A marketing funnel is a journey mapped out to take prospects through various stages of their purchasing decision. First it is about grabbing the target audience’s attention, then it is about informing, educating and engaging them on how your business can help and finally it is about converting them to make the purchase or hire your services. Attracting your prospects’ attention and getting them to interact with you is the first step of the funnel, called top-of-funnel (TOFU). Here’s how you can engage them in TOFU. In this part 2 of the blog series, I will help you understand the tactics on moving them to the next stage which is BOFU (bottom-of-funnel).
Once you have stood out of the noise, grabbed those eyeballs and got your audiences interacting with you, that’s when they are in the middle-of-funnel – ready to be engaged. It is time to truly nurture them as they will begin to show interest in your offerings, will slowly warm up to your problem solving techniques and will want to find out more. This is the trust building phase where you can assure them that purchasing your product or service is the best thing for them!
Here are some proven tactics on nurturing them in mid-of-funnel;
Engage with content: This is the stage where your prospects need the all important in-depth information. You can drive value through content pieces that include real-life case studies, whitepapers, data sheets and e-books talking about industry trends, sector specific challenges and thought leadership pieces, webinars providing actionable insights and education on problems that you aim to solve for them. You can always alter the length and depth of your content based on your audience preferences. If you are not sure what their preferences are – polls and surveys are great tools to understand the readiness of your audience to consume content. This will further equip you to personalize better and fast.
Entice with email nurtures: Whoever said email is dead, was not using them in the right way! Using tactics like ‘always-on’ campaigns, or drip campaigns that send automated emails with valuable content gradually educating the recipient and nudging them with soft CTAs gets them closer to taking action. Similarly, segmenting your audience based on their behaviors, interests and type of content engaged with, enables you to re-target them with exclusive content tailored for their needs. Also, if you have used polls and surveys as mentioned above earlier in the process you can create further personalized email nurtures and triggers to engage them better.
Retarget and remind: Once you have segmented your audience you can re-target the segments based on common behavior patterns via retargeted ads highlighting the benefits of your product or services based on their needs. Driving retargeting campaigns that highlight specific case studies, demos or webinars are an effective way to nurture your audience at this stage. Giving in-depth targeted information is key at this stage of mid-of-funnel as the audience is keen to understand how best can you solve their most painful problems. And what is even better – they are ready to listen!
Leverage with social proof: At TOFU you have grabbed your customers attention, now it is about building trust. Showcase what your existing customers have to say about you. This can be done via customer testimonials, reviews, CSAT or NPS scores, industry endorsements or even user-generated content like videos, social media posts, photos or more where live usage of your product and service is brought to light.
Address objections and pain points: Building content like FAQ pages, glossaries, blog posts that address common questions is a great way to overcome objections early on. ROI calculators, comparison guides and interactive content showcasing how your product or service stack up against the competitors is a great way to get user buy-in early on.
Engage through social media: At the middle-of-funnel you audience is keen to know more about you. Engaging with them on groups and communities across social media channels, shows that you are present, you care and are available to problem solve. Similarly, you can share deeper educational content on your social media channels for your audience to consume at their leisure. By sharing, commenting, answering questions for your identified target audience, you appear approachable.
Jab, jab, jab, upper hook: As Gary Vaynerchuk says in his book, give much more before you can ask for their attention: Provide free consultations, assessments, no obligation ‘introductory’ meetings, breakfast briefings, lunch and learn sessions etc. where your audience can get to know you more, build trust and understand at a deeper level if you are the right business to help them. Remember to set up strategic follow-ups after your initial consultations and meet-ups.
Finish off with strong CTAs: While you are here to give free consultations, and help your audience build that trust, you need to pay your bills too. So, encourage small commitments. Nudge your audience to take action no-matter how small, but keep them moving through the funnel – download a case study, read a report, sing up for a time-sensitive offer (low price offerings) to move them from your MOFU to BOFU (bottom-of-funnel).
Track and score: As your audience engages with multiple activities through the middle-of-funnel, it is important to score them for the actions they take. Based on the scores they achieve, you will have a far better idea of offering your high-score leads some solid BOFU offer. Also scoring and tracking your leads will give you more detailed information about them, which will further enable you to segment them effectively and hence personalize your communication to them in a bid to move them towards BOFU!
If you want to learn about how to overcome personalization challenges while communicating to your audience check out my blog.
