Reaching potential customers or consumers is a key part of any successful business. Email marketing is a popular tool for this, but it's not the only one. There are many marketing tactics that can be used to obtain emails from potential customers, such as landing pages, subscription forms, technical documents, downloads, blog posts, and social media. It's important to properly nurture potential customers depending on what stage of the marketing funnel they're in.
This can be done with a series of emails providing valuable and interesting educational content. Once a sales potential customer converts and becomes a customer, it's important to retain them by continuing to email them great deals and content. Email marketing automation helps to make more efficient use of your time and to send the right email to the right people in your email funnels. Social media can also be a great way to receive emails, but it's more focused on personal connection than in a marketing or sales transaction. Both email marketing and social media marketing require your brand to establish a relationship with potential customers so that they can move forward in the sales funnel.
Both are great to use simultaneously to get highly qualified leads that will convert into sales. However, both marketing tools are different and you should have a unique strategy for each one. Creating a content funnel starts before you create your content. Researching each topic and concept before starting to work on it will give you an idea of what you're competing with.
If you want this to be 100% free and inbound, share your articles in the relevant social media groups, on Reddit or on Slack channels. If your company requires a series of calls to close deals, you can use a sales call booking funnel to save time by automating bookings and tracking. Make sure people don't miss the call with email reminders: send a confirmation email with a link to a reminder in Google Calendar. An email 1 hour before the call is not a bad idea either. For potential customers who miss your call, have automatic email reminders ready right after the scheduled time and along with an invitation to reschedule. In review funnel surveys, ask your entire customer base questions to determine how much they like you, filter the ones they like the most and invite them to leave a review on the platform of your choice.
Offer discounts if people buy within certain time frames of their first visit to your website to encourage spontaneous purchases. Along with an intelligent review funnel, an abandonment funnel will help you identify what is causing customer dissatisfaction and address it on a business scale. The traditional funnel model is linear, starting at the top of the funnel and ending at the bottom, where your potential customers convert. The marketing funnel, like people's buying behavior in real life, is not linear, so it's important to understand the customer journey from the moment of awareness to the moment of conversion. Use Hotjar heat maps, recordings and surveys to optimize your marketing channel for the customer journey and increase conversions. Ask 10 marketers about marketing funnels and you'll probably get 10 different answers because a marketing funnel isn't a one-size-fits-all strategy; it uniquely adapts to the way your buyer buys.
Understanding how each stage works in the traditional marketing funnel model is key for success. The top of the funnel (TOFU) is where potential customers realize your brand and interact with it for the first time. They may not yet know much about your product or service, so it's important for your brand to be likable yet professional, trustworthy and credible.
