With the improving and encouraging technological advances, marketers are constantly looking for ways to boost their sales more efficiently regarding costs whether it is through strengthening their brands or simply enhancing sales.
Quite often, such attempts are broken down into two parts, namely the upper vs lower funnel marketing strategies. Before proceeding any further with recommendations on the best practices for such strategies, it is necessary to clarify what precisely the difference between these terms is and why they can also be used simultaneously. In this article, we will describe the basic definitions concerning the two types of funnel strategies including upper and lower funnel strategies, relevance of these strategies in digital marketing and ways in which both strategies can be used in an advertising campaign.
What is Funnel Marketing?
Funnel Marketing is an engaging technique that allows one to envision the entire set of actions a customer takes towards a brand, including awareness and the final purchase. It is shaped similarly to a funnel in that it can be harder to deal with a brand in the initial stages but as one moves up the ladder and learns more about the brand they are likely to conduct more activities related to it. The funnel can also be divided into three levels which are:
Top Level: The part of the funnel where potential consumers start to learn about a brand and its associated products.
Middle level: The stage of the funnel where consumers have gone beyond the awareness stage and engage with the brand offerings.
Bottom Level: The last stage of the funnel where a purchase has occurred or a desired interaction with the available options was made.
In this article, we will discuss how upper funnel strategies, otherwise known as ToFu, and the bottom funnel strategies, BoFu for short, functions.
Upper Funnel Marketing: Definition and Explanation.
Upper funnel marketing aims at expanding the audience and awareness levels of brands within the project. The only purpose at this stage is to generate interest in a brand as the target customers do not have an idea of what the company offers.
Upper Funnel Marketing: Its Essential Features.
Goal: To introduce the brand to a larger number of people with the objective of generating interest in the early stages of the customer decision-making process.
Target Audience: Large in size, tends to be using mass strategies, consisting of potential consumers who are not aware of the company or are not on any active quest for the product or the services of the said company.
Strategies:
Content Marketing: Blog posts, infographics, videos or social media posts that aim to educate or entertain the audience.
SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTS: Advertisement on Instagram, facebook and mailing history on Linkedin are some of the practical methods of engaging most people.
Connected TV Marketing: Video on Demand (Ctv and ott) allow advertisements to be seen by many people at the same time unattended over many different devices.
Programmatic Marketing: Marketing of a user with the use of automated procedures which allows advertising a certain user throughout the network depending on his essential characteristics and conduct.
Benefits of Upper Funnel Marketing.
Brand cuddling: Upper funnel strategies make it sense to devote large scope and coverage in order to convey the intended message or objectives to people who have never heard of one in the first place.
Lead generation: While this may not be a purely immediate lead generation Korean War type of strategy, the activities of the upper funnel do serve the purpose of creating a reservoir of potential leads that can be utilized during a campaign in the future.
Markers of Interest: Content that serves the purpose of educating or goes a step further and entertains the user has the potential of generating impressions that can be explored within the confines of the brand.
Lower Funnel Marketing: Converting Leads
The funnel that is referred to as the lower funnel of any given brand is made up of leads that have made an intent to purchase the service or the product and just need a nudge. Some of these objectives include converting the leads to paying customers or performing other even more important tasks like ordering a trial or asking for a demonstration.
It is important to point out several factors in the marketing of the lower funnel:
Goal: Turn leads into customers
Then one can expect that the target audience is much smaller but also far more focused. People that have already had dealings with the brand or have shown the desire to do so.
Marketing 3D: Crucible, Demographic, Technical
Email Marketing: Owing to the interactions that a particular user has had with the website these are emails which can be very persuasive in getting the user to perform that last member action. Such include abandoned cart emails or special offer emails.
Retargeting Ads: These are aimed advertisements that target users who visited or interacted with your site or brand, but for some reason did not make a purchase or conversion.
Performance Marketing: Also called as direct response marketing, it concentrates on measurable results of a specific audience through the strategies employed which include PPC campaigns to realize direct sales.
Demand Generation Campaigns: These are organized campaigns designed for creating demand and bringing potential buyers to the very end of the purchase funnel.
Advantages of Lower Funnel Marketing, also known as Lower Funnel Tactics, among Wholesalers
Better Conversion Rates: Since your marketing efforts target prospects who are users of your company’s products and services, these marketing efforts are likely to convert more marketing leads than the upper funnel strategies.
Return on investment: Lower funnel tactics are more cost-effective because they are designed to deliver target leads who are in the conversion process.
Nurture Leads: Where leads can be nurtured controls, and satisfied concerning some issues which might be the reasons for not purchasing the product from the target firm.
Mirroring Lower Funnel Marketing with upper Funnel Marketing approaches
Even if the challenges posed by the upper vs lower funnel may seem distinct, in fact they do bring strangeness to a wider marketing tapestry. This allows addressing the entire customers’ journey and the prospective users’ all stages of purchasing behavior.
Best practices for integration of the through the funnel process
Lead Generation: After these leads are generated through broader, high-level strategies geared towards the upper funnel, lower funnel techniques like email prospecting or retargeting can be used to convert them.
Multi-Channel Marketing: These clients are taken through a succession of steps that leads them down the funnel and ultimately turns them into a customer. For instance, use connected TV ads at the upper funnel and then use social media or email to retarget through the lower funnel.
Content Development: To say the least, design content for varying funnel levels. The focus of the upper funnel is stimulating the awareness of the prospective customers and therefore, such content can be educational blogs or videos. On the other hands, lower funnel focus should be aggressive and aim at making the sales.
Assess and Enhance: A proper assessment of the two stages will be useful as the key performance indicators of the strategies will be able to assess the level of success achieved. Upper funnel statistics can be the amount of the impressions or rates of the involvement like the CTRs, whereas lower funnel statistics can be conversion and income earnings.
From a CTV Ask: But How Does This Work Within a Funnel Marketing Methodology
Connected television (CTV) has an effective advertising approach integrating both upper funnel marketing and targeted low funnel approaches. In addition, its multi-device characteristic makes it a complementary element to the other components of the marketing mix.
Upper Funnel CTV: CTV advertisements are effective in increasing the brand’s first touch as they are designed with high animatic advertisement’s elements to reach a large potential audience. They help in persuasive programmatic marketing efforts through the use of an engaging and effective brand introduction.
Lower Funnel CTV: In case of lower funnel, cross channel TV advertisement does wonders in terms of re-targeting or cascading the more focused promotional message to users who have previously been exposed to the brand’s commercials. CTV platforms provide similar opportunities, allowing advertisers to precisely target their ads for optimum performance, so their ads reach the correct audience at the right time.
At this point, we will put our attention on the upper funnel strategies, which are the first stages in the sales process followed by the lower funnel which contains the strategies used in closing up the deal.
To properly analyze how effective your funnel strategies really are, new KPIs shoud be defined for each part of the funnel unit.
Upper Funnel Metrics
Is the amount of times your ad or content has been seen: the usual term “impressions” as used in relation to this metric makes it self explanatory.
Is the percentage of people who viewed your advertisement or advertisement link and clicked on it: Click Through Rate is a more common term, and metric associated with most ad campaigns.
Is the percentage increase in advertising recognition or recall as a function of pre- and post-campaign surveys: Brand awareness lift is more than sufficient to summarize this process.
Lower Funnel Metrics
Is the number of desired actions that have been carried out, such as purchasing or filling formulizes: Conversions are the ones that explain this metric the most.
Is the average value required in order to gain another client or lead: Cost Per Acquisition is the most basic term that is used refering to this statistic.
ROAS: Return on Ad Spend: the revenue generated for each dollar that is spend on advertising.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there is a clear need to appreciate these differences between upper and lower funnel marketing strategies in order to design an effective digital marketing strategy. Techniques used at lower-funnel are more focused towards immediate returns on revenue and are more conversion-oriented whereas upper/funnel techniques are more focused at building the audience and brand. A seamless strategy helps the marketers to bring the target customers from securing their attention to deciding whether to purchase their products or not. The utilization of connected TV advertising, email or performance marketing- regardless of which strategy is being applied, consciously understanding upper and lower funnel marketing will enable marketers reach the desired results for the desired period of time. Employing these strategies at optimal times greatly improves the outcomes of the campaigns.