This time, i decided to create a quick video about “online marketing funnels”. This is the most/best thing you can do for a business…
Let me know what you think
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Video Transcript Below:
If you are a business owner or a marketing person within a company, this is going to be the most interesting video of them all. We are going to talk specifically about funnels and retargeting. We will look at what exactly is a proper online marketing funnel and each step within the funnel itself. First funnel we will look at is a generic B2B funnel and the second will be a generic B2C e-commerce funnel. Alright, let’s get started.
First of all, what is a funnel? This is a funnel.
It’s a fancy name for what is basically a customer’s journey from being aware that you and your product exist to the point where they actually buy it.
It has this shape because we want your customers to fall down the funnel and line up to buy your products and services. So, usually a funnel has this basic constitution. First there is an awareness stage. Awareness can be lots of things. For example, brand recognition can lead to awareness. If I say a coffee brand some people might see an espresso, for example, or Starbucks. Effectively your brand’s recognition can create awareness on its own.
Then when looking at online marketing one of the other methods of bringing awareness, SEO, for example, paid online ads like LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Ads, Instagram, and so on. General content marketing and blogging- someone might have a great experience with your product and decide to make a review video or write a blog or a comment section on the website. Reviews- maybe someone was happy or unhappy and decides to give their thoughts out to the world. Referrals- a client might be happy and recommend your services to someone else. Events and trade shows and so on. Essentially, it’s all the paths where people become aware of your product or services through one way or another.
That’s when we move to the second step of the funnel- an interest and evaluation path. These people who fell down the second level have shown interest in your service or products. We know that because they came through one of the lead generation systems we used during the awareness stage. This is really important because most prospective clients would not rush to your store just after seeing an ad of yours.
Let’s take a real life example. Let’s say you’re a golf player and you see this ad about this revolutionary product that’s going to help improve your game altogether. It does look like a great product but it also costs $400. And you certainly don’t have $400 right this minute. Now, you go play golf with some friends during the weekend and you have your worst game ever. You get home, you go on Facebook, for example, and there again pops the same ad about the same product. Losing to your friends now means that spending $400 is fully warranted. That is when retargeting and email marketing becomes very powerful. We have access to a number of potential interested people and we are going to try various offers and messages to see if we can get them to act on it. The retargeting works especially well because we’ve already assessed they’re really interested in your product or service. The only problem is they’re not yet ready to make a purchase and that’s when retargeting becomes key to that second step.
The last stage of the funnel, as you can imagine, is the purchase or deal. If your product is good those done deals will go back to referring more clients and thus adding to your funnel again.
Hopefully I was clear enough. But just in case, we will look at a couple of real life examples here. Let’s look at this generic B2B funnel. In this case this company specializes in selling GPS tracking services to fleets, trucking companies, and so on. Let’s say that they are a relatively new company. Here is what their online marketing funnel would look like. First of all SEO; make sure to rank for all those GPS tracking system for fleet and trucks-type keywords. Those are high intent keywords and therefore should slide down in your funnel the easiest. PPC, same story- find the keywords and buy some ads. We already know they are interested in the product and therefore that’s great. Facebook and LinkedIn, find all the potential decision makers – operation managers, fleet managers, directors, and so on – and serve them content and ads. Content like how GPS tracking saved our business, how GPS tracking sliced through our expenses, how we stopped getting invoice disputes with GPS tracking. Effectively, sell them a dream or a solution to their problem. You can create white papers and video testimonials of clients being super happy and see what works best.
Then we go to stage two. If they subscribe to get their white paper, email them. Also use retargeting again with various messages- GPS tracking costs less than $1 per day; why not request a free demo. It’s on us. Try our product for three months risk-free. Since we’ve already established those people’s interest, it’s now a matter of, “How can I convince them to actually make a purchase?”
Finally, last step, make sales and start again.
Now, let’s look at a general B2C-type business, in this case an e-commerce business. This business sells socks. Looking at the awareness stage again we’re going to look at SEO and keywords relating to colourful socks and funky socks. PPC, same thing. Then social media marketing– Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook marketing. Target potential interest groups with amazing product photos. Get reviews from bloggers, influencers, fashionistas, and so on. Once you’re getting this warm traffic to your website, retarget those people and email them with various product photos and various messages and offers like give a 10% offer off of shipping for someone who added to cart but did not check out. And finally, make that sale.
Once you have set up your funnel properly it should be a matter of time before you make your first sale. If you need help with setting up your funnel please send me an email. That’s it for me. As usual please join my Facebook group and if you want to receive some really cool insights please subscribe to my newsletter. Until next time, see you. Bye.
