If you had the choice, would you buy a car that was built in the 90s or a car of the same price that was built last year?

I’d hope you’d choose the one that was built last year because it better suits the needs and wants of today’s driver.

Let’s expand that question to your digital Marketing strategy. If you wouldn’t trust an outdated car built in the 90s—something that only you would be driving—why on earth would you build your business on outdated marketing models? Hasn’t your audience changed in the past 20 years? Haven’t your audiences’ needs and wants changed over the last 20 years?

It makes sense then to ditch the old marketing funnel in favor of something new, something that accurately represents today’s digital buyer.

Below, I’ll introduce you to the absolute BEST online marketing funnel model—the framework that should drive your entire digital marketing strategy. Then, I’ve broken down each stage of the new online sales funnel, along with strategies and tactics that work best at each phase. You’ll also find real-world examples and expert advice on the “how” of making this work for your business. The goal is for you to walk away with a clear understanding of how the (modern) online buyer’s journey works and how best to market to your target audience at each stage. 

The Stages in the New Digital Marketing Funnel from Top to Bottom (Or More Accurately, from Start to Re-Start)

The digital marketing funnel definition is pretty loose—it’s a framework to help define, understand, and follow the different stages buyers pass through during the customer life cycle. Traditionally, it was a linear journey—buyers predictably passed through one stage at a time, like the template below:

But the the new marketing funnel isn’t a funnel at all. It’s a looping journey full of twists and turns:

I’ll break down these stages with three real-world examples—one for need-based services, one for want-based services, and one for e-commerce purchases. Let’s pretend our consumer is Karen, a 35-year-old homeowner with two small children.

Example One: Karen Needs Furnace Repairs

• First, Karen realizes it’s cold in her house. She checks the vents and there’s no heat coming out – Awareness
• Then, Karen Googles “furnace isn’t working” – Consideration
• Karen heads to Facebook to ask for recommendations for an HVAC company – Awareness
• Karen takes her recommendations and Googles each company’s reviews, services, and hours – Consideration
• Karen narrows down her choices and returns to Facebook for recommendations and input from her friends who have used those top companies – Consideration
• Karen sees ads in Google offering discounts to her top places – Consideration
• Karen selects one of the discounts and does more research about that company – Consideration
• Karen contacts the HVAC company online and books an appointment – Purchase
• After her furnace is fixed, Karen raves about the company on social media, and after she’s prompted from an email leaves a review on Google – Loyalty loop
• Karen’s family starts sneezing in the spring. Karen saw a blog on Facebook about how dirty ducts can cause sneezing. When she sees a discount from the company for air duct cleaning in an email newsletter she clicks on the special and follows a shortened loop to get her air ducts cleaned – Awareness, Consideration, Purchase, and Loyalty loop

Example Two: Karen Wants a Kitchen Remodel

• Karen has finally had it with her kitchen and has decided the pots have fallen on her head for the last time – Awareness
• Karen logs onto Pinterest and Instagram to get ideas for kitchen organization by searching for the tag “#organizedkitchendesign” – Awareness
• Karen pins and saves all her favorite ideas on social media, and begins looking for a local remodeler on Google – Consideration
• Karen gets tired of browsing online and goes back to Facebook to ask for kitchen designer recommendations – Awareness
• Karen Googles the reviews and projects of the recommended kitchen designers and sees one whose project she’s already pinned on Pinterest – Consideration
• Karen makes a short list of designers and sets up an appointment with each – Consideration
• Karen picks her favorite designer and signs on for a kitchen remodel – Purchase
• Karen documents her experience on Instagram – Loyalty loop
• Karen raves about her new kitchen to friends on Facebook – Loyalty loop
• Two years later, Karen’s master bedroom is destroyed from a roof leak. Karen skips the awareness and consideration phases and calls the remodeler directly for a quote – Loyalty loop, Purchase

Example Three: Karen Buys Some Beauty Boxes

• While browsing on Facebook, Karen sees an ad for a beauty subscription box. She stops, thinks about her own beauty habits, and keeps scrolling – Awareness
• The next day Karen sees a similar ad on another social platform for the same subscription box, except this ad has customer reviews. Karen thinks again about her own beauty regimen, and clicks on the ad to see what the hubbub is about – Consideration
• Karen Googles other beauty subscription boxes to see if she can get a better deal on the same products and services – Awareness, Consideration
• The next day, while Karen browses the web she keeps seeing ads for the subscription box. Karen asks for recommendations on Facebook to see if any friends have used the subscription service – Consideration
• Karen subscribes to the 30-day trial – Consideration, Purchase
• Karen keeps her subscription and follows the company on social media – Loyalty loop, Purchase
• Karen sees ads from the same company about a new beauty product – Awareness
• Karen skips the consideration page and purchases the new product based on her satisfaction with the previous one and her trust of the company – Loyalty loop, Purchase

The Absolute Best Digital Marketing Funnel Model and Framework

Understanding that when we say “digital marketing funnel” we’re talking about the new looping buyer’s journey, there’s one specific framework that I absolutely swear by (and you should, too):

Avinash Kaushik’s See-Think-Do-Care model.

I’ve written this model into many of my blogs because it’s so damn accurate.

The See-Think-Do-Care model is based on consumer intent and divides each stage into audience clusters.

• See: Largest addressable qualified audience with no commercial intent
• Think: Largest addressable qualified audience with some commercial intent
• Do: Largest addressable qualified audience with loads of commercial intent
• Care: Current customers with two or more commercial transactions

We can easily build this framework into our model with the modern buyer loops:

Within this framework certain digital marketing platforms are better than others, depending on the intent:

Strategies for Top of the Funnel Digital Marketing: the “See” Audience

At the top of the funnel are people in the “see” category—they’re your largest qualified audience with little purchase intent. They either don’t need your product yet or don’t know they need your product. The key to connecting with buyers in this stage of the funnel is simple: Make them aware of your product and the benefits it offers.

Your ultimate goal with top of the funnel marketing is to encourage users down the funnel to the “think” stage, where the first signs of purchase intent surface. Two main digital marketing strategies work better than the others—social media and PPC display ads.

Social media channels—specifically Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube—are prime real estate for your company to generate awareness because there’s where your audience goes to “see” and discover things. Consider these social media statistics:

• 88 percent of adults age 18 – 29 are on Facebook, alongside 84 percent of adults age 30 – 49
• 59 percent of adults are 18 – 29 are on Instagram, alongside 33 percent of adults age 30 – 49
• 81 percent of millennials use YouTube, alongside 58 percent of Gen-X
• Facebook accounts for one in every six minutes spent online and one in every five minutes spent on mobile
• On average, a typical YouTube session is 40 minutes

The best part is that marketing yourself on social media is inexpensive, and you can have a lot of fun with it. This is your chance to show off your brand, show off your products and services, and develop a cohesive brand message.

I’d recommend you start by defining who your target audience is, and then matching that with the right social media platform. That’s incredibly important—choosing the wrong social media platform is the quickest way to become irrelevant.

The other powerful top of the funnel marketing strategy is PPC display ads. The power of display ads can be summed up with the cell phone theory:

The cell phone theory comes from Duke University research on the human attention span. Basically,  we subliminally take in what’s around us even when we’re distracted with something else. Later, those subliminal surroundings appear to already be familiar. What this means is that people can remember your company simply by subliminally taking in the message from a PPC display ad while they’re doing something else.

The culmination of these efforts should result in brand recognition. While brand recognition and ad recall are easier to measure with social media than PPC, you should still see interest growing by engagement with your ads and visits to your website.

Strategies for Middle of the Funnel Digital Marketing

Once your target audience is aware of their needs and your company they move into the “think” stage. This is where it gets tricky—the majority of the consumer research happens in this stage, and the research and discovery loop takes them back and forth through different mediums. During this stage it’s crucial to build your authority and get your target audience onto your website.

Consider these statistics:

• 71 percent of consumers begin their research phase with a search engine
• 92 percent of shoppers read online reviews before purchasing a product
• Four times as many customers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it
• On average, 41 percent of clicks go to the top 3 paid ads on the search results page

Today’s online consumer is much better educated than the consumers of yesteryear. While they enjoy learning about new products and services from brands, they hate being sold to. They digital buyer’s journey has many different touchpoints, and different people follow different patterns. That’s why you need to invest in more than one middle of the funnel marketing strategy.

The best digital marketing strategies for middle of the funnel consumers are:

• SEO
• Video marketing
• PPC search ads
• Email marketing

SEO for Middle of the Funnel Marketing

SEO (search engine optimization) is your number one source of organic web traffic and leads, and actually arguably serves most stages of the buyer’s journey. It’s by using SEO that your website will show up on page one of search results—and 71 percent of consumers begin their research phase with a search engine.

Nobody goes to page two, or page three. If your website isn’t ranking on page one, you may as well be obsolete. What I recommend to target this audience is that you answer absolutely every question a potential customer might ask in the form of blogs, research papers, and features on your website. Make sure each piece of content is optimized for mobile SEO.

Reviews are the second golden ticket for middle of the funnel digital marketing—92 percent of online consumers read them, and 88 percent of them trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Here’s one probable explanation why: consumers don’t trust advertising and marketing anymore, if they ever really did. Now, it’s no longer shut-your-eyes-and-hope-for-a-good-refund-policy—people can effectively shop based on others’ experiences (which is one reason customer service is so important).

This ties into SEO because you can markup reviews on your website for search engines. The better—and more—reviews you have, the more likely you are to rank higher. Simple as that. 

For great guides on optimizing your website for SEO, check out these resources:

• What to Expect When You’re Expecting SEO Results
• What Is SEO?
• What Is Local SEO and Why Does It Matter?
• How to Get Your Business On the First Page of Google

Video Marketing for the Middle of the Funnel Marketing

Why is video marketing good for middle of the funnel buyers? Because four times as many customers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it, and almost 50 percent of internet users look for videos related to a product or service before visiting a store.

The success of video and the role it plays in middle of the funnel consumer research depends entirely on two statistics:

1. The human attentions span is 8 seconds
2. 8 seconds of video is roughly equal to 30,000 words

Seeing as the average blog post hovers around 1,000 words, that means one 8-second video is worth about 30 blog posts. If you ask me, that seems more efficient, and a better use of your time. I recommend you create short (read: under 30 seconds) videos about your company, as well as how-tos and videos that answer consumer questions. Promote them on YouTube as well as social media sites, and don’t forget to put them on correlating landing pages and blogs on your site.

To learn more on video marketing, check out these resources:

• Social Video: The Marketing Trend Worth Investing In
• 7 Types of Videos that Are Effective for Marketing
• How Much Does It Cost to Advertise on YouTube?

PPC Ads for Middle of the Funnel Digital Marketing

What do people do when they want to know more about something?

They Google it.

PPC search ads are the ads that show up at the top of the search results when someone Googles something (or searches in Bing or Yahoo, but let’s be real, here).

And get this: On average, 41 percent of clicks go to the top 3 paid ads on the search results page. Another reason to use search ads for middle of the funnel marketing?

We know that the middle of the funnel is where the “think” stage happens, and that the research and discovery loop takes consumers back and forth—meaning you have to invest in both brand awareness and consideration.

Guess what? PPC advertising can increase brand awareness by 80 percent. 

For more info on PPC ads, check out these resources:

• Do People Click on Paid Ads?
• What Are PPC Ad Extensions?
• PPC Statistics You Should Know
• How Paid Ad Billing Works

Email Marketing Strategies for Middle of the Funnel Digital Marketing

Email marketing—specifically opt-in email marketing—is extremely effective at the middle-to-bottom of the funnel. It’s low-cost, too, with a 4400% ROI.

Three other statistics offer insight into why email marketing is so good at tipping the thinkers into the doers:

• 57 percent of email subscribers spend 10-60 minutes browsing marketing emails during the week
• 7 in 10 people say they made use of a coupon or discount from a marketing email in the prior week
• When it comes to purchases made as a result of receiving a marketing message, email has the highest conversion rate (66 percent), when compared to social, direct mail, and more

Email is the easiest way to wave at someone right there in their inbox. Because they opted-in, they actually expect to see valuable information from you, so give the people what they want!

For more info on email marketing, check out these resources:

• The Best Email Marketing Strategy Guide for Any Business
• How to Generate and Close Leads with Email Marketing
• Increase Your Email Open Rate With the Right Subject Line
• How to Nurture Customer Relationships Through Email

Strategies for Bottom of the Funnel Digital Marketing

And now we get to the final stages of our journey, the “Do” stage—followed by the care stage, and its revenue-building loyalty loop. At the bottom of the funnel (or really, the middle), is where the buyer actually converts from a prospect into a customer. Your biggest hurdle will be to produce content that actually triggers a user into action.

A few of the more successful “do,” or bottom of the funnel marketing strategies include:

• SEO
• PPC
• Email

Let’s go back to that example of buying a car at the beginning of this post.

Pretend you’ve just spent the afternoon talking about the features of different cars and test driving them, and now you’re back in the dealership, ready to take the next step. Two salesmen walk up.

One says, “Let’s talk about prices and see what packages best suit your family.”

The other says “Let me tell you about all the features in the cars you just drove.”

Which would you be most likely talk with at this stage in your buyer’s journey?

Just like car salesmen, you need to be able to provide a potential customer with the information they need most at that moment in their journey. At this stage, you should be optimizing your content and PPC ads for the following search terms:

• Purchase-related keywords e.g., “buy,” “RFP,” “packages” or “quote”
• Branded and competitor terms
• Contact keywords like “contact,” “call,” or “request”
• Comparison, cost, and pricing terms like “how much,” or “cost of”
• Location-specific keyword modifiers like city, state, or zip code

Tactics to Tip a Consumer  from the “Think” Stage to the “Do” Stage

There are a few tactics that work extremely well within the three strategies above to convince prospects to pull the trigger and shell out the big bucks:

• Advertising case studies
• Advertising testimonials
• Advertising free trials of your product or service
• Advertising white papers or other marketing collateral that shows off the effectiveness (or awesomeness) of your product or service
• Customizing presentations based on the consumer
• Advertising live demos and Q&As

If you work these tactics into your email, PPC, and search strategies for bottom of the funnel marketing strategy, you’ll see an increase in leads and sales.

The Final Stage in the Online Buyer’s Journey: Care

Congratulations! You now have a loyal customer!

How are you going to keep them?

That’s the main question you want to ask yourself in the final stage of the new digital marketing funnel—because there really isn’t a “final” stage in the buyer’s journey. Any business owner knows that it’s easier to keep an existing customer than it is to generate brand new ones, so invest in keeping your current customers.  Hopefully, after your new customer made a purchase they start their journey all over again with another one of your products. Or, even better, they become a brand advocate and start selling your product or service for you in the form of recommendations.

We saw above that reviews matter—a lot. So, how are you going to get this new customer to review you? Or share their story about you on social media? How are you going to get them to recommend you to their friends?

You can do this all by caring. Reach out and ask for reviews. Engage with them on social media. Offer them an insider-only discount. Give them something for free on their birthday. Give them advice for free. There are literally hundreds of customer retention tactics out there—find the ones that best suit your products and business.

Tying It All Together: How to Start Planning Content for Your Digital Marketing Buyer’s Funnel

Let’s return to Karen’s buyer’s journey, but this time, I’m going to add in the digital marketing tactics that could be used at each stage:

Example One: Karen Needs Furnace Repairs

• First, Karen realizes it’s cold in her house. She checks the vents and there’s no heat coming out
• Then, Karen Googles “furnace isn’t working” – SEO, PPC, Video
• Karen heads to Facebook to ask for recommendations for an HVAC company – Facebook advertising
• Karen take her recommendations and Googles each company’s reviews, services, and hours – SEO
• Karen narrows down her choices and returns to Facebook for recommendations and input from her friends who have used those top companies – Facebook advertising
• Karen sees ads in Google offering discounts to her top places – PPC
• Karen selects one of the discounts and does more research about that company – PPC, SEO
• Karen contacts the HVAC company online and books an appointment
• After her furnace is fixed, Karen raves about the company on social media, and after she’s prompted from an email, leaves a review on Google – Email marketing
• Karen’s family starts sneezing in the spring. Karen saw a blog on Facebook about how dirty ducts can cause sneezing. When she sees a discount from the company for air duct cleaning in an email newsletter, she clicks on the special, and follows a shortened loop to get her air ducts cleaned – PPC, Facebook advertising, Email marketing

Example Two: Karen Wants a Kitchen Remodel

• Karen has finally had it with her kitchen, and has decided the pots have fallen on her head for the last time
• Karen logs onto Pinterest and Instagram to get ideas for kitchen organization by searching for the tag “#organizedkitchendesign” – Pinterest and Instagram advertising
• Karen pins and saves all her favorite ideas on social media, and begins looking for a local remodeler on Google – SEO, Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook advertising
• Karen gets tired of browsing online, and goes back to Facebook to ask for kitchen designer recommendations – Facebook remarketing and advertising
• Karen Googles the reviews and projects of the recommended kitchen designers, and sees one whose project she’s already pinned on Pinterest – SEO, PPC remarketing
• Karen makes a short list of designers and sets up an appointment with each – PPC, SEO
• Karen picks her favorite designer and signs on for a kitchen remodel – Email
• Karen documents her experience on Instagram – Instagram advertising
• Karen raves about her new kitchen to friends on Facebook – Facebook advertising
• Two years later, Karen’s master bedroom is destroyed from a roof leak. Karen skips the awareness and consideration phases, and calls the remodeler directly for a quote – Email marketing, PPC, Social media marketing

Example Three: Karen Buys Some Beauty Boxes

• While browsing on Facebook, Karen sees an ad for a beauty subscription box. She stops, thinks about her own beauty habits, and keeps scrolling – Facebook advertising
• The next day, Karen sees a similar ad on another social platform for the same subscription box, except this ad has customer reviews. Karen thinks again about her own beauty regimen, and clicks on the ad to see what the hubbub is about – PPC remarketing, Facebook remarketing
• Karen Googles other beauty subscription boxes to see if she can get a better deal on the same products and services – SEO, PPC
• The next day, while Karen browses the web, she keeps seeing ads for the subscription box. Karen asks for recommendations on Facebook to see if any friends have used the subscription service – PPC remarketing, Facebook ads
• Karen subscribes to the 30-day trial – SEO, PPC, Email
• Karen keeps her subscription and follows the company on social media – Email, Social media marketing
• Karen sees video ads on YouTube from the same company about a new beauty product – PPC, YouTube ads, and Social media remarketing
• Karen skips the consideration stage and purchases the new product based on her satisfaction with the previous one and her trust of the company – Email, Social media marketing, SEO

Now that you know the stages and strategies for the new digital marketing funnel, it’s time to put it all into action. I recommend you start by creating an asset list. In your asset list you should include all of your online marketing assets, including your landing pages (an easy way to do this is to run a crawl of your website with a tool like ScreamingFrog).

Put them in an excel sheet, and next to each asset, put the stage in the buyer’s journey each asset best targets. If it can serve more than one stage, include both of them. This will give you a good overview of where you’re lacking content and resources.

Once you have each asset labeled with a stage in the buyer’s journey, start adding platforms and strategies that asset would be good for. For example, blogs and infographics work great on social media, while case studies should be left to email marketing and PPC ads.

After you’ve made your asset list and assigned a stage in the buyer’s journey and best platforms to each one, start planning your execution. Using the tactics and advice above, you can create a cohesive plan that hits all the crucial points of the buyer’s journey and helps a user along.

I get that this is a lot to take in and a lot to wrap your head around. However, if you master your conversion funnel, you’ll eliminate strategies that didn’t work and grow your bottom line. If you need some help with your particular funnel, contact us—we live for this stuff.