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Your entire online strategy for selling must guide visitors along a path. That marketing funnel leads from campaign to awareness. Understand this as your lead generation. That awareness turns to interest and engagement. You nurture those leads. Finally, those leads commit to sales. The trouble is how narrow that funnel can become as visitors are led step by step. How do you ensure the awareness, engagement, conversion process leads to an outpouring of customers that reflects the resources you've put into it?

The Online Marketing Funnel

Any funnel narrows the further down you get. Not every visitor who becomes aware of you will ultimately engage your site. Not everyone who engages your site will do so repeatedly. Not everyone who shows real interest and engagement will commit and purchase. That funnel becomes narrower the further down it goes.

The key is to understand that you're working with large numbers, and to assess your strategy and conversion process analytically. Where is cost most effectively spent?

Let's go with some very broad numbers and say you can double your lead generation through a marketing push, but you're still only seeing 5% conversions at the end. Alternately, you can double your conversion rate to 10% with the leads you already have. Which do you choose?

Ten percent of 100 works out to the same as 5% of 200. No matter how much you scale up those numbers, you'll end up with the same result for each.

The marketing push is a one-time expense. It's not repeatable without repeating the expense as well. Making a change that improves your conversion rate – that widens your marketing funnel so more make it through – is a permanent change that lasts. It impacts everything you do going forward.

Good Leads Need a Good Process First

It's a simple example, but it shows that improvements to your ability to convert leads are a longer-lasting investment than simply gathering even more leads. In fact, a funnel that pulls more through and results in more conversions will allow you to take much better advantage when you can increase those leads.

The point is to improve your process and ensure good performance and conversion rate. Don't waste money on more leads that you're just going to throw into a bad process with a low conversion rate. Streamline their conversion path, get that conversion rate up, and then you'll get far more sales out of the leads you generate.

Establishing Brand Engagement

Engagement today is built through Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It leads search engines like Google to boost your page and content in its search results. This is done through amassing content that includes keywords.

That content can involve blogs, articles, white papers, eBooks, press releases, videos, games, apps – essentially anything that many searches are likely to land on. Keywords can be present in a number of ways depending on the type of content. Search engines will hone in on the use of those keywords.

If you want people to land on your page because they're searching for how to “establish brand engagement,” then you'll include that phrase several times in your content. Certain techniques, such as using “Establishing Brand Engagement” as a heading will make Google SEO value that key phrase in your content even more highly. Including those keywords in the HTML, or in the metadata of images or video may make it rank even more highly.

High Standards of Content

There's a good possibility that you're reading this article now because you searched keywords that are repeated in it. There's a responsibility that comes with that, however. That responsibility is what leads to a later commitment.

If your content just includes keywords that SEO picks up on, but isn't valuable to those visitors in some way, all you've done is manipulate them toward your site. That might get them there, but if they don't have a reason to stay then they won't engage with it. That will be the end of their path, no conversion.

The responsibility that comes with using keywords to develop good SEO results is that you have to back it up with quality content. You can push content out that just uses keywords repetitively, but ultimately you'll start getting downgraded in Google, which is increasingly measuring a number of other factors to assess whether visitors are finding the sites they're led to useful.

Have Fun with Content

You want people to engage with your site, click a few pages on it, return to it, share it with their friends on social media. Whatever content they land on has to be worth their time. It has to provoke their thoughts when it comes to the reason they sought you out in the first place.

Content should not have a sell-first approach. That's just advertising, and people bounce off advertising very hard these days – especially when it's pretending to be something else. Be transparent. Teach them something about the industry, or the product. Talk about your passion for it. There are many ways to talk about a product, the brand, or the industry without selling.

People's interest in learning more will sell them, and their interest is guided more when the content builds trust. Content should act like a conversation in many ways – everyone engaging with it should feel like they know more and trust the speaker more by the time that particular conversation is over. They should feel comfortable.

Content that means something to them will bring them back, is more likely to get shared, and is more likely to develop social media community that is loyal to your brand. Know what your audience is seeking out, and then create content that allows them to find it. You have to engage your audience if you want them to engage you back.

A Few Extra Tips

1. Content such as white papers or eBooks can be gated. Visitors fill out their information to have access to them. Only use one form and make it as simple and straightforward as possible. You need their name, email address, their business and title, and why they're interested in the content. That's it. Don't ask any unneeded information – this makes visitors wary and less likely to continue engaging with their site.
   
   
2. Highlight your online reviews. Use testimonials. The more that others have to compliment your brand, your product, and your site, the less you have to sell it. Provide proof of quality from outside sources, and visitors will feel much more comfortable.
   
   
3. Social media makes people feel safer. Include links to your social media so that they can follow your brand and feel part of the community that already does.
   
   
4. Include a guarantee with purchases. This makes people far more likely to feel safe making a purchase.

Remember that the marketing funnel goes along the path of awareness, engagement, conversion. One segment is only as strong as the other two. Good awareness won't mean leads if you lack quality engagement through content. Engagement means little if you don't have streamlined ways for visitors to convert to customers. A high conversion rate won't get to be applied often if few leads follow through on engagement. It’s a puzzle, and each piece is critical. THAT Agency can help you solve it!