To maintain an optimal occupancy level, you probably coach your team to keep their sales funnel in mind. But have you considered going full-funnel?
The modern concept of “full-funnel marketing” gives a turbo boost to the traditional sales funnel model of selling. The technique helps you spend your online marketing budget strategically — focusing on maximum return on investment.
When you use full-funnel marketing, you try to keep relevant messages in front of your buyer at every point in the sales funnel. From the first contact through move-in, you engage your audience.
The ‘Why’
With a world of information now available on demand through mobile devices, your prospective residents typically know a great deal about your community before they ever speak with a marketing representative. Through your corporate website and blog, advertising, social media, review sites, individual bloggers and more, prospects begin compiling information — and building an opinion — about you.
Long before your prospects enter the buying phase — deciding on a specific community — you must get your message and brand in front of them. With a full-funnel approach, you maximize your engagement with prospects at each stage of the buying cycle.
The sales funnel boils down to your buyer’s intent at each phase of the decision journey. Once you know your prospect’s intent, you can create a personalized strategy to reach her. At each stage of the sales funnel, your buyer’s intent may include:
- Top of the funnel: Gain awareness and education. Your prospects at this phase may not be convinced they want to move to a senior living community at all. Perhaps they are just beginning to be aware of the benefits, or they’ve had their interest sparked by a health event or a push by their children.
- Middle of the funnel: Learn more about the solution. Customers in the middle of your sales funnel have become aware of the need for senior living, and they typically are aware of their “problem” — which may be a health event, the need to stop maintaining a large house or the desire to connect with their peer group.
- Bottom of the funnel: Make a purchase decision. These prospects have shopped around, and they are almost ready to commit to a community. They may require personalized attention from your sales team, including encouragement to make the decision now.
Your goals for your community will determine which sections of the funnel you target. If you need to boost occupancy quickly, you’ll focus on the bottom of the funnel. Building a waiting list may necessitate focus on the top or middle sections of the funnel.
The ‘How’
Your marketing agency will use various strategies and tools to target prospects in each stage of the sales funnel. For instance, awareness-related online tools like blogs, social media and viral videos — and offline platforms like radio and TV advertising — often work best to reach prospects at the top of the funnel.
Getting started with the full-funnel approach will include several distinct steps:
- Smart targeting. Your marketing agency will conduct extensive research to clearly define your target audience and segment buyers according to appropriate demographic parameters. You’ll start tracking potential customers using cookies, keyword-rich retargeting and other online tools as you get your message out with specialized ads.
- Audience engagement. Once you know your audience members and introduce them to your community, you can use targeted advertising and other methods to deepen the message.
- Measurement and analysis. An experienced marketing agency will frequently measure, evaluate and adjust your full-funnel strategy. Finding the ideal platforms and messaging that resonate with your audience requires upfront strategic thinking and periodic reassessment and comparison among the various tactics.
Your marketing agency will guide you in understanding the metrics by which success in each funnel phase is measured. For instance, your agency may use an increase in the number of page views per visitor to your site as a measure of success in engaging the top of your funnel. Meanwhile, your cost per lead and the number of appointments scheduled through your site can indicate success at the bottom of the funnel.
Getting to Full Funnel
The sales funnel is a tried-and-true method for separating your qualified prospects from unqualified leads who may not have real interest in your community. With full-funnel marketing, you push the sales funnel further to ensure that you’re using your marketing dollars wisely.
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