So maybe you should focus more on middle and lower funnel tactics only, in order to get a more immediate ROI. On the flip side, let's say you are selling an affordable consumer product with a high repeat purchase cycle (eg Starbucks coffee). In this case, you may want to invest more in the upper part of the funnel, in order to quickly build brand awareness and keep competitors away,
Final thoughts
Planning the sales funnel and modeling the media mix is not easy, especially for newbies. Also, be sure to surround yourself with smart mentors, consultants or advertising agencies who have great expertise in this area, so that you don't throw your limited marketing resources away. But, hopefully, you now have a better understanding of how it works to help point you in the right direction to build a really great brand, be successful marketing, increase your income and profit.
