You've Got Your Top-of-Funnel Goal: Now What?

So, you've learned all about the metrics that make your marketing count. You've used the marketing calculator to determine the makeup of your funnel that will get you to your sales goal for the year. You have the (sometimes daunting) number of impressions you'll need to get started and to put you on the path for success further down the funnel.

Now what?

Fear not! We have a guide to selecting the makeup of your campaign that will get you the best return on marketing investment (ROMI) and get you to that top-of-funnel goal, right on schedule. 

Below you'll find some of the most commonly used marketing activities, their average* efficacy (benchmark CTR data) and the type of messaging you'll want to use to reach your audience through each.

Based on what you're hoping to accomplish, who you are talking to and your budget, you can use these guidelines to build out a plan to reach your magic number of impressions for your campaign.

*Note that these are averages for the B2B space. These numbers will vary for B2C applications. 

Email Marketing

Average CTR: 3.2%

Audience: Users you already have in your database. These are people who know (and, hopefully, love) you.

Messaging: Email marketing can span across a lot of different messaging depending on where your audience is in their buyer's journey. This is why having a well-organized and segmented CRM is crucial to effective marketing. You want to connect with prospective customers where they are, when they're most receptive to your message. By tracking their previous activity and knowing a bit about their personality or position, you can make an informed choice on what type of message they'll receive next. 

This messaging can range from educational to promotional, branding-focused to action-oriented. The most important thing to do is keep them engaged with your content over time. Even if they aren't ready to buy right now, you can move them down the funnel and be front-of-mind when they are ready to take the next step. 

Organic Search

Average CTR: this number varies, but an astounding fact: the #1 result in Google's organic search has an average CTR of 31.7%. This number drops as you move down the first page of Google results and falls to an abysmal 0.78% when you get to page two. This means that getting on the first page is a HUGE win for your content and getting the top spot is the golden ticket for an influx of relevant traffic to your site. 

Audience: Organic search is great for customers who are searching for a solution to their problems. Most Google searches are conducted as questions. For example: how can I get more marketing qualified leads? How does marketing automation work? What is the best marketing agency in my area? 

Messaging: Messaging in your content for organic search is the most important element in strong search engine optimization (SEO) practices. To get to that top spot, you'll need to be teaching to the test of the questions your audience is asking. If you know that prospects are always asking you for the same handful of resources, returning with the same objections, or choosing your company because of a specific value proposition, that's a great indication that you should include those elements in your content. 

As more prospective customers find your content as an answer to their search questions, Google and other search engines will recognize that your blog or website is reputable and boost it even higher in the results. This takes time, but with a conversion rate of 31.7% in the top spot, is a great long-term investment in driving leads. 

Paid Search

Average CTR: 2.55%

Audience: Just like organic search, you're going to get a lot of people searching for solutions through paid search. They may be looking for products or services that match up with your keywords. Many Google users can identify the difference between the paid search results and the organic results now and look to the paid results when they are ready to buy. 

Messaging: Messaging for these ads has two key elements: getting the right keywords and matching those keywords with a concise, value-driven call-to-action. Matching up your message with the keywords someone may search to have the ad delivered to them is essential to getting that CTR up above the average. Once the ad is delivered, you have a very small amount of space to tell them what makes you different and what they should do to take the next step. 

Google AdWords offers many extensions on their ads to get people going to the right place such as direct links to landing pages or contact forms as well as phone number listings. Knowing how customers who are ready to buy prefer to be in touch will help you determine which to use. 

Paid Social

Average CTR: This varies quite a bit over different platforms, but the overall average is 0.85%. The breakdown by the major platforms is as follows:

• LinkedIn - 0.39%
• Facebook - 0.90%
• Instagram - 0.52%
• Twitter - 1.59%

Audience: As you can likely tell from the numbers above, the audience for paid social is wide and challenging to convert to action. Most platforms allow you to target very specific segments of those audiences that will match your core buyer personas based on their previous activities, interests and demographics, but you're still fighting an uphill battle with attention and placement on social platforms. 

Messaging: Similar to paid search, you'll want to put your value proposition front and center on paid social platforms. Catch your prospect's attention with what you can do for them and hold it with a quick call-to-action. These platforms are usually best for eCommerce purchases or to promote downloadable gated content. You want to give them something to do once they're engaged: buy or learn more valuable information.

Once you've determined where your audience might be most receptive to your messages, consider the budget you have to spend, the length of your campaign or sales cycle and efficacy of the tactics above. Using a mix of these tactics, plus other more traditional marketing activities can help you piece together your plan and reach your goal. 

Helping our customers through this process is our specialty. Contact us today to learn more about how to make your top-of-funnel goal in no time.