Marketing Funnels for Small Business: Part 2

In the last post, we told you about marketing funnels, their purpose for small business, and how you can use them to capture leads as well as valuable data you can apply to your future marketing efforts. Now it’s time for you to learn how to apply that knowledge! Defining a marketing funnel is one thing. Setting one up and optimizing it to achieve your goals is another thing entirely. If you’re looking into digital marketing strategies for your business, here are some tips to help you set up a marketing funnel so you can get the most from your efforts.

Identifying Target Audiences/Segments

You probably already know a few things about the types of people who patronize your business. But your marketing funnel can help you identify new target audiences you may not have considered. By collecting information at various stages in the funnel, you’ll learn more about your customers. Are they primarily from a certain age group? A specific geographical area? A clearly defined income range? Contact forms or other prompts can help you collect this type of information and use it to create more effective marketing campaigns.

Setting Up Intentional Funnels

Here’s something you may not have realized: if you have a website or social media page, you already have a marketing funnel in place! It may not be very effective, but it’s there. The next step is to turn it into an intentional funnel that has a purpose. Think about your goals. Do you want to make more sales or raise awareness about your brand? Do you want to collect data about potential customers? You can achieve one or all of these goals by gearing your content towards that end. Whatever your end goal may be, every stage of your marketing funnel should be set up with that goal in mind. A lead magnet is one popular strategy to use in your intentional funnel. By offering up something of value in exchange for a user’s information, it can act like a magnet that attracts leads. Gated content is an effective way of achieving this goal. You can setting up a prompt that asks for a user’s email address before they can view certain content.

Conversion Rate Optimization and A/B Testing

One great way to test the effectiveness of your marketing funnel is with A/B testing. For every webpage, email, or social media post, try two different versions and see which one captures more leads. It’s the perfect way to test user behavior and the information you gather can guide the direction of your future marketing content. It may take some time to iron things out, but A/B testing will help you optimize your marketing funnel by seeing what works (and what doesn’t). In a perfect world, we could easily explain how to set up and optimize a marketing funnel that will get you immediate results. In reality, marketing funnels are part of an ongoing, complex process of data collection and optimization. If you’re serious about digital marketing, you should always try to make your content the best it can be. If that all sounds like a lot of work to you, don’t worry about it. TIC Digital Marketing is here to help! Call us or head over to our contact page and fill out the online form to inquire about inbound marketing services like marketing funnel creation and optimization, or about our other services like WordPress development and branding.