Full-Funnel Marketing - Strategy, Tips and Phases

1. Full-funnel marketing - a definition
2. The 3 phases of a Full Funnel Marketing Strategy
3. Example of a full-funnel strategy
4. These tools can support you in your Full Funnel Strategy
5. Full Funnel Marketing with Google Ads
6. Conclusion

Some swear by Meta, others by Google, and still others by TikTok. While performance campaigns make absolute sense on all these and other platforms, the desired success often falls short. The reason for missing revenue targets or other business goals is not the channels themselves, but their lack of integration into a comprehensive system.

Marketing channels are often considered separately and evaluated with the same measure of success. However, not every channel and every measure should have the same goal or have to meet the same expectations. One does not expect the same results from a moped as from an airplane - the sensible use of the two modes of transport is different.

Many companies have various isolated solutions in marketing, which sometimes work better and sometimes less so. To awaken the full potential of these isolated solutions, they must be bundled into a holistic marketing strategy. When each measure conveys the right message to the right target group at the right place in the Customer Journey we often speak of successful full-funnel marketing.

Full-funnel marketing - a definition

Full-funnel marketing deals with the holistic alignment of advertising messages along the entire customer journey. Although no customer journey is the same as any other and by no means runs linearly, similarities can nevertheless be found in the different phases from awareness building to the buying decision.

That is why the marketing funnel is divided into three different phases and helps to address the target group properly according to their needs and requirements. These needs vary greatly depending on the position in the funnel: The higher the potential customers in theMarketing Funnel generally the weaker the buying intent. An advertising message with little information and a strong call-to-action is therefore less successful in this phase. In this phase in the upper funnel, closing the sale should not be the primary goal. You can find out what goals and special features the individual phases have in detail in this article.

If there are different marketing goals and needs in the target group, it is obvious that not every channel is suitable for every phase. While campaigns on YouTube Ads, for example, are very successful in the upper funnel, they achieve less successful results in the lower funnel than campaigns on Google Shopping. This is very much related to the different intentions of potential customers in the course of the customer journey. You will also find a tried-and-tested full-funnel marketing strategy with suitable channels in the respective phases in this post. However, before we dedicate ourselves to the practical approaches in full-funnel marketing, we need to know, understand and see the individual phases exactly in the big picture.

The 3 phases of a Full Funnel Marketing Strategy

As already mentioned, there is no typical customer journey - not in the individual case of an online store, let alone in an entire industry.

Nevertheless, the individual steps that a multitude of target customers take can be clustered into three phases.

• Top of Funnel (ToFu), Upper-Funnel or also Awareness Phase
• Middle of Funnel (MoFu), Mid-Funnel or also Consideration Phase
• Bottom of Funnel (BoFu), Lower-Funnel or also Conversion Phase

Customers do not go through the funnel from top to bottom, but enter at different places, jump back and forth and even go through some phases several times before they leave the funnel in the form of an abort or a purchase.

Not least because of this chaotic behaviour in the midst of the customer journey - also called Messy Middle - one also often speaks of the marketing flywheel in marketing.

Whether flywheel or funnel: The reason why potential customers jump between the phases is the lack of satisfaction of needs: Is there still a lack of in-depth information about the product? Am I interested, but there is a lack of social proof? Has my personal, decisive buying argument not yet fallen?

The reasons are many and diverse, and one of the most important tasks in marketing or sales is to identify these reasons and proactively communicate them in the holistic marketing strategy. Anyone who can anticipate and eliminate the typical obstacles, bottlenecks and objections of the target group through targeted marketing measures will be able to significantly shorten the duration of the customer journey.

Metaphorically speaking, the marketing funnel is like a funnel into which you pour water. If the funnel is too narrow at any point, only a little water will come out at the bottom. It doesn't help to pour more water in. Only if the bottleneck is eliminated, you will get more water out at the bottom. Therefore, the first step must be to identify the bottleneck in the lowest part of the funnel, eliminate it, and then work your way up.

Translated into marketing, this means that the first step should be to take care of the phase that causes the most friction and aborts in the Customer Journey. Subsequently, the advertising budget can gradually be turned up in these phases.

Example of a full-funnel strategy

It doesn't matter whether you are expanding your Full Funnel strategy or starting completely from scratch, as the approach is always the same: Start optimising your measures from bottom to top and only move on to the next phase when the phase below it is working optimally.

Bottom of Funnel

In the Lower Funnel, the conversion is absolutely the focus. In e-commerce, for example, this is clearly the purchase of the product.

The potential customers are so far advanced in the Customer Journey that the purchase decision is imminent. Convincing this target group to buy in the last step does not require lengthy, informative ads, but ads with clear calls to action. Sometimes a call-to-action button with the inscription "Buy now" is enough in this area. Performance marketing mainly measures in the Search Engine Advertising.

In terms of content, a few but strong selling points should be used, which give the customers the final push towards conversion. The use of small discount codes in retargeting of shopping cart abandoners is also a popular measure to win new customers.

Important key figures for success measurement are the number of purchases, orders or the amount of sales. The efficiency of the phase can be judged quite simply via the conversion rate. The higher the conversion rate, the more effectively they were asked to buy in the last step or the more purchase-ready the target persons came into the Lower Funnel.

Middle of Funnel

The preparatory phase for the Lower Funnel takes place in the Mid Funnel and is characterised by broader campaigns covering various marketing angles.

In the Consideration Phase, potential customers know their problem and know that there are products or services that can solve this problem for them. The aim is therefore not to directly motivate the target group to buy, nor to inform them about the problem that your product or service can solve. Place your brand via various and repeated contact points in the relevant set of your target group and convince them of your solution by highlighting the added value and providing information on the open questions of your potential customers.

A prerequisite for optimal campaigns and results is a profound knowledge of your target group: Are there different problems? What are your target group's actual pains? What are your target group's goals? And how can your product or service help your customers achieve this goal?

Structure these pains together with the appropriate benefits and aspirations into various marketing angles. These angles are the basis for your communication in the Mid Funnel. Create your ads for the most relevant angle and then work your way up to the other angles.

It is recommended to focus the advertising budget initially on the main angle and gradually expand the campaigns over time. If you don't yet know which angle is the most important for your target group, then the Mid Funnel is an excellent place to test the various messages against each other.

You can easily measure the success of your campaigns by observing the effects on the Lower Funnel. If more comes out at the bottom, then you have done a good job at the top. Of course, you should also look at specific key figures such as click rates, scroll stop rate and user behaviour on the website - the higher, the more relevant your messages.

Top of Funnel

In the Awareness Phase, you are addressing people who don't even know they have a problem or who are aware of it but do not yet know your solution.

Therefore, the awareness is created in the ads and your product or service is explained. The goal is to generate an aha moment or a wow effect in the minds of the target group, which will take them on the further journey in the customer journey.

Good ads require various elements:

• Attention: Your target group is not actively looking for you and doesn't even know you exist. So in the ads you have to create maximum attention and immediately arouse interest so that users don't turn away again.
• Education: Depending on the awareness level, you have to draw attention to the problem and put your finger in the wound - preferably in the same language your target group uses. In this way, you can show your target customers that you understand them and at the same time provide a suitable solution, which you then explain with all its benefits.
• Entertainment: Nobody wants to read boring product features! So design your ads in an entertaining way, not dry, and build an entertaining story into them. Humour or a twinkle in the eye should not be missing. It is best to follow the best practices in storytelling and thus stay in the minds of your target group.
• Call-to-Action: Of course, in the end you want to provoke a purchase, but in the Upper Funnel this is off-putting. There is a lack of many important information and trust, which customers collect only during the Customer Journey. The first step is to invite users to browse your website or learn more in a blog post. You can also build special landing pages for these campaigns that combine products, information and first trust elements.

You should make the best use of visual ads in the Upper Funnel - ideally video ads. In video content, you can include the necessary elements very well and connect them successfully.

These tools can support you in your Full Funnel Strategy

As you implement the individual phases along with the associated marketing channels, you will notice that measurability across the entire customer journey must be ensured. Fortunately, there are a variety of Marketing Analytics Tools on the market that provide relief.

Many marketers still rely onGoogle Analytics, to monitor the attribution between the various channels and stages in the funnel. In addition, in e-commerce, evaluations in the respective shop systems such asShopify can also be drawn upon.

To get an extended insight into the effects between the phases, you can also Customer Journey Tracking Tools like Tracify use, bundle conversion data and evaluate it using a special attribution model.

In the after-sales process, you can finally rely on a post-purchase survey that is integrated directly on the website after the purchase has been completed. For example, customers receive a small survey via Hotjar about how they became aware of the shop. This type of survey is excellent for measuring the influence of upper funnel measures.

Full Funnel Marketing with Google Ads

To implement a promising Full Funnel strategy, you do not necessarily have to search for countless different marketing channels. It is enough if you focus on yourGoogle Ads account.

Within Google Ads, you have a wide variety of different types of campaigns at your disposal that can address all phases of the Customer Journey:

In the Lower Funnel, you start with strong sales campaigns in the search and shopping area and align them with brand or product-related keywords. This gives you a profitable base on which to build the campaigns of the other phases.

In the Mid Funnel, you can gradually expand the keyword set and also invest your budget in additional campaign types that address colder target groups. The selection of the right campaigns at the right time depends on your target group, your product and the duration of the Customer Journey. The principle of working your way up from the bottom to the top in the funnel therefore also applies here.

In the Upper Funnel, Google Ads offers YouTube, one of the most popular video platforms in the world. With YouTube Ads you have numerous options to reach your target group, raise awareness of the product and win new customers. Thanks to YouTube Shorts you also reach people who are more receptive to advertising than with other YouTube formats.

Conclusion

With Google Ads, you can completely cover Full Funnel Marketing. Of course, you should not ignore other advertising platforms like Meta. As is so often the case in marketing, there is not just one right way to success.

The most important step in Full Funnel Marketing is knowing which step is the next one. A profound knowledge of the target group is key to providing potential customers with relevant ads at any point in the Customer Journey.

Once you have acquired this knowledge, you can gradually build up the marketing funnel starting from the Bottom of Funnel through the Middle of Funnel to the Top of Funnel and in these stages increase profitability, sales and new customers.