Acquiring and converting new leads is an important aspect of any full-funnel marketing strategy. However, it can be both difficult and costly if you don't take the right approach. This stage of the marketing funnel, also known as “top of funnel (ToF),” refers to efforts that focus on building awareness for a new product or in a new market. It is unique from the rest of the funnel because it includes potential customers that don't already know about your brand or haven't yet engaged with your business. This means that you'll need to take a tactical approach, creating comprehensive brand awareness campaigns that include in-depth audience analysis, data collection, and strategic paid advertisements.
Improving Awareness and Engagement in Your ToF Campaigns
Start with Audience Segmentation
If you aren’t already using audience segmentation in your top of funnel campaigns, you’re making a big mistake. After all, how can you speak to new customers if you don’t know who they are, what their needs are, and how your brand’s offerings can make their lives better?
There are a variety of ways this type of segmentation breakdown can happen. To figure it out, sit down and make a list of all the attributes of your ideal customer – think age group, gender, hobbies, occupations, marital status, health needs, financial goals, and more. The more specific you can be, the better. Then, you can create audiences that reflect these personas supported by relevant ad copy.
Include Proper Testing
Do you offer multiple services or products? Test each product or service category against each audience to see what is working best. If an audience is responding well, you know that you can scale your campaign accordingly. If not, it might be a good time to pull the plug.
This is especially crucial if you have a large audience or one that can be segmented down several tiers. It’s also important to make sure you know who your target audience really is and plan your tests accordingly. Many times, companies believe they understand their ideal customer, but the persona is outdated or needs refining.
Use Educational Content
Sometimes it isn’t wise to throw a new product in a prospect’s face and hope for the best. If your brand is particularly niche or not widely known, it’s often better to provide educational content first in your advertising before trying to sell later.
For example, let’s say you have a new skin cream on the market that reduces fine lines and wrinkles. A potential customer just stumbled upon your ad, but they’ve never heard of you until that very moment. You’re much better off directing them to a blog post about aging skin, building up trust in your company, and then offering them the product.
3 Top of Funnel Strategies to Fill Your Marketing Funnel
Effective Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising strategies can help attract new leads that you can then nurture into loyal customers. These approaches focus on targeting potential buyers early in their journey, building awareness and interest. By implementing these strategies, you can establish a strong foundation for a full-funnel marketing strategy that supports sustainable growth.
1. Take Advantage of Display Ads
Display advertising involves text-based, image, or video advertisements that are run across a variety of networks, including the Google Display Network (GDN). These ads encourage users to click through to a specific landing page or take an action like making a purchase. They are often used for retargeting campaigns, where they are served to users who have already visited a brand's website; however, display ads are excellent options for top of funnel efforts, too, due to their low cost and high visibility.
In fact, Google's display network reaches 90 percent of all internet users, making it a powerful tool for expanding your reach. Plus, these advertisements offer more flexibility than traditional search ads (which have shorter character limits), allowing you to fully describe and capture your brand.
2. Add Paid Social to Your Social Media Strategy
Social media is one of the most effective ways to build brand engagement, as it allows you to connect with customers and foster genuine relationships. Specifically, your social media profiles enable you to show the “human” side of your brand, and when used properly, can generate a significant amount of brand loyalty.
One great way to use paid social media in your top of funnel campaigns is to boost your organic social posts. Not only is this cost-effective and efficient (because you won't need to create new content), but it's also great for building engagement. Consumers love opportunities to interact with brands, so be sure to spend some time responding to comments on your boosted posts.
When it comes to executing successful top of funnel campaigns on social media, the key is to choose the right platform for your ideal audience. For example, 78 percent of adults aged 30 to 49 are active on Facebook, while only 40 percent use Instagram. So, if your business primarily caters to this age group, Facebook would be the better choice. Spending money on a platform that your target audience doesn't typically use would be a huge waste of your advertising dollars.
3. Incorporate Compelling Video Ads
Like display advertising, video ads are useful for boosting your brand's reach. They allow you to communicate information about your brand in an engaging, easy-to-digest format. Video advertising can take many forms, from youtube ads to television ads, streaming video ads, in-banner video ads, and more. Television and streaming video ads are great for blanket awareness campaigns, but they tend to come at a higher cost, with some networks charging hundreds of thousands of dollars for just 30 seconds of national airtime.
Luckily, there's a more budget-friendly solution: YouTube ads, which cost pennies per view. YouTube also offers three different ad categories (TruView ads, non-skippable video ads, and bumper ads), so you can choose the format that best fits your campaign.
Create Successful Top of Funnel Campaigns with Help from a Dedicated Paid Media Team
Top of funnel advertising isn't as simple as running an ad and hoping that anyone and everyone will see it. Rather, it takes careful consideration, enticing ad copy and creative assets, and strategic placement to ensure you are attracting high-quality leads that are likely to convert.
Ready to start building brand awareness with top of funnel PPC campaigns? Zero Gravity Marketing is here to help. Our paid media team can employ a variety of top of funnel tactics to develop strategic campaigns that yield real results.
For more information about our PPC services, or to speak to one of our paid media specialists, contact us today!
About the Author
Tiffany Anderson
