Follow this guide for some of the best bottom-of-funnel marketing tactics your business can use to increase sales.
When it comes to creating a powerful marketing strategy, you’ll need to understand the different stages of the customer journey– which is represented by your marketing funnel.
The kind of marketing content and tactics you use for attracting people to your brand should be different from the tactics you use to drive a new sale. People will rarely discover a brand and make a purchase straight away. Instead, it takes time to nurture prospects, develop trust with them, and get them to make a purchase.
This is what moving potential customers down your marketing funnel is all about.
So, once you’ve attracted interested customers and “warmed them up,” how do you turn them into paying customers?
By using the right bottom-of-funnel marketing tactics.
Follow this guide for the most effective lower-funnel marketing tactics to help you achieve this.
- What is bottom-of-funnel marketing?
- Why is bottom-of-funnel marketing important?
- Understanding the stages of the funnel
- 10 Lower funnel marketing tactics you can use
- Bottom-of-funnel content ideas
- Customer retention strategies
What is Bottom-of-Funnel Marketing?
Lower funnel marketing, or bottom-of-funnel marketing, refers to the kind of content you need to publish and tactics you should apply to prospects who are ready to convert.
Any good content marketing strategy is all about publishing content that matches the interests and intent of the customer at the different stages of the buying journey. In this case, the buyer journey is represented as a marketing funnel.
The top of the funnel is when a prospect just learns about your brand. In this case, the kind of content you publish should be educational or interesting – helping them to opt into your mailing list and learn more about what your brand does. As they reach the bottom of the funnel, they’ve already been educated and engaged and now need to convert to paying customers.
So, the tactics you use at the bottom of the funnel are more direct ways of trying to earn a sale out of each prospect.
Here’s a representation of a marketing funnel to help you understand the differences between top-of-funnel, mid-funnel, and lower-funnel marketing efforts.
Why is Bottom-of-Funnel Marketing Important?
The bottom of the funnel is where you turn prospects into loyal customers. Without the right strategies in place, you won’t be able to actually generate revenue from the leads you’ve entered into the top of your marketing funnel.
Successful bottom-of-funnel marketing strategies push your remaining leads in the funnel to become customers.
It’s essential that the different tactics your business uses at the different stages of the funnel work with each other to provide a seamless customer journey. When done right, a well-planned marketing funnel should maximize your sales.
Of course, your lower-funnel marketing efforts need to align with your upper-funnel and mid-funnel content.
Each stage of the funnel works together to eventually bring prospects to the bottom. However, it’s the digital marketing tactics you use at the bottom stage of the funnel that will help you generate revenue.
Understanding the Stages of the Funnel
Before we get into your lower funnel marketing strategy, it’s important to understand how a marketing funnel works as a whole.
All marketing funnels include the following three stages:
- Attract: Also known as the awareness stage, this is when a prospect discovers your brand. The aim here is to educate and inspire them and get them to move further down the funnel. These prospects are not ready to buy.
- Inform: Also known as the consideration stage, this is when a prospect understands their problem and starts to look for a solution. This stage is about developing trust and promoting your product or service as a good solution for the prospect.
- Convert: Once you have engaged a prospect with relevant content, they can now enter the conversion stage. This is when your lower funnel tactics start to apply. This stage is all about turning the educated prospect into a customer. Prospects here are ready to buy – you just need to turn your leads into conversions.
Some marketing funnels will have an additional fourth stage:
- Engage: Also known as the loyalty stage, this is when you continue to engage existing customers with the hopes of driving repeat purchases from them.
So, when we talk about lower-funnel marketing, we look at the “convert” and “engage” stages. Unlike the other stages, which are all about driving interest in your brand and informing potential customers about what you do, these stages are focused on directly pushing a sale.
When a business looks at its conversion rate, it focuses purely on lower-funnel marketing.
10 Lower Funnel Marketing Tactics You Can Use
Any smart marketing strategy targets prospects with the right content at the right stage of their buying journey.
To help you maximize conversions ta the lower end of the funnel, here are 10 of the best strategies that you can use.
1. Offer Discounts or Promo Codes
One of the most effective lower-funnel marketing tactics is to offer promo codes or discount coupons. All kinds of brands do this, as it’s a great way to push an interested customer into making a purchase.
You can offer these codes through a strategic popup on your site. This should trigger when a first-time customer enters your site when the customer is filling up their shopping cart on your online store when a customer enters the checkout page. You could also send these codes as part of an email drip campaign.
Whatever the case, sending a discount is a highly effective way to encourage a sale. The prospect already knows what you offer, and they understand the value of it. Sending them a discount could be just the push they need to motivate a sale.
An effective way to push an impulse sale is to include a limited-time discount. This adds a sense of urgency, which can give prospects more reason to make a purchase.
2. Case Studies and Testimonials
A prospect may be ready to make a purchase when they reach the bottom of the funnel, but they might still need an extra push to understand whether they can actually trust your brand. A positive case study or testimonial can do wonders here.
Gathering this information from a happy past customer can help you inspire future customers. This adds an element of social proof and helps prospects understand what your product or service could actually do for them.
Try to include testimonials across your website – especially on checkout or booking pages where they need to make a purchase decision.
Sending more detailed case studies is another great solution. This could work well in targeted emails – like drip campaigns or even abandoned cart emails.
When a prospect can see that other customers have had a positive experience with your brand or products, then they will have more reason to make a purchase too.
Above: Example of how you can use customer reviews or testimonials in lower-funnel marketing emails.
3. Send Leads to Sales People
Many businesses send leads to sales team members when they reach the bottom of the funnel. This could be because the lead might have specific questions or concerns that your website doesn’t offer.
If this is the case, adding a calendar link to set up a meeting with a salesperson could provide the push a prospect needs to turn into a paying customer.
4. Add Reviews to Your Checkout Pages
Reviews are another essential form of social proof that can help you drive a lot more sales. Strategically adding them to checkout pages can help develop trust, which is necessary for motivating a purchase.
This tactic is especially important for any kind of eCommerce store. Reviews show potential customers that other customers have trusted and bought from your store, which is what they want to know before making a purchase.
Reviews can also help customers answer questions and find out more about what your products look like in real life before they make a purchase.
5. Optimize Your Pricing Page
Your website’s pricing page is likely the last place a prospect navigates to before they commit to a purchase. This means you need to make your pricing page as enticing and trustworthy as possible to encourage a purchase.
Try to add as much value as you can here. Be very specific about what your products or services include, and highlight any additional benefits you offer – like free shipping or a generous returns policy.
Making your pricing page transparent and easy to understand also fills a prospect with all the information they need pre-purchase. If they don’t have unanswered questions, they will have a better chance of turning into a customer.
Offering a free trial is another fantastic lower-funnel strategy. If you have a software product of some kind, free trials are a great way to rope new customers in.
It’s also a good idea to add a chatbot to your pricing page, as shown in the example below. This can help answer buyers’ questions and help them earn more trust in your company before clicking “buy.”
6. Try Retargeting Ads
If you choose to use paid advertising, then retargeting ads are one of the best lower-funnel strategies. This is when you display an ad to people who have previously visited your site or interacted with your brand.
Retargeting can be highly effective and offer a great ROI for paid ads. This is because retargeting ads are displayed to people who have already shown an active interest in your brand and what you offer. By strategically retargeting them, there’s a good chance you’ll bring them back to your checkout page.
A good tactic is to use a discount code, coupon, or special offer in the retargeting ad. This could provide just the push they need to go back to your site and complete a purchase.
Above: Example of a retargeting ad with clear benefits (source)
7. Create Product Comparisons
For a slightly more aggressive lower funnel marketing tactic, some brands publish product comparison content. This is when they directly compare their product against a competitor – which will generally be a well-known name.
You could also compare it to a nameless product and call it something like the “industry standard” or a “similar product.”
This strategy can work well because it shows products exactly how your product performs compared to the competition – which is important for motivating a purchase from them.
Just make sure that you don’t bully your competitors or create a page that offers a negative perspective of your brand to your audience. Instead, focus on highlighting the unique or special elements of your product or service to show what your brand does differently from the competition.
8. Use Trust Badges
Adding trust badges to your website can be an effective way to motivate visitors to make a purchase. These badges could include things like awards your business has won, star ratings you’ve achieved on product review sites, or even the logos of companies you have worked with in the past.
By adding these badges to your site, you give more reason for visitors to trust your brand and the products or services you offer. This can help you boost conversions in the lower stages of your funnel.
9. Show Your Products in Use
One of the best ways to motivate a purchase is to display your products in use. Instead of just offering standard product shots, try to offer more realistic images or videos of your products in use. You can include these on your product pages, share them on social media, or send them out in your email marketing strategy.
One of the best tactics is to create a realistic video of how your product performs and what it looks like in real life. This can help potential customers better understand and gauge your products – which is especially important in eCommerce.
If you offer services, a great strategy could be including some kind of a “before and after” video or image sequence to show prospects how your services work and what they could achieve. This could be a great idea for local service providers like plumbers or contractors.
10. Encourage User-Generated Content
User-generated content is when people who aren’t affiliated with your brand share content about your brand. Besides being able to drive a lot of awareness around your brand, this can be an excellent strategy for the bottom of your marketing funnel as it helps to improve trust and reveal your products in real life (as mentioned in the point above).
You can generate user-generated content through things like social giveaways or challenges. When you do generate this content, try to share it across your marketing channels.
When a prospect sees other people promoting your brand or sharing their experiences with your brand, there’s a better chance they will convert into a paying customer.
You could also explore working with micro-influencers to generate this kind of content. Even if it’s a paid promotion, prospects tend to trust brands more when they see other influential people they trust promoting them.
Bottom-of-Funnel Content Ideas
You may have a blog or a YouTube channel where you publish content. While all of your content might be published in the same place, it’s still important that you publish different types of content for the bottom of the funnel.
To help you out, here are some of the best lower-funnel content ideas that you could use:
- Case studies from existing customers
- Product or service reviews or comparisons within your niche
- Webinars featuring your product in action
- Detailed videos of your product in use or your service offering
Basically, you’re trying to push your prospects into making a purchase decision while they’re at the very end of the buying journey. You’re not trying to create content that informs and educates. Instead, you want to create content that inspires, motivates, and helps customers take action.
Customer Retention Strategies
When we talk about lower-funnel marketing ideas, we should also consider the retention stage of the marketing funnel. Remember, your marketing funnel is not only focused on driving new sales but also on retaining your existing customers.
Here are some of the best strategies you can utilize to do this:
- Email marketing: To send regular communications with customers, keep them up to date with your brand, and offer any relevant promotions they might be interested in.
- Social media: To keep customers engaged with your brand and what you offer. This will help them stay up-to-date with news, updates, and promotional offers that your brand runs.
- Loyalty offers: Offering special discounts or promotions to existing customers for their loyalty is always a great idea. Imagine a loyalty card at your local coffee shop or an offer of free shipping for returning customers. These are effective loyalty ideas.
Conclusion
Your marketing strategy should be broken down into different tactics that you use on customers as they progress through your marketing funnel. To turn those prospects into paying customers, you’ll need to make sure you apply the right bottom-of-funnel strategies.
The tactics above are some of the most effective strategies that any kind of business can use. By targeting the right people at the right time with the right content, you should be able to drive a lot more sales for your business.
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