The Power of Full-Funnel Marketing: Reaching Customers Across Channels

We are moving to a digital era where marketers are looking beyond acquisition – with changes to data privacy, an increasingly saturated marketplace, expansion into new categories, brands need to be present where their customers at. A full-funnel marketing strategy ensures they are literally in front of that consumer at every single possible touchpoint to increase interaction and nurture the customer throughout the buying journey.

A recent Nielson study shows that full-funnel strategies see up to 45% higher ROI compared to marketing campaigns across a single purchase stage. However, since the path to purchase is complex, with consumers moving seamlessly across online to office channel, how can brands make pivot to meet customers where they are and get the best buck for their marketing dollars?

% spilt of spend across your full funnel paid strategy

Overdose Digital shared that spend splits are tailored for each business depending on their specific marketing goals and business objectives. In the lead-up to peak season, they recommend brands to focus on driving increased upper funnel activity in September and October to start the acquisition journey when media costs are cheaper than during the more competitive periods in Nov/Dec.

Has sales increased from shifting spend from top of the funnel to the bottom of the funnel?

Funnels are linear, but customer journeys rarely move directly from awareness to consideration to purchase. While the marketing funnel is a helpful framework, customers can come across your brand at any stage through any channel or skip a stage - so you need to understand how each touchpoint is connected to better invest in the stages of the funnel.

Overdose mentioned that there is only so much that can be captured from those bottom-of-funnel users, so whilst a redistribution can result in a short-term spike for any users potentially slipping through the cracks, it only lasts so long.

Having a healthy remarketing approach across a variety of channels is important to get the most out of these bottom-of-funnel users, but equally important is continuing to invest in acquisition efforts to drive potential customers to your site. This allows companies to see more capacity to invest in bottom-of-funnel marketing as this pool grows, but everything should scale together.

Word of mouth and referral must not be forgotten as they are still strong contenders of marketing tools and email automation & campaign activity can go a long way in maximising the return on your investment.

Balancing your investment in digital marketing vs organic traffic

There is no one size fits all approach and both digital marketing and organic traffic can we mix them together to create a comprehensive and effective campaign. The end goal is to get the most amount of high-quality traffic to the website, so instead of looking at Paid vs. Organic, look at Paid AND Organic. In an organic SEO vs. paid Google Ads scenario, we first need to determine the amount of organic traffic we are driving, against targets. If organic SEO levels are low, then paid ads will need to pick up the slack to achieve those intended targets.

This is best assessed with a brand and non-branded approach. Branded spend would be the first point that we are decreasing our spend. As we will (provided adequate optimisations) always rank organically #1 for our own brand name, we don’t need to be spending money to achieve the same click.

These are some things to keep in mind to gain the click without the cost:

● If competitors are bidding on your brand, you don’t want to lose that #1 brand spot

● If you have certain key promotions, paid ads can allow for site links and greater marketing and promotional presence As for the branded side, the ideal situation is that we drop spend for keywords that are ranking #1. However, rankings fluctuate every day and controlling this manually is not an efficient way to approach this. As well as this, if other brands are bidding on these keywords, we are going to lose real estate and potentially the click too.

An Insider Intelligence article states that 30% of advertisers are reducing their marketing budgets in 2023 due to the economic outlook. So, experimenting firstly with branded spend drop is the best way to go when reducing paid ads cost.

What would you cut first if you're asked to halve your digital marketing spend? 

Brands that continue to invest in marketing, even during tough times, tend to come out better in the longer term.

Brands should investigate into a detailed review and analysis of their marketing efforts and their contribution to their overall sales – and see if they have data from their customers on what drove them to purchase from you. Identify those efforts that are working and those that aren’t working quite as well and let these results guide your company into deciding if there is a need to cut down the marketing spend by half.

Brands need to be aware that full funnel marketing marketing is a holistic approach, it all comes down to how the clear brands are on their objectives and adapting to the changes in consuemr behaviour.

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