The world is different than it was last year. If no trade shows and no live events are hampering your marketing efforts, we can show you how to generate qualified leads right now. Don’t let the pandemic control what kind of year you’re going to have. Learn how to run full-funnel, intent-based campaigns and get your marketing back on track.
How to Run Full-Funnel, Intent-Based Campaigns
Online Advertising is a Best Buy for Intent-Based Campaigns
Sometimes it takes money to make money. We know that budgets for many businesses are shrinking. There are probably a lot of businesses who feel like maybe they don’t want to spend advertising dollars right now. But in truth, right now is the perfect time to invest in digital advertising. While you aren’t spending money on trade shows, you can even take some of that trade show budget and direct it towards online advertising.
Digital advertising is absolutely a best buy, but you have to have the right strategy. If you’ve tried digital advertising in the past and it didn’t work for you, maybe you didn’t get any leads, or you didn’t get any good leads, the reason is probably because you didn’t have the right strategy. Digital marketing and social media don’t live in silos; they aren’t one-trick ponies. Your efforts have to be coordinated through an omnichannel strategy in order to see results and convert leads into sales.
You can’t simply throw five thousand dollars on LinkedIn and think that that’s a digital marketing advertising campaign. In order to see good results, you need to be in multiple channels, running those campaigns at the same time, and advertising at each stage of the funnel:
- awareness
- evaluation
- decision
Top of the Funnel – Awareness
The thing that we all need the most is awareness. And not just any awareness; we need qualified awareness. We need the customers that could buy from us to know that we exist and know the problems that we can solve for them. The number one goal for awareness is to communicate to your target audience what the problem is that you can solve for them.
Something every business should be doing is some form of content marketing. Hopefully, you’re blogging once a week. But if you’re only writing a blog, putting it on your website, and then not doing anything else with it, it’s not going to do you much good.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing targets a clearly defined audience by offering valuable, relevant information in the form of blogs, downloadable assets, video, and webinars with the intent to generate leads from customers who engage with the content. It is a great way to establish authority on a topic, build awareness with potential customers, and create reciprocity by giving away information.
You need to take that blog, put it on LinkedIn, and promote it on social media. But don’t stop there. You have a huge opportunity right now to further promote that blog using advertising. When you write a blog and promote it on social media, you are helping people understand the problems that you can solve.
One of the great things about blogs is that the article lives on your website. When you run an ad for that content on LinkedIn, and you’re promoting it to your best possible customers, you’re also driving traffic to your website. If you’ve followed our tips on converting more leads from your existing traffic, then the traffic you are sending to your website through digital advertising is going to convert into leads.
During the awareness phase, you want to be the one to inform your audience, rather than them going somewhere else. Your blog articles are an ideal opportunity to highlight how you can solve their problems. Content marketing, such as blog articles, is valuable to your customers and can create and go a long way towards creating reciprocity.
Middle of the Funnel – Evaluation
As you drive traffic down towards the middle of the funnel, your target audience is starting to evaluate you; they’re getting serious about wanting to know more about what you do. This is an opportunity for creating lead magnets.
Potential lead magnets could include:
- Webinar
- eBook
- Podcast
There are all kinds of opportunities to give your audience information and content about your business. While awareness is all about helping people understand that you exist and the problems that you can solve, evaluation is giving them an opportunity to raise their hand and let you know that they are ready to learn a little bit more.
At this stage, they may still not be ready to talk to a salesperson, but they are ready to give you more information about themselves. Think of it as a baby-step commitment, but it lets you know that this buyer is more serious than someone who just visited your website or filled out a survey.
It’s important to spend money promoting these mid-funnel lead magnets. Once a potential buyer opts in, once they give you their email address and you give them your lead magnet, you can continue to nurture them with knowledge throughout the buyer journey. That way, when they are ready to buy, you stay top of mind.
You can’t control when a buyer is going to be ready to meet with a sales representative or when they are going to be ready to buy, but you can control having your brand and your name in front of them. Wherever they are, that’s where you want to be, so when they’re ready to move forward, they think of you.
Bottom of the Funnel – Decision
You’ve reached the bottom of the funnel, and now your marketing qualified leads, your MQLs, are ready to transfer over to your sales team. Once you get down to the decision phase, the salesperson really needs to become the champion in your organization, and marketing’s job really is to make them look great. There are several things that you can do to arm your sales team and help them stand out from the crowd.
One way marketing can support the sales team is by developing specific decision phase assets. As an example, marketing can develop something we like to call an ABM video. This is a customized video that your sales representatives can send out to their customer that has your branding on it; it talks about two or three challenges the customer has and how you can help overcome those challenges. When that sales representative sends the video to their prospect, it really makes them look good and makes them stand out over their competition.
Running Multi-Channel Campaigns
This is not the time to shut down and not market. Many of your competitors are cutting their budgets and not spending any money online. That means there is tremendous opportunity for you to build a fat pipeline of prospects that you can be working now. You owe it to your business to prepare for the future. With a full pipeline, when the economy gets back to normal, which it eventually will, you’ll be ready to move full speed ahead.
Remember that you can’t be a one-trick pony. You had top of the funnel leads, then you had middle funnel leads, and finally, you had bottom of the funnel leads. These things don’t work in a silo. You have to constantly be running campaigns across all the different channels and all the different stages of the funnel and tweaking your strategies throughout the whole process.
At Vende Digital, we can help you run full-funnel, intent-based campaigns. If you have been frustrated with your digital marketing performance, we can help you market your business online with confidence. Contact us today to schedule a complimentary Discovery Meeting to see if we’re a good fit.
How to Run Full-Funnel, Intent-Based Campaigns: Key Takeaways
- Learn how to implement lead generating tips and get your marketing back on track.
- Find out how to advertise at each stage of the funnel: awareness, evaluation, and decision.
- The number one goal for awareness is to communicate to your target audience what the problem is that you can solve for them.
- There is a multitude of opportunities to give your audience information and content about your business in the evaluation phase.
- Marketing can support the sales team by developing specific decision phase assets.
- Vende Digital can help you run full-funnel, intent-based campaigns.
