By implementing full-funnel marketing, businesses can increase customer relevance and create a more complete and accurate picture of marketing’s overall effectiveness
In a perfect world, a marketer’s investment choices would consider both the long-term health of their brands and short-term financial objectives. But the environment for marketing today is far from ideal. Marketers are making budget cuts due to ongoing economic pressures. These measures favor short-term, easily measurable tactics at the end of the funnel at the cost of upper-funnel strategies whose immediate impact and ROI are much less noticeable.
These decisions are frequently based on the supposition that since the upper funnel won’t ever produce the same level of return as the lower funnel, it will be more challenging to defend those budget portions to the C-suite.
As a result, they are referred to as low-hanging fruit. What if marketers could bring a higher level of measurement and accountability to the entire funnel while demonstrating the impact of upper-funnel investment on lower-funnel spending?
The Trick to Increase ROI
Budget and impact discussions frequently turn tense: performance marketers brag about their capacity to generate clicks. At the same time, brand builders argue for longer-term investments, even though they often find it challenging to show the immediate value their teams produce. The short-term and long-term effects of brand campaigns are difficult to quantify.
Marketers don’t necessarily attribute sales increases to them because of causation but rather because of correlation. Because CEOs view marketing as a growth engine for the company, this worries CMOs.
Also Read: Top 7 Strategies to Enhance B2B Performance Marketing in 2023
The measurement issue with the brand building has masked its significance.
Because of this, many CMOs allocate an excessive amount of their marketing budget to acquiring customers at the bottom of the funnel. This strategy is often simpler to justify rather than generating customer demand and attention at the top, which is less tangible.
This tendency toward bottom-of-the-funnel campaigns has important implications for long-term value. Customers who develop an emotional connection with a brand are more likely to be devoted and valuable over time than those who find a website through a generic keyword search or social media ad.
The need for a full-funnel approach
Leading businesses have shifted to “full-funnel” marketing to address this disparity. This strategy uses linked teams, measurement systems, and key performance indicators (KPIs) to combine the power of brand building and performance marketing. By implementing full-funnel marketing, businesses can increase customer relevance, create a more complete and accurate picture of marketing’s overall effectiveness, and create more value without spending more money on marketing.
This strategy goes beyond simply doing more at each stage of the funnel. To provide a comprehensive customer experience, it’s important to comprehend how each step affects the others. Full-funnel marketing has effects that go beyond improved effectiveness and return on investment. It involves understanding how each funnel stage affects the other stages and the overall customer experience.
Changes in the marketing landscape
Although full-funnel marketing is not a new idea, two recent significant changes in the marketing environment make it crucial for businesses to adopt this strategy quickly:
The decline of returns on the performance market:
Due to market saturation in targeted advertising segments and the inflation of digital media expenses, businesses observe a plateauing or decrease in returns on performance marketing. It is essential to use a full-funnel strategy because it is getting harder to gain a competitive advantage in performance marketing due to the commoditization of automation tools.
A shift in consumer behavior:
The COVID-19 pandemic’s dramatic shift in consumer behavior has sped up digital transformations. Customers’ expectations of brands have changed in this shifting market, and many now consider a brand’s mission a key factor when making purchases. Marketers can access information about these novel behaviors, allowing them to comprehend how customers make decisions at every sales funnel stage.
Full-funnel marketing has effects that go beyond improved effectiveness and return on investment. It involves comprehending how each funnel stage affects the other stages and the overall customer experience. Customers are more likely to stick with a brand and make longer-term purchases when they feel emotionally connected to it. Companies risk sabotaging their brand and losing customers by concentrating only on the lower funnel.
Leading businesses have successfully adopted the full-funnel marketing strategy. They understand the value of a comprehensive marketing plan that combines brand development and performance marketing to deliver a satisfying customer experience.
Right-sizing investments: Charting a path forward
Leaders in marketing today are rushing to adjust their investment plans for the future. And many people are unsure of how to order the numerous challenges they face. There are a few guiding principles that all marketers can adhere to, even though each company’s full-funnel media strategy blueprint will differ:
Evaluate the channel strategy through the entire marketing funnel
The upper funnel is not just for television. Online video, non-branded search, and digital out-of-home may all offer greater measurability and accountability. Internally, adjust measurement expectations and ensure business leaders can see how investments in the upper and lower parts of the funnel are interdependent.
Work to remove organizational barriers that aren’t obvious
Full-funnel investments require centralized leadership, but this leadership must be backed by an integrated team working toward the same objectives, as opposed to the more typical silo structure divided into discrete groups with their agendas and budgets.
Establish a single, reliable source of accurate measurement
Greater collaboration and clarity will result from consistent metrics throughout the funnel, and better results will follow. The fact that each funnel component plays a different role does not preclude it from being wired for performance throughout.
The Operating Model throughout the Funnel
Full-funnel marketing necessitates investment in the appropriate technology and data infrastructure in addition to the mentioned areas. To ensure that teams use the same data and definitions, for instance, having a centralized data repository and a common data language across functions is essential. As a result, results across the funnel can be accurately measured and attributed, and teams can better make decisions based on data-driven insights.
Also Read: Top 5 Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Issues & Solutions Affecting Ad Campaigns Performance
The right talent and capabilities are crucial for supporting data and technology. This entails combining technical, analytical, and creative skills and strategic knowledge. Programs for skill development and upskilling employees can help close talent gaps and guarantee that the team has what it takes to implement a full-funnel marketing strategy.
Finally, marketers must continuously monitor and improve performance to ensure that the full-funnel marketing strategy is effective. To find fresh perspectives and opportunities for improvement, this calls for experimentation and testing. It also necessitates a readiness to change course in response to shifting market dynamics or consumer trends.
The economic pressures of today are actual. Additionally, marketers can always pick and choose from the budget to meet their immediate needs. But over time, this hurts brands because it eventually shrinks the size of the addressable audience and continuously forces brands to market to the same audiences.
By laying the groundwork for a full-funnel strategy, brands can maximize ROI, improve their strategies at each stage of the customer journey, and continue to grow and thrive over the upcoming year and beyond.
For more such updates follow us on Google News TalkCMO News.
