The Red Branch Media Customer Journey [Marketing Funnel]

The customer journey is often talked about, but it’s not as often understood. Aside from the “7 Touches” rule, few people take the time to really examine how their customer feels, what they think, where they find their information or what goes into the decision-making process.

This is why there are so many tone-deaf commercials, frustrating email campaigns and poor user experience. At Red Branch Media, we use the classic marketing funnel (nothing new!) to ensure customer journeys are as painless as we can make them on the marketing side.

Here is how customer journeys work:

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Top of the Funnel (ToFu)

What is ToFu?

The top of the funnel is the first time your customer meets you. Before this moment they’ve either never heard of you or only know the basics of your organization.

How customers might find you to enter the funnel…

• Internet searches
• Word of mouth
• Ads (digital or physical)
• Social media
• Email

Strategies

ToFu strategies are introductions. The point isn’t to sell, but to leave a good impression that leaves the prospective client wanting to return to your website/content/etc.

At Red Branch, we like to use your organization’s personality to create a digital persona that fits your company. We also explain exactly what the company does or has to offer their clients/prospects.

Tactics include…

• Social media posts
• SEO/Organic search strategies
• SEM/Paid digital ads

Purpose

Strategies in ToFu are focused on making it easy for your prospect to find you or your product.

Middle of Funnel (MoFu)

What is MoFu?

The middle of the funnel is when the customer knows who you are and what you have to offer. They might not yet understand what you or your product can do for them, but they get the basics of your company.

How customers might interact with you in the middle of the funnel…

• Website visits
• Blog posts
• Email newsletter subscriptions
• Social media (follows or posts/conversations)

Purpose

Tactics in MoFu are focused on collecting contact information.

Strategies

MoFu strategies are soft sales. The customer knows who you are and might even know some of your solutions, but they need to see themselves using your product or service. Your strategies should support the knowledge they have and build on reasons they should turn to you. Sometimes it requires pointing out a problem they didn’t know they even had.

At Red Branch, we generally create new, interesting content that provides advice, research or actionable tips to ease a part of the customer’s job/life. We place those pieces behind forms or landing pages that require an email to download the incentive (content, quiz, etc.)

Tactics include…

• Email sales workflows
• Downloadable content
• Landing pages
• Testimonials

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Bottom of Funnel (BoFu)

What is BoFu?

A customer is in the bottom of the funnel when they’ve learned who you are, what your product is and have shown interest in both.

How customers might interact with you in the middle of the funnel…

• Videos/Demos
• Pricing pages/bid requests
• Brochures
• One pagers
• Case studies/Testimonials

Purpose

Tactics in BoFu are built to ease the sales cycle for your prospect. The prospect is near making a purchasing decision and might be looking at other options, so tactics should give them an incentive and make it easy for them to choose you.

Strategies

This is where you’ve established enough of a relationship with the prospect to start hard selling. The prospects in this stage have shown real interest in your company, so your strategies should keep any promises you’ve made in prior marketing materials as well as make it easy for them to start working with you.

This is an interesting stage at Red Branch. Sometimes we work closely with the organization to ensure the sales team has everything they need to make a successful sale. Those things could be sales decks, sales sheets, and brochures. We’ve even helped create physical booths for conferences and events. For smaller organizations who don’t have sales teams, we’ve created workflows for demo sign ups and campaigns for deals and coupons.

This is the stage that is highly focused on how the organization likes to secure sales. As an outsourced marketing agency, we are practiced at working in tandem with established internal teams as well as other agencies, no matter the physical location.

Tactics include…

• Coupons/deals
• Buyer’s Guides
• Videos
• Establishing differentiators (one pagers)
• Free trials
• Comparison Checklists

While every customer journey is different, generally they all fall into these similar stages. For example, a B2B customer might engage with a google ad or a webinar offer they see on LinkedIn, while a B2C prospect may find they are more likely to hear a radio ad or see a video on facebook that gets them aware enough to be a top of funnel prospect. For that same B2C prospect to actually purchase, it may take a coupon, event or money back guarantee, while in the case of the B2B buyer, it might be a series of meetings, a face to face demonstration or more in-depth proposal.

As you can tell from the types of content listed, plotting the customer journey and bringing them to the point of sale, is a joint effort between email marketing, social media, content marketing, SEO, digital advertising, lead scoring and web development. In fact, we’d go so far as to say that’s WHY we began offering outsourced marketing as a service instead of ad hoc services like social or digital. While not every client needs ALL these things, or can afford them, it’s better to ensure each portion of your customer journey is covered, internally or externally.