Introduction
As a business owner, you may be wondering how to lay the foundation for your digital marketing strategy. When it comes to developing a marketing funnel, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by information about the various techniques, such as pay-per-click advertising or search engine optimization, and it can be difficult to understand where you should initially invest your marketing budget to get the best ROI.
In this blog, we’ll be unpacking the role of advertisements in your business’s digital marketing strategy and focussing your attention on how to lay the foundation of an effective marketing funnel so that you can convert attention into income.
The Role of Advertisements
Advertisements always seem to steal the spotlight. When you go to kickstart your digital marketing strategy, the first place most business owners look to invest is in an advertising campaign. After all, advertisements have proven to be a powerful marketing tool since the early days when the newspaper dominated the media.
You’ve surely heard about how effective modern digital marketing can be now that we can utilize user data to target advertisements directly at the individuals best suited for your services. However, you’ve also undoubtedly heard horror stories about costly ad spends that resulted in minimal or entirely absent ROIs…
The world of advertising is constantly evolving, but from looking at the history of successful campaigns we see a common thread: the most effective ads convey a simple message. In other words, when an advertisement tries to do too much, it becomes ineffective. The goal of an ad should be to hook the attention of the audience and seduce them into further exploration — it’s difficult to design an ad that not only draws attention but also converts the lead into a client at the same time.
Thus, advertisements are a time-tested tool for expanding your reach and visibility, but in order to result in a legitimate increase in revenue, they must work to direct attention to the conversion-oriented component of your marketing funnel.
(If you’re looking for more information about digital marketing techniques like pay-per-click advertisements and search engine optimization, take a look at our last blog, “SEO vs PPC” here)
Converting Attention Into Action
So, the question you must ask is: “How do I establish the foundation for my digital marketing strategy in a way that will convert attention on the internet into purchasing action from a prospect?” As a business looking to expand, the goal for your marketing strategy is to generate more business, not (solely) to get more attention. Therefore, the most important marketing tool in your arsenal is one that is designed to authentically convert leads into clients.
This is a pivotal point in the sales process. It requires the individual in your audience, whose attention you’ve worked hard to win, to commit to your company as a provider rather than as a source of information. A successful conversion happens when the customer is confident in your business’s ability to deliver on the product/service they desire, or in other words, conversion is predicated on a prospect’s ability to trust your company.
The Foundation Of Your Funnel
“So the foundation of my digital marketing strategy is a tool that builds trust, not a campaign to get attention?”, you may be wondering. To which we say: exactly.
We live in the age of information, a fascinating era in which we have access to seemingly infinite sources of knowledge via the internet. However, as we’ve surely learned, many of these sources are falsely advertised and full of incorrect information (If you’ve ever bought a knock-off product from China unsuspectedly, say I). In this climate, consumers have become accustomed to prolonging their purchasing process until they have thoroughly investigated the product or service in question. Only after they come to authentically trust the company will they commit their funds to the cause.
Thus, at the heart of your marketing funnel lies a tool that builds trust by strategically adding value to those who seek it and creating transparency between you and your audience. At White Wolf Marketing, we’ve discovered that the first step to achieve these objectives is to design a website that outlines your typical customer’s buyer journey so they clearly understand your value proposition and are enticed to take the desired action(s).
A website is the foundation of all your digital marketing strategy because every additional marketing service you integrate into your efforts down the road, be it an advertisement campaign, SEO service, or social media management, will direct the attention they attract back to the website. All the attention in the world will go nowhere for your bank account unless your website is designed to connect with your audience, equip them with the information they’ll need to make an informed decision, and entice them to take purchasing action.
Conclusion
If you want to build a 16 story skyscraper, you have to lay the proper foundation or else risk the collapse of the entire building. Similarly, if you want to build an effective marketing funnel, you must establish a foundation that helps you convert leads into clients.
It’s okay to dream big when it comes to your marketing strategy, but start small. Don’t get caught spending your money on a digital marketing campaign designed to attract attention before you’re sure that the traffic is flowing to a well-crafted website. To learn more about how to build your business’s marketing funnel, get in touch with a White Wolf Marketing consultant and we’ll be happy to help.
(If we lost you at “marketing funnel”, no worries! It’s a modern concept that many thought leaders in the marketing industry are focusing on. If you’d like a brief overview of how marketing funnels work, take a look at this blog from Neil Patel here)
