As customer acquisition costs continue to rise, and earning buyer loyalty grows increasingly difficult, companies in every industry are beginning to recognize the value of full-funnel marketing tactics. In today’s world, you can’t expect to see exceptional results if you focus all of your time, effort and budget on simply “converting” customers.
The most successful companies are the ones that take a comprehensive approach to forging powerful relationships with consumers throughout every stage of their buying journey. In fact, a full funnel approach to marketing can boost the ROI of your promotional strategy by around 45%.
With a holistic, connected approach to building brand awareness, educating consumers, and earning optimizing buyer retention, you’ll not only increase sales, but boost the lifetime value of every consumer you convert, and save money on future marketing initiatives.
Here, we’ll introduce some of the top full-funnel marketing tactics we use help our clients outperform the competition, and unlock incredible revenue.
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Full Funnel Marketing Tactics: Strategies for Every Stage
On a broad level, full funnel marketing is all about enhancing the experience consumers have with your brand at each stage of the marketing funnel. It looks not just at increasing awareness, boosting your brand’s reach and generating leads, but also helping customers to choose your company over the competition, and optimizing your conversion rates.
What’s more, full funnel marketing can significantly increase consumer loyalty. Even after you convince a customer to purchase your product or service, you continue to engage them with content and marketing strategies designed to increase repeat conversions, and transform buyers into advocates for your brand.
The result is you end up spending less on marketing initiatives in the future, because you already have a strong brand reputation, and a community ready to drive sales to your company. For instance, leading food delivery service, Gousto now generates more than 80% of its new signups from referrals and organic marketing strategies, thanks to a full-funnel approach.
While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to building the ideal full funnel marketing strategy, there are certain tactics that can deliver excellent results at each stage of the funnel.
Top of the Funnel Marketing Tactics
It’s easy to overlook the importance of your “top of the funnel” tactics when it comes to marketing. A lot of companies assume they should be focusing most of their attention (and budget) on the “conversion” stage. But you can’t convert customers if they’re not aware of your brand first.
In fact, a study from Fospha found that companies that consistently invest in building brand awareness achieve up to 42% higher return on ad spend (ROAS).
The full funnel marketing tactics you use at the top of the funnel should concentrate not just on increasing brand reach, but also positioning your company as a thought leader your customers can trust. Here are some of the top strategies we recommend using.
Organic and Paid Social Media
Social media is a fantastic tool for building brand awareness, and capturing the attention of your ideal customer. While organic content helps to boost the visibility of your company on the channels where customers are already searching for products and interacting with other brands, paid campaigns help you to hone your focus on a specific group of “ideal leads”.
For instance, we created a TOFU paid social strategy for the paint company Lick, using audience data and targeting strategies to significantly increase new customer acquisition by 66% year over year. What’s more, our strategy helped to reduce the company’s acquisition costs by around 7.5%.
Content Marketing and SEO
Content marketing and search engine optimization strategies are another way to significantly boost the visibility of your brand, products, and services. Creating content that targets the keywords and phrases your customers are searching for in the early stages of their purchasing journey boosts your chances of connecting with customers who may not even be aware they need your solution yet.
The key is to focus on valuable, educational content, designed to answer common customer questions, and demonstrate a deep knowledge of their pain points. For instance, just look at all the content HubSpot produces on a regular basis. They don’t just publish content that shows off what their products can do, they create guides that gently nudge consumers towards their solutions.
Public Relations (Press Campaigns)
PR strategies are regularly overlooked by many companies investing in full funnel marketing tactics for the top of the funnel. However, they’re a fantastic way to expand your reach and connect with new consumers. Not only will a press release on a reputable website or platform help you to connect with new potential leads, but it can boost your credibility too.
Simply being featured on a well-known publication is enough to show your ideal audience that you’re an established, reputable company. You can even boost the impact this strategy has on your reputation by including quotes from industry leaders in a press release.
Influencer Marketing
Working with influencers is a good way to boost the impact of your marketing strategies throughout the customer journey. However, it can be a particularly valuable tactic for the top of the marketing funnel. While customers won’t always immediately trust the claims your company makes about your products or services, they’re more likely to trust the recommendations of influencers.
In fact, 69% of consumers trust influencer recommendations, and most online buyers follow at least one influencer on social media, or YouTube. You don’t even have to spend a fortune to get great results. Micro-influencers are fantastic at increasing brand reach and awareness too.
Middle of the Funnel Marketing Tactics
The full funnel marketing tactics you use to increase brand awareness at the start of the purchasing journey can also be valuable for the middle of the funnel. Organic and paid social ads, are great for drawing attention to the core benefits of your products and services when consumers are comparing their options.
Plus, search engine optimization strategies and content can help you guide your customers towards a purchase. You can use comparison guides to and other forms of content to help your customers identify the ideal product for their needs, increasing your chances of a future conversion.
However, there are a few additional full funnel marketing tactics that are particularly valuable for the middle of the funnel. These strategies typically focus on both educating your audience (helping them to make purchasing decisions), and highlighting the credibility of your company.
Ebooks and How-to Guides
Before customers are ready to buy something, they need help understanding which products or solutions are going to solve their problems, or help them achieve their goals. Ebooks and how-to guides are an excellent way to show off the benefits of whatever you offer, while increasing your company’s value in the eyes of potential customers.
They shouldn’t focus on trying to simply “sell” whatever you offer, but instead on delivering useful information to your customers. For instance, Mailchimp’s guides on email marketing don’t just highlight all the features of the platform, they show customers how to unlock the full benefits of an email automation system.
This gently pushes customers towards a purchase, while also allowing Mailchimp to position itself as a trustworthy thought leader in its niche.
Webinars and Events
Webinars and events are another fantastic way to educate your audience, demonstrate your authority, and gently promote your products or services. In-person and hybrid events help you draw attention to your company’s expertise, and can even boost your brand’s reputation by aligning you with other well-known brands and thought leaders.
Webinars highlight your industry expertise, and deliver value to your customers, helping strengthen the relationship between your company’s and potential leads. They can also be a great way to collect contact details so you can nurture potential customers over time. Plus, they can offer insights into customer pain points and goals, so you can personalize future marketing strategies.
Email Marketing
Speaking of nurturing your leads, email marketing is a fantastic way to keep customers engaged and informed as they move through their purchasing journey. The right email strategy keeps your company and its products or services top-of-mind with customers who aren’t immediately ready to make a purchase – reducing your risk of losing leads to the competition.
The key to success with email marketing is a highly personalized, data-driven approach. Segmenting contacts based on their interests, demographic data, and behaviors ensures you can create more powerful, relevant campaigns. Our highly personalized email marketing strategy for Bibado helped the company increase its email revenue by 36%.
User-Generated Content
Just as customers are more likely to pay attention to the companies that their favorite influencers recommend at the start of the purchasing journey, they’re also more likely to trust the insights of external parties during the “consideration” stage.
Over 95% of customers say they regularly read product reviews before they decide to purchase something. Showcasing reviews and testimonials, as well as case studies and customer success stories on your website, and across your social media channels can significantly increase your chances of future conversions.
Plus, actually paying attention to reviews helps you to understand your customers, and the factors they consider when making purchasing decisions.
Bottom of the Funnel Marketing Tactics
A lot of companies assume that the full funnel marketing tactics they implement at the bottom of the funnel will be the most complicated to get right. However, if you invest the right amount of time, effort, and resources into your marketing tactics for the earlier stages of the funnel, actually converting your customers should be a lot easier.
If you’ve already earned the trust of your customers, and shown them the value you can deliver with your educational content and strategies for building brand awareness, it won’t take as much work to actually convince them to buy something.
Often, all you need is a little extra nudge to turn an interested lead into a paying customer. Here are some of the top full funnel marketing tactics we recommend at the bottom of the funnel.
Paid Search (PPC)
Paid search campaigns can be useful at all stages of the marketing funnel. However, they’re particularly valuable at the “decision” stage, when customers are already aware of your product or service, and are more likely to take advantage of offers and deals.
A well-designed PPC strategy, focused on targeting customers that demonstrate purchasing intent, can drive massive conversion rates. The key to success is making sure your paid ads are personalized, focusing on the key benefits that matter most to each segment of your target audience.
Enticing offers and promotional discounts are extremely useful here too. You can even consider using pop-ups on your website to deliver first-order discounts and exclusive promotions to customers when they click on your paid ads.
Retargeting Strategies
Even if your customers are ready to make a purchase, there’s no guarantee they’ll do so immediately after clicking on a paid ad, or a purchasing link shared via email or social media. There are plenty of factors that can distract your customers and stop them from buying something.
The key to boosting your conversions is making sure you give yourself multiple chances to recapture customers that abandon your website for any reason. Retargeting campaigns, which focus on driving consumers back to your website can turbocharge your results.
Again, personalization is crucial here. Showcase the products your customers previously viewed in your retargeting campaigns. Using psychological strategies to trigger a “fear of missing out” can be useful here too. For instance, consider showing your customers that you’re running out of stock for a specific product, or that reminding them they have limited time to access a discount.
Conversion Rate Optimization
Conversation rate optimization (CRO) actually consists of a series of different full funnel marketing tactics, designed to improve and streamline the customer experience. The focus here should be to make it as simple as possible for customers to make a purchasing decision.
This means ensuring product pages and landing pages include all of the data and insights customers need to make the right choice of which product or solution to purchase. It also means eliminating any potential friction points that could reduce conversion rates.
For instance, simply eliminating the need for customers to have to create an account to purchase a product with a “guest checkout” can reduce cart abandonment rates.
Post Funnel Marketing Tactics
Finally, we come to the part of the marketing funnel that’s most often overlooked by companies implementing full-funnel marketing tactics: the retention stage. A great full funnel marketing strategy shouldn’t just help you to capture and convert more leads.
It should also help you earn your customer’s loyalty. After all, it’s much cheaper and easier to convert an existing customer than it is to acquire a new one. Plus, your existing customers can significantly reduce your customer acquisition costs, by acting as advocates for your brand.
Here are some great post-funnel marketing tactics to try.
Exclusive Offers and Events
Consumers are more likely to remain loyal to companies who make them feel special. If you show your customers how much you appreciate them with exclusive offers, events, and experiences, they’ll develop a much deeper connection with your company.
Keep track of your most loyal customers and reward them for their continued support. You could consider sharing discount codes and giving your customers freebies on their birthday, or after they make a certain number of purchases, for instance.
Alternatively, you could make them feel special by inviting them to special members-only events, or allowing them to access sales before anyone else.
Loyalty Programs
Loyalty programs are one of the most popular full funnel marketing tactics to use in the post-conversion stage. They serve the purpose of making customers feel appreciated and special, while also helping you to increase future conversion rates.
There are plenty of different ways to run a loyalty program. For instance, you could award customers with points every time they make a purchase, which they can use to access discounts or deals at a later stage. Alternatively, you could create a tiered loyalty program, distributing higher-level rewards to your most valuable customers.
Customer Success Programs
Finally, customer success programs are another fantastic way to boost loyalty among your buyers, increase repeat purchases, and strengthen the relationship you have with your target audience. Something as simple as a “community” environment where customers can access training resources, how-to guides, and support from other consumers can deliver excellent results.
Not only will your customer success strategy help to ensure your customers get more value from anything they purchase from you, but it can help you to promote referral programs too, or identify advocates who can help your business grow.
Mastering your Full Funnel Marketing Tactics
The full funnel marketing tactics you use to increase brand awareness, boost conversions, and delight your customers will vary depending on a range of factors. The key to success is learning as much as you can about your customers, and creating a strategy that’s tuned to their purchasing journey.
At The Graygency, we work alongside companies to devise comprehensive, powerful, and effective full funnel marketing strategies. Using in-depth data, insights, and omnichannel strategies, we help companies of all sizes reduce marketing and customer acquisition costs, and increase sales.
Contact us today for help building the ultimate full funnel marketing strategy.
Ready to learn more about full funnel marketing ? Check out these articles:
How to Build a Full Funnel Marketing Strategy
Choosing a Full Funnel Marketing Agency: How to Pick the Ultimate FFM Partner
How Much Should You Invest in a Full Funnel Paid Media Strategy?
