The formula for a winning full-funnel marketing strategy

Is your conversion rate up-and-coming? Is there room to improve it and get more prospects to become happy brand advocates? (Hint: The answer is always "yes.”) A well-rounded full-funnel marketing strategy is the place to start. 

A full-funnel marketing strategy aims to take the prospect's hand when they're still just a soft lead and guide them through the funnel stages as they sit on their decision and eventually buy into your product or service. 

It's important that your funnel marketing tactics meet the prospect where they are at every step, and taking a full-funnel approach is a key way that you can ensure that your funnel is clear, compelling, and aligned with your prospects' needs and intent.

 A full-funnel marketing approach has three main stages to help win potential customers.

Understanding full-funnel marketing

Before optimizing your marketing, you need to understand the full funnel inside and out.

What is full-funnel marketing?

The marketing funnel is a conceptual framework that represents the stages a lead goes through before they make a purchasing decision or take action to buy your product or service. A full funnel approach helps marketers understand the customer acquisition process, and how marketing campaigns can nurture leads.

There are several iterations of the marketing and sales funnel, some of which have additional stages beyond the purchase action. The traditional full-funnel marketing approach has the following stages:

• Awareness: This is the top-of-the-funnel stage. It's the first time potential customers become aware of your brand or service. Your goal during the awareness stage is to attract a broad audience of potential customers and generate interest in what you have for them.
• Consideration: This is the middle-of-the-funnel stage. During the consideration stage, potential customers know that you have a potential solution to their problem, and they're considering it. Your goal during this stage is to demonstrate what makes your solution better than all the others.
• Conversion: This is the bottom-of-the-funnel stage. During this stage, your potential customers are about to make a real purchasing decision, hopefully with you. Your goal during this stage is to convince potential customers they'll be happy with your solution.

A full-funnel marketing strategy  is a comprehensive approach that considers all these stages of a customer's journey, from initial awareness to final purchase (and beyond). It involves crafting targeted messages and tactics to nurture leads and guide them towards conversion at every step.

Benefits of a full-funnel approach:

• Increased brand awareness: Consistent marketing messages across all channels in the entire funnel strengthens brand recognition.
• Improved lead generation: Targeted content and nurturing campaigns in your marketing efforts attract and convert qualified leads.
• Higher conversion rates: Understanding user needs at each stage allows for personalized offers and a smoother buying journey.
• Enhanced customer lifetime value: Building relationships encourages customer loyalty and encourages repeat business.
  Some of the benefits of a full funnel strategy.

Going beyond conversion

A full-funnel strategy doesn't stop at purchase. Consider including tactics to nurture existing customers, encourage repeat business, and address churn.  Loyalty programs, exclusive offers, and exceptional customer service can turn one-time buyers into brand advocates.

By implementing a full-funnel marketing strategy, you can attract, engage, and convert potential customers into loyal brand fans, ultimately driving sustainable business growth.

Making the most of your marketing funnel

The marketing funnel is a neat and tidy framework that lets marketers and business owners contextualize the customer journey as it applies to their marketing strategy. It's a structured way to understand how potential customers interact with your brand and move through the entire funnel. It also helps you gain insights into their behavior, preferences, and pain points at each stage of the journey.

Key strategies for successful full-funnel marketing

Optimizing a marketing funnel starts with a strategy. You'll want to tailor your approach at each stage based on what your potential customers are looking for.

Top of the funnel (Awareness)

During the top of the funnel stage, you're aiming to meet your target audience where they are and make yourself known. This is the time to spread awareness of your brand far and wide, but don't bother targeting mass audiences indiscriminately. Instead, you'll want to target your marketing efforts to the specific target audience that you want for your brand.

Some potential strategies for the top of the funnel stage include:

Content marketing

This strategy is the best way to tell your target customers that you truly understand their pain points and you're here to hear them out and give them a real solution. That means creating high-quality, informative, and engaging content that addresses what your readers' need and lets them know you're there for them.

For example, Lucidchart used TOFU content marketing with a use case that optimizes the buyer experience with account maps in their proprietary software. 

LucidChart used a case study as part of their full-funnel approach.

Search engine marketing

No matter who your potential loyal customers actually are, they are almost certainly users of Google or another search engine. Search engine marketing involves establishing pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns that propel you to the top of the search results.

Establishing better pay-per-click campaigns for the top of the funnel involves targeting and engaging potential customers in the early stages of their buying journey. TOF PPC campaigns are typically designed to create awareness, generate interest, and capture leads.  

It’s important at this stage to balance CAC with Long-Term Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV). While keeping your CAC low in the TOF stage is important, don't sacrifice the quality of leads you acquire. Aim to attract potential customers with high lifetime value, meaning they are likely to become loyal customers and generate revenue over time.

Influencer marketing

Aligning with a trusted and beloved influencer is a great way to build credibility within your audience of prospective customers. During the awareness stage, you can harness influencer marketing by collaborating with influencers who align with your brand values and have the same target audience as you.

Sperry took an interesting approach to influencer marketing by recruiting users who were already posting cool, high-quality photos of the brand's famous boat shoes, and asking them to create influencer content for the brand's Instagram. 

Social media marketing

It's incredibly common for prospective customers to flock to social media to get a sense of their options – and that makes it one of your most valuable marketing channels. You need a strong presence on social media with paid social media advertising and valuable shared content.

Citibank shared a powerful campaign as part of their full funnel strategy, which showed the moment young girls learned that men get paid 29% more than women. The powerful emotional reaction that the social campaign elicited ensured lots of engagement. 

Image via BusinessWire

Middle of the funnel (Consideration)

The middle of your full-funnel strategy sees prospective customers considering the solutions to their problems. They know that your solution is a possibility, but now their biggest question is whether your solution is the right one for their needs. Your job during this stage is to show the customer that your solution works and could change their life.

Some effective marketing tactics for the middle of the funnel stage include:

Content marketing

You'll notice that content marketing is actually effective though the full funnel, and is possibly your biggest asset when it comes to promoting awareness, supporting consideration, and influencing decision-making. At this stage, you might consider showcasing real, existing customers and their success stories by publishing case studies or educating the customer about your solution by providing guides and how-to content.

This case study created by Google in collaboration with Beats is accessible with plenty of white space and shareable imagery. It shows how Beats and its content agency took advantage of the Super Bowl platform to create an incredible, impactful ad. 

Tom Brady in the "Be Heard" 2017 Super Bowl advert for Beats.

Lead nurturing

While the lead is actively evaluating their options, you can gradually educate them, build trust, and guide them with automated lead nurturing sequences that send a series of emails or messages over time. This is an incredibly important part of your full funnel strategy for building a relationship once a lead has shown interest in your product.

Here's what an effective funnel marketing lead nurturing campaign could look like:

• Week 1: A welcome email goes out to new leads who signed up for your newsletter or downloaded a lead magnet. 
• Week 2: A blog post or video goes out addressing a common pain point and providing valuable insights with a CTA. 
• Week 3: Send an email with a case study or success story that shows how your product or service solved a customer's problem. 
• Week 4: A personalized campaign goes out, with a CTA asking the reader to share specific challenges and goals that they're facing. 
• Week 5: Based on the responses from the prior email, send a follow-up email with tailored solutions related to those challenges. 

This is a simplified version of what a lead nurture campaign could look like. In reality, the buyer journey isn't always a straightforward sequence. One best practice for lead nurture is to create a specific nurture campaign for each phase of the funnel, and each campaign should have its own funnel-based goal. For example, your lead nurture campaign built around awareness could aim to get the prospect to sign up for your newsletter. 

What's most important is that your lead nurture campaign allows you to constantly engage with prospects. When the time is right, that constant contact will allow your prospects to convert to valuable customers. 

Lead scoring and segmentation

Scoring leads at this point in your full-funnel marketing enables you to prioritize who to nurture first. By scoring leads based on certain metrics, you can optimize your process, save time, and contact the people who want to be part of your brand and product.

You can segment leads based on:

• Demographic information
• Content engagement
• Email engagement
• Website behavior
• Social media interaction
• Previous brand interaction

Retargeting ads

You can retarget website visitors who have shown interest in your product but haven't converted yet. This means you follow them and continue to show relevant ads based on their interest. This allows you to re-engage potential customers who may have shown interest in your products or services but haven’t completed the full funnel to make a purchase yet. Additionally, you can tailor the actual content of the ad to aid the viewer in their consideration stage.

A MOFU retargeting campaign includes:

• Display ads
• Social media ads
• Search ads
• Custom landing pages 
• A/B testing and optimization 
  
  

Bottom of the funnel (conversion)

Bottom of the funnel marketing strategies support the actual decision-making part of the customer journey. At this stage, your prospects are about to make a choice, and your hope is that they'll choose your solution. Content at the bottom of the funnel should align the potential customer's needs with your solution, making it clear why they should buy in.

Some examples of conversion-focused marketing funnel tactics include:

Product demos

Sometimes, seeing your solution firsthand is what it takes for your prospective leads to buy in. A demonstration is a great way to allow leads to experience your service or product firsthand. You can also offer free trials with personalized support and guidance.

The MasterClass brand is, well, a master at product demos. Their workshop demo videos prove that the knowledge they're offering is valuable and insightful by showing it firsthand. At this stage in your full-funnel marketing strategy, being able to show a glimpse of what customers could be getting can make all the difference.

Discounts and promotions

Embracing a full-funnel approach allows you to understand where prospects fall off the map. If you see that somebody has been stuck in the consideration stage for a while, it makes sense to entice them with strategic BOFU marketing messages – things like limited-time discounts, special offers, or promotional codes as an incentive to act. You can use scarcity and urgency to prompt immediate action.

To run a campaign based on urgency and discounts effectively, start by setting clear goals and defining your target audience. Craft an irresistible offer, such as limited-time discounts or flash sales, and establish a strict deadline to create a sense of urgency. You have to support that offer with attention-grabbing visuals and persuasive copy, incorporating countdown timers and prominent CTAs. 

Promote the campaign across your marketing channels, including email, social media, and website banners. Finally, continuously monitor and optimize the campaign's performance, and analyze results to refine future campaigns.

Abandoned cart remarketing

This point in your full-funnel marketing strategy can be a great moment to try implementing abandoned cart email campaigns to recover lost sales from potential customers. A timely email can prompt users to complete the transaction after they added items to their carts but didn't complete the purchase. Sometimes, a customer gets stuck in the middle of the funnel because they merely forgot to check out or spent too much time waffling on their decision.

For example, you could send the following email sequence:

• Email 1: This email goes out within an hour of cart abandonment, with the subject line "Don't forget your items!" and a CTA.
• Email 2:  Sent 24-48 hours later, with the subject "We saved your cart!" and a CTA. 
• Email 3:  Sent three to five days later, with the subject "Last chance to grab your favorites!" and a CTA. 

Re-engagement email campaigns

Try identifying dormant or inactive leads stuck in the middle of the funnel, and send them emails to get them back in action. Offer incentives, updates, or new features to rekindle their interest and encourage a return to your website.

Here's what a re-engagement campaign might look like:

• Email 1: With the subject line "We miss you!" and acknowledges the reader's past engagement and your brand's desire to reconnect with them. 
• Email 2: With the subject line "Unlock exclusive benefits just for you!" and reiterates the benefits of rediscovering your brand. 
• Email 3: With the subject line "Don't miss out on this last chance to reconnect!" and urges the reader to take action to keep receiving emails. 
• Email 4: With the subject line "Farewell for now!" and bids goodbye to the reader, stating that they'll be removed from the subscription list and giving an option to resubscribe. 
  
  

Launching a new product? Read our guide to go-to-market strategies. 

Tips for optimizing your full-funnel marketing strategy

Before you get started optimizing your marketing funnel, take the time to learn from these handy tips and tricks.

1. Know the customer journey

First, make sure you know the full-funnel marketing stages inside and out. You should know what makes a prospect more likely to take action and move along the funnel during the awareness, consideration, and conversion stages. You should have your finger on the lead's pulse through the entire customer journey, and know exactly what motivates action at every stage.

2. Personalize the experience 

Customers want to know that you're truly listening to what they want and need. They need to know that you hear their pain points and you're willing to walk them through their problem to find the ultimate solution (your product). Personalization should be implemented at every stage of the customer journey. You'll be rewarded with customer loyalty and improved conversion.

3. Make it hassle-free to buy in

Are there friction points making it hard for leads to progress through the funnel stages? If a potential customer finds it hard to add an item to their cart, find out more about the product, or opt in to a subscription, they simply won't act. Make it a point to exhaustively test your platform or website for the user experience, identifying and fixing any friction points along the way.

4. Use every marketing channel 

You have an entire world of marketing tools and channels available to you on this journey. It would be a mistake to use only the platforms you're familiar with. It's not enough to have a good website and stellar social media presence. You need to be  tailoring your marketing strategy to include email retargeting, using paid ads, and constantly doing research to find other platforms.

5. Optimize by funnel stage 

Finally, try breaking the process down into stages. You shouldn't try to apply the same blanket digital marketing strategies to every part of your sales funnel. Instead, take some real time to investigate the awareness stage, find out where leads are getting stuck, and solve those problems thoroughly. Take your time with each stage and build a full-funnel strategy from the ground up, one stage at a time.

Enjoying this? You might like:

• Everything you need to know about sales and marketing funnels
• How marketing and sales can work better together

Consider getting help on your marketing funnel strategy 

Don't be afraid to get help with identifying and nurturing your funnel prospects. With the right marketing metrics at your fingertips, you can identify what's working and what's not in an instant. It just takes the right analytics tool to give you better control over your funnel performance.

A great analytics tool can help you understand all the supporting metrics that help improve your conversion rate. It also helps identify friction points and bottlenecks so you can create a friction-free experience for your prospects.

Boost your funnel with one all-inclusive hub

With Funnel, you get access to a single data hub that will empower all the reporting and analytics you need to control the customer journey and improve your conversions. Using any visualization tool, with Funnel by your side, you can create an all-inclusive dashboard packed full of the funnel marketing metrics that matter. You have the power to take control of your marketing funnel at every stage and get the conversion rates your solution deserves.

Get a personalized demo today and see for yourself how Funnel can transform your marketing model and support your marketing team.