Generating demand for your business involves effectively engaging your audience, building your brand awareness and nurturing them down the marketing funnel. It is critical to understand the stage of the marketing funnel that your prospects operate. There are most often three stages of a marketing funnel. In this three-part blog, I will go into detail of each stage of the marketing funnel and hence the lead nurture journey; the Top of Funnel (TOFU), Middle of Funnel (MOFU) and Bottom of Funnel (BOFU). They differ based on the level of interest and engagement your leads have with your business at each of these stages. Top of the funnel is where the leads are fairly cold, may not know much about what you offer, or are not even aware of the problem – you think they have. It is at this stage where building awareness is crucial so they begin to take notice of what it is you can help them solve.
Since this is a very initial stage of nurture it is important for your business to stand out of the chaos amongst your competitors to an audience that is fairly broad. At this stage they may not be aware that they need your product or service and so may have a very short attention span. Hence it is key to build content that is eye catching, entertaining and educational. You do not want the audience to be ticked off off by pushing a sale or by being aggressive this early in their journey. The approach to lead nurture at a TOFU should be non-intrusive, informative, engaging and trust building. It is important for your content to be optimized very well for search engines to capture organic traffic from users searching for the information related to your niche.
Here are some proven strategies to help you engage your top-of-funnel audience and convert them;
Drive value via content: Once you are aware of your customer profile at this stage – even if it is broad, it is good to put out informative content in line with your audience interests, providing solutions to any known pain points that they may have, build trust by showcasing your expertise in the field and ensure you are seen in places where they are looking. You can narrow down your audience profile based on the way this audience interacts with your content. This will further help you niche down.
Tactics: Build eye catching videos – long and short, launch webinars with popular topics, deliver podcasts with guests that are relevant in the space you are trying to drive interest in. Leverage social media channels to grab those eyeballs via LinkedIn Lives, Twitter Spaces, Facebook Lives, YouTube shorts and more.
Optimize your SEO: Since your audience is pretty broad at this stage they most often will not be aware of your business or your offering. Hence it is important to be present where your prospects are looking. Identifying and incorporating relevant keywords into your content strategy will improve your visibility.
Tactics: Optimize your website with meta tags, headers, proper formatting, back linking and similar SEO tactics.
Leverage social media: Ensure you do not spread yourself too thin. Many businesses make the mistake of being present on most popular social media channels- it is important to be present on the most relevant social media channels. Identify two or three of these channels that resonate with your audience. Build a strategy to engage on these channels – with quality content posted consistently. It not just about replicating the same content/post on each and every channel. Each channel is unique and each channel sees its audience behave differently. Hence it is important to ensure your content rings with these unique behavioral patterns for speedy engagement and growth.
Tactics: Use images, infographics, polls to build engagement on your channels. Create groups, host live sessions especially for members to build a community that engages on relevant topics further driving interest and trust amongst the audience. Social media is a great way to get to know your audience deeper and use that information in the rest of your marketing strategy.
Deploy paid advertising: Once you have identified two or three social media channels where your prospects are lurking, you can target them with relevant, informative, clickable paid ads. The same applies to paid ads on the search engine of your choice. By targeting people on the basis of their geo location, job titles, companies, sectors, profile descriptions etc. you can increase the visibility of your offerings via sticky ads that prompt your audience to click on.
Tactics: Paid ads on social media channels like LinkedIn, Instagram, X/Twitter or search and display ads on search engines like Google for those actively searching for related information will get new leads to explore your business website. If they are targeted well, they will stick around once they land on the website further driving interest and engagement if you have a solid web content strategy.
Employ email marketing: Email marketing is one the proven and effective ways to engage your audience on a regular basis as long as they have consented to you communicating with them. There are ways to build lead magnets into your email strategy to encourage your contact list to stay engaged and not unsubscribe.
Tactics: Periodic newsletters, discount offers, thought leadership pieces exclusive to subscribers and free trials, curated content and industry news and more will keep your readers tuned into your emails. Appropriate clickable assets woven into your emails will encourage your readers to take action and consume the information, engaging and warming them in the process.
Partner with influencers and syndicates: With the rise of influencer marketing, there are numerous subject matter experts and influencers that enjoy considerable amount of clout in the industry. These are people that your prospects often listen to and get inspired by. What better than getting them to advocate for your product or service? Similarly there are syndicates within particular sectors/industry of your interest. They often have the reputation and the opportunities to present to a very relevant, engaged audience, that is similar to your lead profile. Though choosing the right syndicate is important here. Check out my blog on how to choose your syndicate and make sure your syndicates deliver for you!
Tactics: Identify relevant, industry specific influencers and syndicates as partners on webinars, conference speaker sessions, blogs and similar written content, live sessions like LinkedIn Live, Twitter Spaces, Facebook lives etc.
Finally….
Rinse and repeat with analytics: Numbers will give you a good idea of what is working and what isn’t. It will tell you a story of what your audiences find useful and what they don’t. Have an eye on your analytics and improvise constantly. Tracking the performance of your content will ensure your campaigns are not static but instead improve based on constant engagement with your prospects.
Tactics: Regular reporting of lead gen and lead nurture at a weekly, monthly and quarterly interval will give an idea of the nature of these leads. Reports focusing on lead nurture via specific events like a webinar, industry event or podcast will help understand if that event has worked and if it was worth the budget spent on it? Measuring the performance of your email nurture campaigns will help you understand how engaged your readers are through their journey via the emails. If they are unsubscribing half way through your nurture, you know they are not glued in and are hence not interested. Check out my blog on Building efficient lead nurture campaigns to engage your audience better
Stay tuned for my upcoming blog on lead nurturing through the Middle-of-Funnel…
