We’ve talked a bit about the marketing funnel and how consumers move from the awareness to consideration stages quite a bit. But, when you’re doing conversion funnel marketing, the decision stage is the most important. Those bottom-of-funnel keywords can wholly determine the success or failure of your conversion funnel digital marketing strategies.
With this in mind, we wanted to take some time to recap the stages of the search engine optimization (SEO) funnel and help you understand how your digital marketing funnel is shaped by the words you use and the content you put into the universe.
Not quite at this stage of the funnel yet? Review our other blogs on the awareness and evaluation phases here:
A conversion funnel (or sales funnel) is a term intended to help you visualize how your audience members find your brand, what they’re experiencing and exploring, and what actions they ultimately take to go from visitors to paying customers.
There’s a difference between upper funnel vs. lower-funnel marketing. In upper-funnel marketing, you’re trying to build brand awareness and let people know you exist. You’re trying to gain traction among audiences who may not even realize they need your product. By the time you get to the bottom-of-marketing funnel, you’re talking to people who have identified that they have a problem and are seeing your business as a possible solution to cure their pain points.
As you work on your bottom-funnel SEO strategy, you must be mindful of words that trigger results. You want to use phrases that prospective customers will use when considering making a purchase. Once you’re working on lower-funnel SEO, you’re talking to people who have already moved through the evaluation phase and are ready to make a decision. The goal at this stage is to take the relationship to a mutually satisfying closed sale.
When it comes to the stages of the SEO funnel, SEO for conversions is often the most difficult. Creating your purchase funnel SEO begins with understanding your end customers’ needs. From there, you can curate terminology that’s based on these requirements.
Here’s a look at some search terms bottom-of-the-funnel audiences might be looking for:
When it comes time to actually create your content, you want to focus on things that will entice your audience to pick you over your competitors. Look for ways to integrate reviews, product comparisons, and demos into your content so you can help your future customers make informed decisions about the items they’re about to purchase.
When you’re talking to people in this stage, they’re ready to decide on a solution, strategy, or method, and they need your content to get them over the finish line.
Vendor comparisons, trial downloads, and case studies can be particularly helpful in this arena. This is when you want to inject your calls to action with offers to join free trials or live demos so your decision-makers can see your product in action. You can also offer consultations or coupons at this stage to help win your customers over.
You need to be sure you’re staying in line with your key objectives, creating metrics, and doing your research as you go along. You don’t want to choose keywords out of the blue just because you think those are the words people might be searching for. Instead, you need to use the tools that can help you understand exactly which phrases might convert audience members into paying customers.
If you’re unsure how to do this, it might be time to hire a professional SEO agency that can help you tackle the task of converting leads into paying customers. Our team at Zero Gravity Marketing is up to the task. All you need to do is send us a note!