Navigating the Full Brand Funnel
In the dynamic landscape of today’s startup business world, founders often grapple with a central question: “Where should we invest our precious marketing budget?” While the sales funnel remains a steadfast concept, the debate centers on which funnel stage to prioritize. This challenge is especially pronounced for B2B startups operating within a broader brand portfolio, each at varying stages of growth and awareness.
We all learned the fundamentals of the sales funnel when the customer journey was simpler, linear, and involved fewer touchpoints: Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action. In those days, brand building campaigns primarily revolved around TV commercials, print ads, and outdoor advertising. However, measuring Return on Advertising Spends (ROAS) often led to correlation-based attributions rather than causation. Despite this, the traditional approach to brand building had its undeniable allure.
The digital and social media era ushered in a complex, non-linear customer journey with numerous online and offline touchpoints. On the plus side, every digital interaction became traceable. Performance marketers boasted about their ability to monitor audience actions while keeping a laser focus on ROAS. This laser focus often caused startup brands to lose sight of the bigger picture, concentrating mainly on the bottom of the funnel.
Times have changed. We now exist in the age of “micro-moments,” as Google terms them. Startup founders and marketers must adapt to these intent-driven moments that shape perceptions, preferences, and purchases.
Micro-moments have dissected the startup brand’s customer journey into countless real-time, intent-driven stages, each offering opportunities for brand influence. To succeed, startup brands must understand how these micro-moments connect and complement each other to craft a holistic customer experience.
The Full Funnel Approach for StartUp Brand Building
The key is to step back and view the big picture—the Full Funnel. This approach lets startup founders and marketers oversee the entire customer journey seamlessly, combining the best of long-term brand building with short-term performance marketing. This not only amplifies impact but also improves cost efficiencies. Moreover, in times of uncertainty, a full-funnel approach aids in understanding customer preferences and decision-making throughout the journey, nurturing loyalty and attracting new customers.
Here are six actionable ideas to bridge the gap between these seemingly disparate schools of thought for startup brand building:
1. Cross-Reference Campaigns
Every digital and social media action and interaction can be traced and tracked. Then why not direct startup customers there? Direct customers from mass-media campaigns to digital ecosystems. For example, use print ads to promote app downloads, TV commercials to highlight e-commerce promotions, or billboards to offer discounts via QR codes. The idea is to use mass-media to direct startup prospects to a world where their movement can be monitored and tracked.
Align key performance indicators across channels to understand how various interventions influence the overall startup brand’s journey and end goals, such as website visits triggered by regional TV ads or QR code scans.
2. Precise Measurement
Tracking who viewed your ad is very much possible, whether it is on OTT platforms, which have seen their viewership increase exponentially, or on new-age set-top boxes. Leverage technology to measure the impact of brand channels accurately, connecting ad exposure to consumer actions. This way, you get the best of mass-media and data-driven marketing together.
3. Embrace Voice Marketing
Voice assistants like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri are now part of everyday conversations in urban households, enabling the most natural and intuitive way for startup customers to interact with brands, to discover and use their products or services. Incorporate voice marketing into your startup strategy, capitalizing on the prevalence of voice assistants like Alexa and Google Assistant to enhance customer experiences through content discovery and recommendations.
4. Think Omni Channel
Online and offline exist only in the minds of marketers, for the startup customer, it is only a single brand that they are interacting with. Ensure a consistent, relevant, and relatable brand experience, whether online or offline. Startup customers expect continuity in their conversations with your brand and hence pick it up from where they left off last time.
5. AI-Empowered Humans
Use AI-powered chatbots and tools, not to replace human intervention, but to augment the customer experience. Balance the intervention depending on the conversation the startup customer is having with the brand. Implement AI chatbots, handling routine queries efficiently while preserving human intervention for grievance resolution and complex inquiries.
6. Customer-Centric Organizational Culture
A full-funnel approach requires a paradigm shift in the way a startup organization functions rather than simply stitching together a performance marketing campaign at the end of a brand building campaign. Believing that brand building is the job for sales, marketing, and service teams is an obsolete school of thought. Instill a culture of brand building across your startup organization. Encourage collaboration across functions and align efforts to achieve common KPIs and, ultimately, shared business goals.
In summary, the question isn’t about prioritizing the top or bottom of the funnel but rather how to strategically implement brand interventions throughout the startup customer’s purchase journey to enhance both top-line and bottom-line results. While executing specific campaigns may demand a closer look at details, always remember to step back and see the big picture.
Lastly, remember that while startup marketers distinguish between funnel stages, customers view your startup brand as a single entity. From initial contact to a lasting relationship, consistency in look, voice, and feel is key. Your startup brand’s journey is their journey, from start to finish.
