The realm of Digital Marketing is a constantly changing environment. Another newfangled stuff that might be bothering you is the gimmicky fuss about ‘Digital Marketing Funnels’?

What are Digital Marketing Funnels?

Let’s start with the basics. Earlier there used to be a linear digital marketing approach where visitors were directly converted into leads. But with time, Digital Marketing has now become a multi-faceted approach, in the form of ‘Digital Marketing Funnels’. This is because with rising awareness and competition, people aren’t ready to buy just anything available on the internet, without doing a proper research. Therefore, a Digital Marketing Funnel brings about awareness of your brand through different strategies with the ultimate aim of grabbing attention of people who will end up buying your product or services.

Dealing with Each stage of a Digital Marketing Funnel

Digital Marketing Funnel is rather an ‘Hour-Glass’ approach that consists of 10 strategic steps to ‘generate customer leads’, ‘retain them’ and ‘expand your business’.

Pre-Purchase Stages

1. Engagement

“I never knew that brand existed? Is the Brand relevant to my needs? Is it genuine?” These are some of the issues that are addressed in this ‘brand awareness’ stage. The objective of this stage is to let customers find your brand with the aid of SEO & SMO techniques and deliver value and brand awareness to the target audiences.

2. Education

“I wasn’t aware that this could be the solution to my problem” – is what generally addressed in the education stage.

Here’s when content marketing plays a very crucial role. Within this sphere, you can share high level intro of the solutions you offer for the identified customer problems, talk about the challenges and the opportunities, and even make them aware of your products/services.

3. Research – ‘Is your product going to be a hit in the market? What makes your business unique from your competitors?

To build a strategized digital marketing funnel for your business, you need to do some extensive research with the help of Google Analytics or Social Media Insights. If you aren’t able to assess your website’s performance, don’t waste your time (=money) any further and be prepared to hire a rewarding SEO Agency Melbourne or a Social Media Marketing Agency. Some top questions during your research should take into consideration factors such as:

• Different ways with which you can make customers more aware of your brand.
• Potential of your company to bring out irresistible offers to beat your competitors.
• If your customers don’t act to these offers and promotions, how you are going to deal with it.
• Tactful ways with which you can address your customer needs.

4. Evaluation

Does the product/service actually addresses the customer needs? Does my idea matches with my audiences need?

From this stage onwards, you have identified your potential buyers and now you need to focus on building your brand value/ idiosyncrasy of your product(s)/services. Here you would need to rethink about your product’s features/ capabilities, technical specifications, working and designing unique solutions. While evaluating, make sure you consider all the needs of your potential buyers and be sure enough to address their real problems.

5. Justification

Will customers really be wanting to buy this product/service? Aren’t their enough competitors already present? How will you convince about this new launch to your investors?

Here you would need to give social proof, an estimate of ROI and flexibility of the brand in order to minimize any losses in the future and have a far-sighted vision of taking this brand to a competent level.

6. Purchase

What shall be the initial cost of my product? Should I do PPCs and run promotions and contests?

This is probably the most important step of the digital marketing funnel. Incurring profits, even after application of discounts, offers and freebies, should be your ultimate motive. Use Marketing Automations, Facebook ‘Shop Now’ features, E-mail Marketing, Ad Campaigns to push up your sales.

Post-Purchase Stages

7. Adoption – Now when the purchase is made, it’s time to deliver all the promises you have mentioned to your customers so far. A customer is likely to turn off from a new brand if they experience rocky starts and even petty glitches throughout the entire process. Keep your internal team ready to address all customer issues immediately.
8. Retention – Now once you have delivered your dream project, it’s time to get feedbacks and learn if your customers actually loved the experience. Even if they have complains, address and resolve them as quickly as you can which helps in building trust. Also consider providing value added services such as educational contents, best practices, product updates and tips and tricks associated with your product, to show that you are totally concerned about your customer needs and satisfaction.
9. Expansion – If you are able to cross this stage, you already know that you are running a successful business. You’ve earned your customer’s trust, probably built a long term relation, and now it’s time to cross-sell and up-sell your product for a pool of new potential customers. If you have any complains about a product/service, make sure you rectify these issues before stepping on the bigger play field.
10. Advocacy – Advocacy of your brand by spreading ‘word of mouth’ messages is extremely important to build expansive customer leads. Testimonials, product reviews, positive endorsements about your brand etc. will boost up your sales and your brand image. Developing such a relation with customers that they can deliver positive advocacy is the biggest factor in driving a quality ROI.

While formulating a digital marketing funnel, be aware that not one size fits all.  Industry based experts of SEO Agency Melbourne are experienced at doing thorough researches about the potentiality of your business growth and undoubtedly are the  best catalyst to help reach out to new audiences and bring customer leads for your business.