How to Be a Full Funnel Marketer in 2023 and Beyond

A Webinar in Collaboration with Rockerbox

Preface

Let me preface this by extending a special thanks to Rockerbox for organizing the webinar!

As we advance into the digital age, marketers need to keep changing how they do things to stay on top. Even the conventional marketing landscape is shifting. Today how we do digital marketing has changed a lot and it is not only due to new technology but also due to how people act and respond.

Recently, I was invited to a webinar organized by Rockerbox where a comprehensive discussion on full funnel marketing was held, to highlight its importance in the current uncertain times, and explore its cross-channel aspects, and various strategies.

I was accompanied by Theja Talla, CSM Rockerbox as we shared our input and offered guidance for marketers to optimize their strategies and address the challenges through real-life examples to become a full-funnel marketer in 2023.

In this post, I have penned down some of the key takeaways from our session which I believe would be useful for marketers aspiring to implement full funnel marketing strategies effectively. So without further ado, let's get started!

About the Speakers

  • Co-Founder & Growth Marketer at Gradient Media Group

    Experts in Direct-Response Advertising, specializing in Paid Social, Paid Search, & Paid Shopping, offering fully managed service and consulting.

Ravitheja Talla - Client Solutions - Rockerbox

  • Customer Success Manager at Rockerbox

    Experts in making customer success scalable while enhancing the customer experience for the growing mid-market customer base.

Key Take Aways

  • Learn what it takes to become a full-funnel marketer and how you can integrate this method into your own plan and manage your full-funnel strategy across various platforms and approaches.

  • Understand the significance of upper funnel media

  • Discover how to determine the right mix of marketing channels to achieve your business goals

  • Learn how to create a tangible plan that supports a comprehensive full-funnel strategy, and what challenges you may encounter in the process

Be a Full Funnel Marketer

Understanding Full Funnel Marketing

Maggie, our interviewer kicked off the session formally with the basic question of what full-funnel marketing is.

I describe full-funnel marketing as an all-inclusive approach to creating marketing strategies that consider the entire customer journey including cross-channel and paid social channels.

From the cross-channel perspective, full-funnel marketing involves understanding how each marketing channel contributes to guiding a customer toward making a conversion. This includes analyzing the role of TV, paid search and paid social in driving new customer acquisition and meeting demand. The focus is on integrating these channels to achieve core business goals.

As far as the paid social channels are concerned, upper funnel investment plays a significant role. This implies allocating resources towards objectives like traffic, video views, or reach and understanding how these aspects contribute to conversions. The aim is to leverage the platforms, employing upper funnel campaigns within the paid social to determine budget allocations and goal-setting.

Theja Talla rightly pointed out the importance of understanding the distinct stages of the sales funnel: awareness, consideration, and conversion. Conversion tracking and pinpointing the success of channels and campaigns at the awareness level is important as it helps in developing a strategic, multi-channel approach that considers the entire customer journey.

Measuring Upper Funnel and Awareness

Recognizing the difference in goal setting for upper funnel campaigns compared to lower funnel efforts is important. Different campaign types, like video views, traffic, and reach, require different evaluation metrics, such as CPC or CPM goals.

Metrics like the cost against the view product action or add to the cart can provide a better understanding of upper funnel performance. This allows for a realistic assessment of the expected return on investment from the upper funnel, especially when explaining to leadership that revenue may not be immediate but will likely materialize in the future.

As Theja Talla puts it “Hey, look, there's this line that didn't produce any revenue. You know that the upper funnels spend there will produce revenue at a later date. It's just not today"

Similar to TV ads, where immediate purchases are not expected, upper funnel strategies often contribute to revenue over time, especially for higher-priced items.

In my opinion, this understanding can prevent a hasty cessation of upper funnel campaigns and acknowledge their long-term impact on brand consideration cycles. Additionally, continuous testing of different campaigns and creative types further refines the measurement strategy, ensuring optimal ad spend and effective performance across the entire funnel. I have discussed this in a later section as well!

Setting Clear Goals and Objectives for Full-Funnel Marketing

Setting clear goals and objectives is the very basis of successful full-funnel marketing. This process involves aligning your campaign objectives with the broader business objectives, and ensuring there is cohesion between the two.

During the session, Maggie, our interviewer, raised an excellent question about how to build a measurement strategy that would support a complex full funnel strategy.

For me, goal setting is the key as it can facilitate navigating the discrepancies between reported platform metrics and the source of the respective facts. By establishing clear goals, marketers can make informed decisions, define budget allocations, and track performance effectively.

As I mentioned earlier as well, setting goals for upper funnel campaigns is different from those in the lower funnel. In tools like DoubleClick and Meta, various upper funnel buys, such as video views, and traffic reach, have different metrics. For instance, a reach buy may have low CPMs but higher CPCs. It is important to align goals accordingly, like setting a CPC goal for traffic campaigns and a CPM goal for other buys. This ensures a realistic evaluation compared to core campaigns that are focused on tight returns on ad spend or CPA metrics.

P-Max and Its Place in the Funnel

In his response to Maggie’s question about measurement strategy for supporting full funnel, Talla pointed out the role of P-Max (Performance Max) campaigns in full-funnel marketing and how their effect may vary depending on the type of products being promoted via the campaign. I believe it is a good time to elaborate on the concept.

P-Max campaigns can help you engage potential customers across various channels. A question from the audience was directed our way regarding the positioning of P-Max in the funnel. Talla took this one and I agreed that P-Max campaigns are often positioned in the middle to lower funnel, with emphasis on paid search and shopping, and rely on prospecting, discovery, and YouTube advertising.

I further elaborated on this aspect that to assess the effectiveness of P-Max as a lower-funnel and retention tactic it may be helpful to examine the ratio of new versus repeat customers driven by the campaign. The data may indicate that a substantial portion of P-Max spending usually contributes to repeat customer purchases, hence making it a valuable strategy for customer retention rather than netting entirely new customers.

Engaging Creative Content in Full Funnel Marketing

When it comes to full-funnel marketing it is important to understand the cyclic nature of consumer interactions. The intricate overlapping between upper, mid, and lower-funnel stages involves strategic omissions and creative storytelling.

During the Q&A session, a participant introduced the idea that the traditional marketing funnel is evolving into more of a loop, focusing on loyalty, retention, and advocacy. To some extent this is correct, considering the challenge of assessing when a consumer is ready to convert, especially in industries like insurance.

However, investing in upper-funnel initiatives may introduce users who, while exposed to the brand, may not immediately convert. Thus, closing the loop may require creative testing and modifying narratives for diverse funnel positions.

For instance, showcasing new products in upper-funnel campaigns, and then transitioning to promotional content as important dates approach, ensures consistent engagement. Employing careful exclusions prevents overlap, streamlines each stage, and helps to optimize spending while increasing the prospects of meaningful conversions within the consumer journey.

Evaluating Awareness Effect over Time

Continual assessment of awareness campaigns can be helpful in understanding their impact over time, particularly when it comes to upper funnel marketing endeavors. Theja Talla highlighted the role of RockerBox in quantifying the value of upper funnel activities by tracking various on-site conversion types, which I believe is a very beneficial tool.

Unlike lower funnel campaigns where awareness efforts are mostly geared toward immediate purchases, this is not the case with upper funnel activities.

I used the famous pizza analogy to explain the distinction. With conversion campaigns, you are targeting a specific slice of the audience, focusing on those most likely to convert. However, with upper funnel campaigns, you unlock the entire audience, similar to having the whole pizza.

This approach helps pre-qualify the audience, such as targeting a 1% look-alike of high-value customers. By investing in upper funnel objectives, you reach the full potential of this qualified segment, fueling mid and lower funnel efforts with stronger quality leads. Without upper funnel investment, segments can become saturated, leading to overspending on mid-funnel targeting.

To assess the impact of the upper funnel and awareness spending over time, it is important to look beyond platform metrics. I recommended evaluating the percentage breakdown of new users versus returning users and considering site-wide revenue lift as a key metric.

Benefits of Full Funnel Marketing

Using a full-funnel marketing approach means considering the entire journey a customer takes, i.e. from the first time hearing about a product to making a purchase. This approach provides several advantages for instance; it helps understand how different ads and channels impact customer decisions at various stages.

The result is not just more value for money (ROI) but also keeping customers coming back. By adapting ads according to where customers are in the journey, especially using tools like paid social media and creating content that suits each stage, businesses can make their marketing efforts more effective.

I used an example to explain this concept. In the summers, we see broad adverts for new shoes from Nike and Adidas, reaching out to main customers. They highlight the product benefits, like comfort and durability for kids during the school year even though it is not the peak season. However, as September approaches, and the back-to-school period starts, we see a shift in marketing to focus on those who know about the product. The brands use promotions and incentives to encourage customers to buy. The idea is to adapt marketing based on the season and the stage of the customer's awareness about the product.

This also signifies the importance of starting holiday marketing early and the need to build top-of-funnel awareness in advance. I usually advise brands to leverage the lower costs by investing in upper-funnel strategies ahead of the peak season.

Testing and Optimization

In full funnel marketing, A/B testing serves to evaluate performance and optimize strategies accordingly. By analyzing spend across marketing placements; you can identify successful and underperforming areas and eliminate redundant CPA and ROAS. This insight allows for altering baselines for performance and driving new channel testing.

The strategy involves testing different campaigns and creative types within particular campaigns, such as separating a high-performing product from a campaign and reallocating it. This iterative testing and optimization process facilitates the goal of efficient budget allocation and channel optimization and enables marketers to ensure that their marketing efforts are continuously tweaked and refined for a greater impact and return on investment.

However, testing multiple channels simultaneously can make it challenging to pinpoint the most effective one. For smaller brands with budget limitations, I recommend a prescriptive approach that focuses on single-variable changes each month to understand their impact. Metrics such as site-wide revenue lift and the percentage of new users are important considerations. Similarly, survey results, especially "How did you hear about us?" data, can offer valuable insights, and facilitate accurate budget allocation depending on the most effective channels.

As the business scale increases, it becomes pertinent to understand baseline metrics and adopt a methodical approach when introducing new elements into the marketing.

Budget Allocation and Allocation Strategy

Strategic budget allocation in full-funnel marketing involves a cross-channel perspective, understanding each channel's role in customer conversion. With a focus on paid social, the strategy should ideally align with your core business goals.

As a marketer, you must consider upper funnel investments against traffic, video views, or reach objectives, and formulate strategies that match the customer's position in the funnel. Despite the obvious challenges in allocating funds to upper funnel media; it is imperative for overall marketing success. Theja Talla suggested the use of tools like RockerBox that can aid in assessing the impact of upper funnel investments on other channels, thereby facilitating a well-informed decision-making process for budget allocations and goal setting.

Case Studies: Brands Excelling in Full Funnel Marketing

In an answer to a question by Maggie about companies that I think are doing well in terms of marketing achievements, I mentioned a few names and why I think they are successful.

Firstly, brands excelling in securing full funnel marketing goals include insurance giants like Nationwide and GEICO, known for their memorable taglines and jingles. Despite consumers not actively seeking insurance, the consistent upper funnel presence ensures brand recall when they are ready to convert.

Another standout example for me is Weight Watchers, a name that is successfully demonstrating the effective use of upper funnel media in customer acquisition. They go beyond mere budget allocation and employ tools like RockerBox for path-to-conversion analysis, and for monitoring their cross-channel marketing effectiveness.

We can infer from these examples that these strategies allow brands to confidently assess the impact of upper funnel investments, differentiate platform effectiveness, and make informed decisions for future budgeting and strategy refinement.

The key takeaway here is that successful brands not only invest strategically in upper funnel media but also rely on data analysis and customer-centric approaches to optimize their full funnel marketing efforts.

Challenges and Common Pitfalls

One of the most critical challenges in full funnel marketing is dedicating appropriate budgets to upper funnel media for the success of the marketing strategy. I want to add a few other common pitfalls, just to round up what I have discussed so far.

Shortsighted finance metrics - Monthly performance reviews often tend to discount the value of upper funnel campaigns, and may be focusing solely on immediate profitability and overlooking their role in supporting lower funnel and other channels.

Rigidity in goal setting - Setting the same goals for upper and lower funnel campaigns is a common mistake. However, it is important to differentiate goals based on the funnel stage, understanding that upper funnel campaigns may initially show decreased performance before yielding long-term benefits.

Surface-level metric evaluation - Lastly, evaluating diverse upper funnel buys with a one-size-fits-all approach can lead to misconceptions. Aligning specific metrics like CPC for traffic campaigns and CPM for reach campaigns can enable effective evaluations.

Overcoming these challenges will involve educating stakeholders, implementing flexible goal-setting strategies, and adapting metric assessments to the unique nature of upper funnel marketing. Adopting a comprehensive approach that is line with full-funnel objectives can help drive sustained success.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, to implement a successful full-funnel marketing strategy, you must begin by integrating a cross-channel approach, incorporating paid social strategies, and acknowledging the vital role of upper funnel media in achieving core business goals.

Tailoring your ads according to different stages of the customer journey will ensure increased return on investment (ROI) while allowing you to set clear goals in line with the broader business objectives.

Implement specific metrics for evaluating diverse campaign types, while continually assessing your awareness efforts, and understanding the expected time for return on investment from upper funnel initiatives.

At the same time, you must embrace adaptive creative content based on seasons and awareness stages, conduct tests for ongoing optimization, and allocate marketing budgets strategically with a cross-channel perspective.

Moreover, you must also acknowledge and overcome challenges, including educating stakeholders on the value of upper funnel campaigns, differentiating between the goals for upper and lower funnel, and using metric assessments according to the unique nature of upper funnel marketing.

Additional Resources