Creating a Comprehensive Marketing Plan for the Entire Customer Journey

Navigating through the world of full-funnel marketing and omnichannel strategies can be perplexing for many. Numerous articles delve into intricate concepts like key performance indicators (KPIs) and goal monitoring.

Instead of overwhelming you with unnecessary intricacies, this blog provides a straightforward and practical method for constructing a powerful full-funnel marketing strategy.

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What You Will Learn?

It aims to enable you to effectively reach prospective customers at every step of their journey. To facilitate comprehension and implementation, real-world examples will be included as well.

So, let’s begin with what is a funnel in digital marketing.

In the realm of digital marketing, a funnel represents the visual representation of the customer journey and the steps involved before a potential customer completes a desired action or makes a purchase.

Funnels marketing illustrates the distinct phases that individuals progress through as they transition from being unfamiliar with a brand or product to becoming loyal customers.

Types of Funnels:

In the realm of digital marketing, a variety of funnel types exist to address distinct objectives and desired outcomes. Here are several common funnel types:

• Widely employed, the sales funnel steers potential customers through awareness, interest, consideration and purchase stages. The objective is to convert leads into paying customers by nurturing them with pertinent content and compelling offers.
• Concentrating on capturing and converting leads into potential customers, the lead generation funnel entices visitors to provide their contact information via lead magnets like eBooks, webinars or free trials. The funnel subsequently nurtures these leads to progress toward a purchase decision.
• Frequently used for educational purposes and establishing authority in a specific niche, the webinar funnel commences with webinar promotion to attract attendees. During the webinar, valuable insights and information are shared, followed by an offer or call-to-action to convert attendees into customers.
• The tripwire funnel involves offering a low-priced, high-value product or service to convert leads into paying customers. The initial purchase serves as a tripwire, leading customers into the sales funnel where they can be upsold or presented with additional products or services.
• Focused on acquiring recurring revenue, the membership funnel offers exclusive access to premium content, community forums or ongoing services. The funnel entices visitors to sign up for a membership or subscription and then engages and retains them as active members.
• Affiliated marketing funnels revolve around promoting products or services of other businesses in exchange for a commission. The funnel guides potential customers through the stages of awareness, consideration and conversion by providing valuable information and recommendations about the affiliate products.

These represent a few digital marketing funnel examples. The selection of a particular funnel depends on the specific goals and objectives of the marketing campaign and the desired actions from the target audience.

Learn More: What is the Role of Digital Marketing?

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What is Full-Funnel Marketing?

Full-funnel marketing encompasses a comprehensive approach that effectively reaches potential customers at every stage of the sales funnel, spanning from initial awareness to the ultimate conversion.

It entails developing customised marketing strategies and content that specifically cater to each phase of the customer journey, encompassing awareness, consideration, evaluation, and purchase.

Funnel Marketing Tips:

• Seamlessly guide prospects throughout the entire purchasing process by providing them with pertinent and valuable information.
• Embrace a full funnel marketing strategy to cultivate stronger customer connections and optimise your marketing efficacy.
• Acknowledge the significance of nurturing leads and sustaining customer engagement.
• Review the marketing funnel template followed by leading brands and get an understanding of the various steps involved in the process

Explaining Top of the Funnel (TOFU): Funnel Marketing Guide

At the top of the marketing funnel, the focus is on reaching out to potential customers who may have limited awareness of your brand or the problems you can address.

• This stage typically encompasses the largest audience as it targets individuals who lack specialised knowledge and understanding, making it crucial for generating brand awareness and interest.

  Marketing Funnel Examples:

  For instance, we have crafted a comprehensive guide to address the question, “What is SEO?” This content is intended for individuals who are searching for this query on Google, unaware of both the concept of SEO and the existence of our software. Such content falls under the top-of-the-funnel category.

• In the middle of the marketing sales funnel, the primary objective is to engage with individuals who have recognised a problem but have not yet identified the specific solution. The funnel starts to narrow down at this stage.

  Marketing Funnel Examples:

  Our guide on keyword research serves as a prime example of middle-of-the-funnel marketing. When someone searches for “keyword research,” they likely possess a basic understanding. While they are closer to becoming a customer than those seeking beginner information, they might not be ready to make a purchasing decision just yet.

• Bottom of the funnel (BOFU):

  Bottom-of-the-funnel marketing aims to target individuals who have a clear understanding of their problem and are actively considering your products or services as a potential solution. This stage typically represents the smallest and most targeted segment of the funnel.

  Marketing Funnel Examples:

  A notable example of bottom-of-the-funnel content is our comparison article between Ahrefs and SEMrush. When someone searches for “Ahrefs vs SEMrush,” they are likely in the buying phase but require assistance in making a final decision.

Role of Funnel Marketing Strategy

It is crucial to develop content or media that caters to all stages of the marketing funnel. Neglecting any stage can result in missed opportunities to engage potential customers.

Many companies tend to focus solely on bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) marketing, as it often yields higher conversion rates. However, BOFU marketing is usually more expensive and competitive compared to other funnel stages.

• By incorporating top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) and middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU) marketing efforts, you expand your reach to a wider pool of potential customers and lay the groundwork for future growth.
• A Nielsen meta-analysis showed that full-funnel marketing strategies deliver up to 45% higher return on investment (ROI)

How to Develop a Converting Full-Funnel Marketing Strategy?

You can formulate a highly effective funnel marketing strategy by following these five steps:

Step 1: Identify the Customer Journey:

Begin by gaining a deep understanding of how your customers progress from being unaware of your brand to making a purchase. This entails comprehending the buyer’s journey.

The content marketing funnel comprises three stages:

• Awareness: Customers become aware of a problem or need.
• Consideration: Customers evaluate available solutions to address their problems.
• Decision: Customers make a final decision and complete a purchase.

What To Do?

• Remember, each customer’s journey is unique and your objective is to understand their decision-making process and use content or media to guide them along the way.

Step 2: Select your Marketing Channel:

Attempting to create a funnel marketing strategy across multiple channels simultaneously can potentially undermine your plan’s success even before it takes off.

• Instead, it’s advisable to begin by choosing one channel and focus on developing, executing, and monitoring its performance until you establish a system that delivers positive outcomes. Subsequently, you can expand to incorporate additional channels.
• Numerous marketing channels are available, such as social media platforms, paid advertising, and more. At Traffic Radius, we prioritise organic search through search engine optimisation (SEO).

SEO proves highly effective for full-funnel marketing since it allows you to target keywords throughout the funnel, achieve high rankings in Google search results, and consistently attract traffic month after month.

For instance, our article on techniques for obtaining more website traffic generates an estimated 1,000 to 2,000 monthly search visits, as per Traffic Radius data.

What To Do?

• By creating content for every stage of the funnel, you may even witness compounding results, as Google’s search algorithm values topical authority.
• Comprehensive coverage of keywords across the entire funnel, not solely bottom-of-the-funnel keywords can lead to overall improvements in rankings.

Step 3: Determine your key performance indicators (KPIs)

While other guides might complicate this aspect, we will ensure it remains straightforward.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are measurable metrics that enable you to monitor the performance of your marketing initiatives and make necessary adjustments to your strategy.

KPIs can encompass various aspects, such as website traffic, goal conversions and attributions, time on page, bounce rate, and more.

What To Do?

We suggest starting with a single KPI: Traffic.

• Website traffic serves as a simple yet robust indicator of your marketing efforts’ effectiveness. In general, increased traffic tends to correlate with higher sales.
• Note that mere traffic volume isn’t the sole objective. Instead, focus on targeting the right keywords and generating relevant content aligned with your marketing funnel.
• The definition of success may vary based on your specific niche. Some niches feature lower search volumes and intense competition, while others offer a multitude of high-volume keywords.
• Observe an upward trend in your traffic numbers over time. Another valuable KPI, particularly when implementing an SEO strategy, is keyword rankings.
• We recommend checking tools; even after being in business for over 10 years, we still prioritise overall website traffic and keyword rankings as my primary KPIs to evaluate the effectiveness of my efforts.

Step 4: Develop content

Now that your strategy is in place and you have identified your KPIs, it’s time to embark on creating your content.

What To Do?

• The type of content you generate will depend on your niche and chosen marketing channel. While it’s impossible to cover every possibility in this blog, we will assume you are following my recommendation of using SEO as your primary traffic channel.
• For a comprehensive SEO strategy that targets the entire marketing funnel, the first step is conducting keyword research.
• This involves uncovering the keywords that potential customers are searching for on Google at each stage of the funnel.

For instance, let’s consider Billy Blogger’s buyer journey in the awareness or top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) stage. We can start with a seed keyword like “website traffic” and explore the suggested keyword ideas.

From these ideas, we can identify potential article topics such as:

• How to check your website’s traffic.
• How to drive traffic to your website.
• By repeating this process with different seed keywords for each stage of the funnel, you can generate more content ideas.
• For the middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU) stage, you can search with a seed keyword like “SEO.” This will yield keywords such as “What is SEO,” “How to do SEO,” “SEO best practices,” and more.
• To address the bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) stage, you can use broad keywords specific to your product and explore relevant content ideas.

Step 5: Monitor performance and make adjustments

After publishing articles and initiating promotional efforts, it’s essential to track the performance of your content over time to evaluate its effectiveness.

What To Do?

• The Organic keywords report presents all the keywords your website ranks for, enabling you to compare current rankings with previous positions. If you notice a decline in rankings over time, it signals the need to refresh your content to maintain its relevance and ensure the continued effectiveness of your marketing funnel.
• The Top Pages report showcases the highest-performing pages in terms of traffic and the number of ranking keywords. This valuable information allows you to identify which parts of your funnel are excelling, enabling you to generate more content in that area.

For example, if the Top pages report highlights significant success with affiliate marketing content (which falls under the middle-of-the-funnel or MOFU stage), it would be beneficial to create additional articles on this topic. By following this approach, we have witnessed substantial growth, attracting thousands of new visitors every month.

The top pages report serves as a basis for determining which pages to prioritise for conversion optimisation. By focusing on enhancing lead generation and sales on your highest-traffic pages, you can maximise the return on your marketing efforts.

Is Sales Funnel Marketing Strategy Worth It?

Implementing a comprehensive sales funnel marketing strategy is essential for businesses seeking to maximise their marketing effectiveness and achieve long-term success.

By targeting potential customers at every stage of the sales funnel, from initial awareness to final conversion, businesses can effectively nurture leads, foster strong customer relationships and cultivate brand loyalty.

Throughout this guide:

• We have delved into the key elements of a successful full-funnel marketing strategy.
• We have emphasised the significance of mapping the customer journey.
• Carefully selected appropriate marketing channels identified relevant key performance indicators and created tailored content.

What To Do?

• Understanding your customers’ journey empowers you to develop content that directly addresses their needs and guides them along the path to making informed purchase decisions.
• Choosing the right marketing channels, such as leveraging the power of organic search through SEO, can provide a consistent stream of targeted traffic and attract the right audience for your business.
• Establishing KPIs, such as tracking website traffic and monitoring keyword rankings, allows you to evaluate the success of your marketing efforts and make necessary refinements to optimise your strategy.
• Regularly monitoring performance and analysing data insights provide valuable feedback that enables you to continually improve and ensure the long-term effectiveness of your marketing initiatives.

Conclusion

A well-executed full-funnel marketing strategy empowers businesses to expand their reach, drive conversions, and cultivate strong customer loyalty. By embracing this holistic approach, you can enhance the overall impact of your marketing efforts and achieve sustainable growth in today’s highly competitive business landscape.