The marketing funnel is a cornerstone concept. It’s not just a visualization tool; it’s a strategic roadmap for success. And when it comes to PPC, where every penny counts, a well-defined funnel is the difference between stagnant campaigns and explosive growth.
This article breaks down the full-funnel PPC strategy you need to dominate your market. We’ll walk you through each stage, from initial brand awareness to conversion, and show you how to leverage PPC to its full potential.
The Marketing Funnel: A Quick Recap
The marketing funnel simplifies the customer journey towards a purchase. Here’s a breakdown of the key stages:
- Awareness: This is where potential customers first encounter your brand. They might see your ads but haven’t actively researched your product or service yet. Think of it as planting the seeds of brand recognition.
- Consideration: Now, they have a need and are actively looking for solutions. This is where you provide informative content to establish yourself as a trusted authority in the space.
- Conversion: This is the golden stage: the purchase decision. Make it easy for them to find you with targeted campaigns and persuasive CTAs.
PPC for Every Stage: Building Your Funnel Strategy
1. Top-of-Funnel PPC: Awareness Campaigns
Don’t underestimate the top of the funnel! Even if someone isn’t ready to buy today, they might be tomorrow. Brand awareness campaigns using display, video, and discovery campaigns ensure you’re on their radar when they start researching.
2. Middle-of-Funnel PPC: Consideration Campaigns
Now that they’re aware, provide valuable content to help them make informed decisions. Use search campaigns (targeting relevant keywords) and informative video or display campaigns (with refined targeting) to position yourself as the solution they need.
3. Bottom-of-Funnel PPC: Conversion Campaigns
The moment of truth. Make yourself the easiest choice with branded search campaigns, shopping campaigns, and remarketing to keep your brand at the forefront of their mind.
Small Budget? Prioritize, But Don’t Neglect Growth
Yes, you can start with a limited budget. But here’s a crucial point: prioritize the bottom of the funnel initially, not as a long-term strategy.
Focus on maximizing conversions, then gradually expand your reach with middle and top-of-funnel campaigns as your budget grows. This approach can give you a quick revenue boost, but it has limitations.
Why Full-Funnel PPC Wins Every Time
Let’s illustrate with an example. Imagine you get 100 customers converting at $10,000 each, resulting in $50,000 monthly revenue. Optimizing the bottom of the funnel might increase your conversion rate to 10% ($100,000 in revenue). Great, right?
But that’s a short-term win. You’re not growing the pool of potential customers. A full-funnel strategy addresses this.
Imagine top and middle-of-funnel campaigns doubled your potential customers to 200. Even with a 10% conversion rate, that’s $200,000 in revenue – with the potential for continuous growth!
The Power of Guiding Your Audience
A full-funnel PPC strategy takes effort, but the rewards are substantial. By guiding potential customers through every stage of the buying journey, you nurture leads, build brand loyalty, and achieve sustainable, scalable growth. Display, video, search, shopping, and remarketing all play a role – tailor your approach to maximize impact at each stage.
Build a rock-solid full-funnel PPC foundation, and watch your business soar.
While you’ll initially see a revenue bump with this strategy, long-term growth is hard because you’re not trying to grow the real number that matters strategically, which is the number of people at the bottom of the funnel. If you don’t grow the number of people looking to convert, it gets harder and harder to grow the business.
Now, let’s run the math on what a full-funnel strategy can do:
Same example as before: 100 customers at the conversion stage, 5% conversion rate at $10,000 per purchase. Adding bottom-of-the-funnel advertising can help boost the conversion rate from 5% to 10% (ideally), but what if top and middle funnel grew the number of potential customers from 100 to 200?
200 customers x 10% conversion rate = 20 conversions at $10,000 per purchase. That’s $200,000 in revenue, with the potential to continually grow the number of customers in your target market.
While this example is obviously a best-case scenario, it’s all to illustrate the point that while targeting the bottom of the funnel is good, implementing a full-funnel strategy, where you take customers from awareness to consideration to conversion, is the best and most consistent way to achieve long-term growth in paid advertising.
Crafting awareness, consideration, and conversion-focused PPC campaigns
Implementing a strategic full-funnel approach to your PPC campaigns takes more initial effort but pays dividends through continual, scalable growth over chasing short-term profits.
By guiding potential customers from initial awareness through consideration and onto conversion, you increase lead volume and gain momentum.
Display, video, search, shopping, and remarketing play distinct roles across the funnel. Evaluate your business’s current customer volume and conversion rates to prioritize budget and resources.
With the proper full-funnel PPC foundation supporting your efforts, you enable the revenue growth your business needs to thrive.
Article adapted from Search Engine Land