Optimize Your Marketing Funnel With These Three Questions

Originally Published on Forbes.com

Although a sale appears to be the single moment a customer hits “place order,” experts who know the marketing funnel know they’re playing the long game –– as in weeks, months or years spent investing in a customer. The path is very rarely straight from discovery to purchase. Instead, we guide our consumers along a tailored, relevant and intuitive journey to conversion.

With such a complicated, back-and-forth process, many marketers can lose control of their brand’s marketing funnel. By asking the following three questions from awareness to purchase, you can better serve your customers and your business in the long run.

1. How Does This Fit My Bigger Brand Message? 

The entrance to the marketing funnel is the moment your customers discover the brand. Whether through audience targeting, a shared post or happenstance, this is where you make your first branded impression –– as well as where consumers begin gathering knowledge. This is the awareness and interest phase.

While marketers were initially thrilled at the increased screen time that came with staying at home, this became a double whammy. With more platforms and content than ever, attention’s scarcity as a commodity made it even more difficult to capture. To most effectively reach consumers in this saturated digital landscape, consistency is key.

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No matter where consumers turn, they should be met with content that matches a clear brand identity and tone. While the platform determines how they connect with you, it should never change who they are connecting with. Publish content that is in-voice and accessible (read: short) across all platforms so there is never a question of what your brand is to the consumer.

2. How Am I Meeting Consumers Where They Are At? 

After meeting your brand, relevant consumers will then move forward to include you in their pool of possibilities. At this point in the funnel, consumers are engaged and have actively made a gesture of their interest. However, where many marketers lose their prospects is putting the brand first and people last. 

Today’s customers take a more informed and active approach in their buying behaviors from consideration to intent. From comparing prices and ethics in addition to PODs, research is a key component of the marketing funnel that is often disregarded by brands. Rather than providing them with the information they need, some suffocate customers with marketing buzzwords that sound appealing but serve little purpose.

Rather than shoving keywords in their face, put yourself in the customer’s shoes. When purchasing online, the goal is often to solve some sort of problem. Brands must take the time to listen and acknowledge their customer’s mindset if they hope to push them to purchase (rather than run the opposite way). By acknowledging their intent, you have the opportunity to show why you are the fit for them.

3. How Am I Making My Brand The Clear –– And Easy –– Choice? 

Finally, the point where we see our ROI is in evaluation and purchase. After framing our PODs as the solution to our customer’s issues, we can create a conversion. Customers have likely already visited your website and social media during their research. Therefore, once they are equipped with the information they need, they are finally ready to make their purchase.

However, we risk wasting all of this hard work when customers are not met with an intuitive purchasing system –– and this isn’t limited to user experience. Brands have an additional opportunity to make purchasing easy by educating consumers along the way. Similar to when customers first considered our product or service, we have to meet them where they’re at.

Ask yourself: Where are the potential hiccups or questions along the way, and how can I respond to them before customers arrive? Whether it’s by installing an AI chatbot or creating a FAQ page, acknowledging your customer’s purchasing needs and offering intuitive solutions creates a more seamless experience and better results.

When The Digital Door Closes

After the sale, some marketing funnel models continue, with "loyalty” and “advocacy” as the final steps. Ideally, your relationship with the customer doesn’t end at one purchase. By gathering leads throughout the funnel, brands can establish a lasting relationship and reconnect using email updates, solicitations for feedback and post-transaction customer service. Most importantly, use these leads to gather data and fuel a better understanding of your audience’s habits.

Lastly, when placed in our continually changing digital landscape and world, we must repeatedly ask, “What would I need right now, as a consumer?” With our unpredictable times and circumstances, tailored investment in our customers throughout the funnel is the key to keeping them consistently engaged with the brand.

Kelly Ehlers, Founder & President