First impressions matter, so don’t let your top of the funnel marketing strategy discourage your prospects from fully diving into your brand — here’s how.
Effective marketing is like creating the perfect gourmet burger — you’ve got to make every single ingredient enticing enough that your audience can’t resist taking a big bite. But where do you begin?
It all starts with choosing the right bun. You need something with a formidable structure, fantastic flavor, and a satisfying consistency to carry the rest of your strategy through to fruition. In other words, you need a top of the funnel marketing strategy that stirs curiosity, spreads the word about your brand, and encourages your audience to dive deeper into what your brand offers.
The question is: With so many other burgers out there, how do you convince your audience that yours is the best?
Okay, that’s enough of the burger metaphors.
But the reality is that there are a lot of options to choose from when you’re putting together your marketing strategy, and each has their merits. In this article, we walk you through some of the most effective top of funnel tactics, and reveal why top of funnel marketing is so vital.
Bottom vs. Top of Funnel Marketing
Now you may be thinking, what is “top of funnel marketing”?
Well, think of how you typically interact with a brand. Let’s say you’re scrolling through Instagram when you see some really nice sneakers. This ad you came across is an example of top of the funnel marketing in action: it’s a broad post that speaks to a general audience — people who need or like shoes.
Middle-of-the-funnel marketing involves marketing to prospects who are in the consideration stage. Here, they are aware of your brand, but aren’t quite ready to convert. At this stage, compelling content and informative resources are great ways to keep them interested and draw them closer to your brand, and a conversion.
Bottom of the funnel marketing refers to any strategy to get prospects to engage with your brand, and ultimately convert. In this case, this includes crafting a snazzy product page with a detailed description, price point, and easy transparency into user reviews that will get them to buy the product or at least contact someone from your company.
This consumer journey from initial awareness to final purchase decision is typically visualized as a funnel, where tons of potential prospects convert into a smaller group of loyal customers.
Naturally, you’ll have some people peel away and look at alternative options as they go about their own journey, but that’s normal. After all, it’s impossible to please everyone. However, the goal is to widen your funnel and convert as many people as you can by attracting more potential customers in the first place.
Here are four ways you can do just that.
1. Start by Using Your Biggest Billboard: SEO-Powered Blogs
From educational blogs to eye-catching infographics, imbue your posts with interesting content that leaves your audience with something to remember your brand by. But don’t just use ChatGPT to write your articles and call it a day — you have to be intentional with the way you communicate with your target audience.
To guarantee engagement with your content, write blogs that answer your customers’ most burning questions to organically boost your search result rankings. Want to kick it up a notch? Incorporate some social media savviness: conduct polls, respond to comments, and personify your brand with genuine and honest conversations. That is how you can intrigue and connect with them on a deeper, more human level.
When done well, an editorial strategy can deliver powerful results. In fact, content marketing generates three times more leads than traditional outbound marketing (cold calls, TV commercials, print marketing) at a fraction of the cost.
But great content is only worth so much. You have to make sure it’s getting seen to ensure your efforts reap rewards. To get the right eyes on your content and draw in readers, learn to master SEO by optimizing meta titles, meta descriptions, and by using high-value keywords to generate more traffic.
Not sure where to start? It’s easier than it sounds! Check out Neil Patel’s checklist and you can begin optimizing your content without delay.
2. Integrate Raving Recommendations With Online Reviews
What’s even better than an ad?
Having a loyal customer advertise your offerings for you. We’re not talking about paid collaborations with social media influencers (although those can be helpful too); we’re talking about testimonials and recommendations from real customers encouraging others to connect with your brand.
According to Wyzowl, 90% of consumers trust what customers say about a brand more than what a business says about itself, so use your bottom-funnel audience to improve your top of funnel marketing strategy.
3. Paid Search: Money May Not Buy Happiness, But It Can Buy Leads
If it's in your budget, consider investing in some paid ads. There’s no shame in paying for a solution that makes it easier for your target audience to see and interact with your brand.
Around 75% of people admit that paid ads make it easier to find the information, products, or services they need, according to a study by business connection platform Clutch.
But wait! This doesn’t mean you should ditch your organic marketing efforts. Instead, use both a paid and organic approach to maximize the power of your top of funnel strategy.
4. Show Off Your Trophy Case and Promote Your Accolades
Sometimes it’s good to brag about yourself. According to the British Quality Foundation, small award-winning companies experience a 63% increase in income and a 39% sales growth compared to organizations without any accolades.
For large companies, this number jumps to 48% and 37%, respectively. If your hard work gets you some well-deserved recognition, use this as a selling point to differentiate your brand from the competition and immediately garner trust from interested prospects.
And keep in mind, most awards require you to submit your work. So, to make sure your efforts are recognized, keep an eye out for relevant awards and make regular applications a key element of your wider marketing strategy.
Now You’re Ready to Serve Up Success
Once you understand the vision for your top of funnel marketing plan, all you have to do is integrate these four tactics and roll out your strategy. Just be sure to monitor your KPIs and other performance metrics (we can help with that) and tweak your approach accordingly.
Even if you make the best burger in town (okay, okay, one more burger analogy) you have to switch up some ingredients to keep up with consumers’ changing taste buds.
Need some help mapping out or implementing your top of the funnel marketing plan? Let’s have a quick chat. And if you’re interested in checking out some of our top of the funnel marketing strategies for clients like Airbnb, AXA, Healthline Media, and many more, check out our work.