10 Successful Digital Marketing Funnel Strategies To Use
“…rapidly rising companies have astonished the global public with their ability to expand and scale at a pace that was previously unknown. From this phenomenon, the term “hypergrowth” was coined.” Hypergrowth is a common experience within young markets and start-ups, however, it is a make-or-break scenario. With the digital world offering us so much opportunity, there is much to be done to stand out, create a successful digital marketing funnel and truly drive online conversions.
The online user experience is everything. By creating a relevant and appropriate user experience that matches the persona’s needs throughout the entire buying journey you can heighten that online user experience, leaving no doubt in their mind about your reliability. The digital marketing funnel, also known as the buying journey can help us to understand the stage of our prospects and help us to better understand their needs at any specific moment.
If you want to start to succeed in the digital world and perfect your digital marketing funnel let us guide you with some of our digital marketing funnel strategies shared directly with us on the Pathmonk Presents Podcast. Coupled with our own research and real-life insights and tips you should be well equipped with the tools to increase online conversions, and thrive in the digital world.
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Digital Marketing Funnel Strategies for The Awareness Stage
1. Digital Marketing Funnel Strategy: Community Building
Building and generating a community around the challenges your solution solves is a growing digital marketing strategy and is highly valued by consumers today. The content generated within a community is more trusted, fresher, and real. A key reason that people join a community is to be informed via in-depth conversations with those who care most about a topic.
The online buying world has formed the habit of pushing people further away, missing the human touch from the digital marketing funnel or purchasing journey. With so many solutions and products tried before purchase, communities offer a place for people to research, discover, and recommend products.
Senior Director of Marketing at Bennie, Chris Flores dives further into the role a community has played in their buying journey. At the awareness stage of any buyer, a community can offer relatability, and build brand trust and authority. As Chris states the community not only allows individuals educational opportunities but Bennie can take the opportunity to discuss their solutions and encourage feedback. These community members create an impactful and strong alignment with their product ultimately driving relationships with prospects.
Below you can see an example of their Community landing page and the clear value they offer:
The benefits of building a community:
- Gives your brand a personality and authority. It’s an opportunity to highlight your values and let your users take a look behind the curtain
- Meet your target audience. Your community is a reflection of your buyer persona. Use this opportunity and the feedback to adapt your products and your brand to this community.
- Develop loyal and returning customers. With a safe space to express and discuss, people can adopt a loyalty to your brand.
- Access to more data & insights. Communities are an excellent source of information, feedback, and new ideas.
2. Digital Marketing Funnel Strategy: Run a Podcast
We may be a bit biased on this particular strategy but it helps that we’ve had experience here before advising it as a growth tactic. Getting attention for your product can be daunting; how do you get the word out there? Where is my audience? This new format is a growing way for the modern world to find information and entertainment. PodcastInsights offers us some real-life data on podcasts. With 68 million weekly podcast listeners it seems like a no-brainer to leverage the podcast format for brand awareness and your digital marketing funnel overall.
Helping companies build revenue-generating podcasts is one of our previous guests, Jake Jorgovan of Content Allies Outbound leads are unfortunately not built on trust in the same way inbound leads are. We have to ensure that our targeting is accurate, our message is relevant, and that we work to build the relationship with more intentional touchpoints. Listen in to hear how podcasts can be a part of awareness building in the digital marketing funnel.
Take a look at their page below:
The benefits of running a podcast. We can vouch for them:
- Easy, quick, and affordable to produce. If you have a product or solution you have a challenge that that product solves. Start with an open discussion.
- Curate a niche audience and loyal followers. As soon as you start to offer value you’ll generate your very own audience with the added opportunity to highlight your services.
- Build Relationships and trust. People can respect the information you share or like us, the real conversations we have with individuals in the industry. We invite guests to discuss their growth strategies and have the opportunity to start a relationship with them.
- Overall brand awareness. Just by starting a podcast, you’ve created awareness about your product or service. With our guests, we encourage them to share their interviews and in turn, we are building brand awareness for each other.
3. Digital Marketing Funnel Strategy: Create an Independent Buying Journey with Specific Landing Pages and Value Adds
We must remember that we are not at the heart of the business, your customer is, and placing value over profit, and removing self-interest could bring you more return than expected and help you to thrive with an optimized digital marketing funnel. With a shift in the way people buy, consumers are becoming more independent and we must adapt and support that in all elements; from copy, to CTAs, landing pages to visual assets. Want to get more insight into your buying journey or digital marketing funnel and understand how it’s performing? Try our Buying Journey Grader.
With value at the heart of their strategy, low commitment, competitive pricing, and a supportive community, PostHog allows its website to act as a product itself and create an independent buying journey. Understanding what the buyer needs is key to James and he dives into their efforts to better support their buyer. By ensuring value is given, questions answered and information provided their prospects are independent and catered to. They have created a separate landing page to direct their audience to a common question within the industry and help them in their research.
See their landing page below:
The benefits of tailored landing pages:
- Increase Conversions. Having a clear CTA with clear values makes it easier for your buyer to take action. Making the process, easy and frictionless is going to help you and your buyers.
- Improve SEO and drive traffic. Landing pages are a further source of content. Helping you to rank organically and ultimately drive traffic.
- Lead Generation. If every link is directed back to your homepage you’re missing out on the opportunity to support a specific stage of your buyer’s journey. You can direct and guide them based on their reason to click.
4. Digital Marketing Funnel Strategy: Tap into App Marketplaces (HubSpot, Shopify, Salesforce etc.)
We’re so familiar with these marketplaces but have we considered them as part of our growth strategy and overall digital marketing funnel? Since the pandemic, there has been an increase in consumers turning to digital marketplaces. Finding the right marketplace allows you to tap into a broader audience. Marketplaces provide you with an additional online presence on platforms with established and loyal consumers with whom they have already built trust. This has been a recent venture for us as we have been recently certified as a HubSpot App.
The Director of Product and Data at Spocket, Shreyas Sali dives into their success within the Shopify ecosystem and offers our listeners insightful and practical advice for growing a SaaS start-up. By hyper-focusing on one key channel, such as Shopify, and executing a successful buying journey they were able to grow and develop through other key growth channels and optimize their digital marketing funnel.
You can find them on the Shopify Marketplace:
The benefits of leveraging a marketplace.
- Customer Acquisition. In a space that already has loyal consumers, you can tap into a broader audience.
- Guaranteed online visibility. This is another opportunity to appear in your online buyer’s search while opening you up to a wider audience.
- Brand authority and trust. By leveraging the reputation of the marketplace you’ve already allowed your users to trust you more. A marketplace provides convenience and safety for online buyers.
- It’s scalable and affordable. Your only challenge is choosing the right marketplace.
Digital Marketing Funnel Strategies for The Consideration Stage
5. Digital Marketing Funnel Strategy: Leverage Intent Data to Better Understand Your Prospects
Intent data is one of the most effective ways to gather the intel needed to understand the digital marketing funnel, your buyers and how they search and consume, and ultimately the direction your marketing should take; revolutionizing your entire B2B strategy. Pathmonk’s marketing and lead conversion expertise are based on industry research and a deep understanding of what the customer sees and needs to see. By understanding the effect that intent data can have on your digital marketing funnel and eventual conversion rate, you can accelerate your B2B growth exponentially.
Intentsify makes intent data actionable, automated, and digestible so you can leverage powerful insights. We weren’t surprised to learn that Intentsify takes an active approach to finding its own customers by using its own intent-driven solution in combination with education-based content. We were happy to learn that Jaymi is looking to improve and increase personalization on their website in order to ensure visitors can resonate and connect with their solution. Focusing on user experience has increased their inbound leads and we’re not surprised.
Check out their website below and activate the power of intent:
The benefits of leveraging intent data:
- Increased lead generation. Knowing more about your buyers means you can tailor and match their needs. With a heightened experience you can increase your leads.
- Build relationships with the right prospects. With intent data, you have access to detailed and specific information for each individual prospect which you can use to target the right buyer persona.
- Create relevant and quality content. Knowing more about your buyers allows you to provide them with relevant content. With quality content, you can increase your qualified leads.
- Save time. You have the ability to shorten the sales cycle. Intent data gives you the power to predict buyer purchasing intent with precision and fine-tuned lead scoring.
6. Digital Marketing Funnel Strategy: Let the User Experience the Product
This is an excellent opportunity to enhance and optimize your digital marketing funnel. As online buyers have access to so much information and with questions to be answered and trust to be earned allowing visitors to have an interactive experience with the product can satisfy their needs and offer reassurance during their buying process. Allowing them to get a feel for the solution, and understand the value they’ll receive is key in the digital marketing funnel. It is an opportunity to let your product do most of the selling, and prove value to users.
The Head of Growth and Marketing at Correlated, Breezy Beaumont dived into how they work to grow and equally leverage product-led growth to suit their customer needs. By shifting to a self-service website coupled with educational content and a witty personality they can successfully produce product-qualified leads.
See their product at the forefront of the buying journey:
The benefits of product-led growth:
- Faster growth. You’re removing more friction and getting to the point. With easy and quick access to experience the product itself, you can reduce the time to the buyer’s final decision.
- Customer retention and experience. By allowing your customer to experience the product you’re giving them value instantly. They are more likely to be drawn in and trust you. There is no promise of value, there is just value.
- Generating positive feedback. With a heightened user experience you can create a ripple effect of word of mouth and reviews.
7. Digital Marketing Funnel Strategy: Show Results With a Website ROI Calculator or Case Studies
With endless solutions and a world full of websites it can be tough to stand out. An ROI calculator on your website might be what you need to give your customers the peace of mind they are looking for, offer reassurance, and guide them through the research and decision process. By adding a return-on-investment calculator to your site, you can build your customer’s trust from the start; to build rapport with customers and future clients.
We spoke to Gregor Noltes from AimfortheMoon, who is the marketing lead and a self-developed entrepreneur who knows what it takes to innovate and scale. As Gregor works to grow and expose the business he delves further into understanding their buyer personas. As these buyer personas are innovators they are result-driven. To target and reach this clientele Gregor aims to build trust by showcasing real results through unique case studies. Case studies are another opportunity to really showcase the possibilities with your solution and again highlight your true value.
Here is an example of our ROI Calculator:
The benefits of an ROI calculator:
- Quick time to value. Allowing your customer to understand the value they can receive is a way to help them to a final decision.
- The focus is on the customer. You’re allowing them to do more than read articles but see what you can do for them.
- Enhanced customer interaction. The experience is critical to their buyer journey. Interactive content enhances the retention of brand messaging, according to Ion Interactive
Digital Marketing Funnel Strategies for The Decision Stage
8. Digital Marketing Funnel Strategy: Optimize the Website Experience
As B2B marketers have the collective goal of driving conversions from their websites they face the challenge of trying to better understand their online buyers and maintain their interest. We work to understand how our prospects use and search within the online world in order to engage with them, understand their unique pain points, and ultimately build a bridge from our expertise to those it can help most.
Simply having a website with content is not enough to impress our online buyers, we must ultimately know and understand the buyer journey stage and overall digital marketing funnel to optimize their digital journey. To do this we must leverage data and Pathmonk Metrics can offer you money-making insights extracted from how visitors behave on your website.
The CEO of HappyorNot, Miika Mäkitalo joined us to discuss his views on serving customers. Happy customers buy more and Miika works to leverage data to serve website customers. For increased conversions, analysis of the buying journey and meaningful data can provide growth opportunities. Miika is always looking to improve their website and understand its buyers in order to serve website customers more efficiently.
See what Pathmonk Metrics can do for you:
The benefits of optimizing the website experience:
- Strengthen your brand relationship. With a quality experience, your customers can respect and trust your brand. This experience is a direct reflection of your brand.
- Improve first impressions. We have limited time in the fast-paced digital world to impress and stand out. By simply optimizing and maintaining you can gain more online users and retain their attention.
- Optimization means conversion. Accounting for every minor detail and putting yourself in the shoes of the customer, creates a fluid and streamlined experience. You can reduce your bounce rate and increase conversions.
9. Digital Marketing Funnel Strategy: Leverage Micro-Moments
To create a seamless customer experience across all channels while being useful and anticipating users’ needs can be supported with micro-moments. Users canvasing the internet for the next-best solution spend time researching and ensuring they are making the best choice. If you are not offering an enhanced user experience it is easy enough for a prospect to move on to a competitor. However, by offering those users appropriate material balanced with a streamlined buying process you can influence your audience in those key intent-rich moments.
Pete Everett joined us from GrowBe. In order to provide their prospects with a clear value, their website is simple with a confident brand presence and direct calls to action. For future growth, Pete is eager to implement micro-moments. With micro-moments, the team has the opportunity to elicit a quality user experience and encourage more contact. The aim is to ensure the value proposition is received in the most direct and engaging way. With more engagement comes more direct value communication, ultimately leading to more conversions.
See how Verikai leverages and incorporates a micro-experience into their buying journey:
The benefits of leveraging micro-moments:
- Increase website conversions. Each buyer will be at a different stage in their journey and to help support them with appropriate material and content you can leverage a micro-moment to enhance their buying journey. You can influence visitors in real-time to instantly qualify & convert.
- Improve lead quality. By capturing the attention of a prospect you can analyze their reaction to each micro-moment and better understand their intent to buy.
- Heightened user experience. You’re meeting the user in their journey and supporting them at the right moment.
10. Digital Marketing Funnel Strategy: Optimize the Conversion Goal
Our conversion goal must match the stage of the buyer. A buyer in the awareness stage may not be ready to experience a demo but rather require more information and resources. Therefore we have the opportunity to take our understanding of the digital marketing funnel and leverage it to better aid the buyer journey stage with optimized conversion goals. Our conversion goals must be an easy decision for our prospects, with little friction and a supported push to final conversion.
As marketers, it is important to understand from a consumer’s point of view, what type of content can encourage a user to move from a lead to a customer. To simplify and streamline the buying process with a focus on the buyer journey stage in order to give prospects what they need is a critical element of the digital marketing funnel.
Optimizing the conversion goal means reducing the time to value. A previous guest, The director of marketing at BrightLocal, Kristian Bannister discussed the importance of reducing the time to value for their prospects with a frictionless and simple conversion goal. With all leads driven through the website, a conversion goal that supports the buyer’s journey is essential to the team’s success.
See an example of their conversion goal below:
The benefits of optimizing conversion goals:
- A frictionless & streamlined buying journey. By providing appropriate material and resources you guide the users through their journey. You reduce their effort by creating a frictionless and obvious next step.
- Reduce time to value. You help to quicken the buying journey with more tailored content that can quickly satisfy doubts, questions, and needs.
- Building a quality lead. With appropriate conversion goals that have led and influenced your buyer, you do yourself the favor of generating a lead that is ready to buy.
The Bottom Line
There is no right way or one way to support a buyer during their digital marketing funnel and we have covered strategies that have worked best for both us and fellow marketers in the real world. As the online buying world ever evolves and expands, solutions and tools, like Pathmonk, help you to gain control over your digital marketing funnel.
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