Understanding Digital Marketing Part 3: Relationships

After reading last weeks article, you should be creating a sales funnel for your next online marketing campaign. This blog post breaks down each tier of the sales funnel, looks at what type of content you should be using, where you are in the funnel and who you should be marketing to at each stage. 

Awareness (Top of Funnel) 

Here, people are starting to be introduced to your brand. Therefore, your brand needs to create a relationship with these individuals. You need to let them get to know, like and trust you. 

Evaluation (Middle of Funnel) 

Once you begin developing a relationship, you have the chance to build trust by giving people value. This is different from prospect to prospect and industry to industry. Therefore, be sure you give the right value for the customer you want to attract. 

Conversion (Middle of Funnel) 

By building trust with a prospect, you warm them up to your brand. As a result, you have a better chance of converting a sale. 

Affinity (Bottom of Funnel) 

Only once you bring a prospect to this level do you want to try and sell. It is at this point they know, like and trust you. As a result, a relationship has been nurtured. Since people are hesitant to buy from someone they don’t trust, selling here as opposed to earlier, gives you a better chance at success.

Championing (Bottom of Funnel) 

Don’t make the mistake of losing a customer after they purchase from you. When treated properly, a satisfied customer can become a champion for your brand. As a result, they will send their friends and family to you. Word of mouth is the most cost-effective form of marketing you can do. Therefore, it makes sense to train and incentivize happy customers to champion your brand. 

This is a general view of an online sales funnel and the components that it is made up of. Knowing when to use them will help you out in your next campaign, but you still need to know how to implement them properly. Much like carpentry, you can have the tools, but without the knowledge of how to use them correctly you won’t succeed. Next week we will look at exactly that!