Attention Economics: The more information there is, the more scarce attention becomes.
Yesteryear: The Sellers Market
In the past, audiences could only get their buying information from a few sources, infrequently at best: newsprint, television commercials, radio ads. Marketing messages, therefore, had widespread attention on their product due to the lack of other medium options and availability. This scarcity of information fostered a sellers market.
Age of Information: The Buyers Market
Now, in the age of technology, there is an abundance of venue options offering marketing messages at all times. Audiences choose who they want to listen to and dismiss everything else as noise. Sellers have to find a way to get their product back under the shifting gaze of the modern consumer. This abundance of information fosters the current buyers market.
New Approach: Being Found
So the approach of a good marketing campaign has first and foremost switched its focus from finding customers to being found by customers. Mass communications sweeping entire demographics are now being countered with one to one communications aiming to cultivate individual relationships. Engaging clients on such a personal level, however, requires continuous interactions on multiple platforms.
Being Found: Big Data
With this inundation of information comes more regularly available and in depth marketing information. Big data is big business now, and it’s helping marketing agencies build strategies based heavily on statistics and research as opposed to intuition and subjectivity. The culmination of modern strategies has developed a funnel analogy to show the path a prospective client must be drawn down in order to arrive at the business’s desired destination – a sale.
Big Data: The Inbound Marketing Funnel
The commonly used (Inbound Marketing) Sales analogy references a funnel through which most sales must travel, from the creation of interest to completion of a transaction. The realms of this funnel are Top-of-Funnel (ToFu) to Middle-of-Funnel (MoFu) to Bottom-of-Funnel (BoFu) and they descend like so:
Traffic generation > prospect conversion > lead generation > customer acquisition
The Inbound Sales Marketing Funnel: Top of the Funnel (ToFu)
Top-of-funnel is all prospect conversion. The objective is to generate interest in your knowledge, and then to engage the individuals within this generated traffic that are interested in advancing with your services. The Top of the Funnel represents a wide range of prospective customers attracted by search engines results, social media posts, or email campaigns. Prospective clients are whirled into this marketing funnel where they can take a spin around some of your business’s information platforms: blogs, FAQs, tutorials, newsletters.
Pro Tip: Content creation is a prevalent means of drawing the attention of audiences specifically looking for information related to your industry. Reaching a targeted demographic is a proven means of higher sales conversion.
Top of the Funnel (ToFu) to Middle of the Funnel (MoFu)
Once your company gains the trust of the prospective client, middle funnel tactics move individuals closer to a buying position. The middle of the funnel requires a great deal of finesse, as there is still little invested by the viewer at this point. Here the goal is to entertain and engage individuals, while beginning to inform them about how your business meets their needs.
Pro Tip: Utilizing multiple platforms to get your message across – text, email, images, audio, video – will meet the consumption preferences of a wider range of people. Instead of just typing it, incorporate into a visual, write it into a video tutorial. Not only will this appease more people, but it will create a more SEO-friendly website for your company.
Middle of the Funnel (MoFu) to Bottom of the Funnel (BoFu)
At the bottom of the funnel, most of the passively interested parties have been weeded out. With a smaller amount of people to cater to, at this point it is up to the business to complete the sale. Such tasks are made easier, of course, by incorporating a well developed marketing strategy that incorporates professional tested finishing moves.
Pro Tip: The bottom of the funnel is where a strong automated email and direct mail campaign can help complete a sale. Use these platforms to keep the potential client engaged. Nurture the final sale with personalization, special offers, trials, and freebies.
Go Pro: Hire a Marketing Agency
It is difficult to understand the physics behind a funnel without proper training sciences. So too is it difficult to manipulate a marketing funnel when you do not know how to read marketing data. Hiring a Marketing Agency to develop a powerful funnel effect with your potential clients will garner a solid return on investment. Understanding the intricacies of developing leads and converting those leads into sales, is not common knowledge. Hiring a Pro as opposed to working with a few random Pro Tips makes a difference in the quality of work, predictability of results, and success of a campaign.
Contact us today to see how we help you funnel in new customers!