The Marketing Funnel Changed
I work in marketing (especially performance marketing) for a few years now and I’ve been watching paid media platforms changing the marketing funnel as we know it.
Gone are the days we had to bring the best of our talent to build solid lead generation campaigns to feed our clients’ businesses.
We don’t need to worry about if our campaigns will or not generate leads anymore. With all the automation we have today, it’s just a question of time to start getting the so desired leads.
The trend is pretty clear. To get the most easy-to-setup automated campaign to attract advertisers of all sizes to the platform. And that is what’s causing the change on the marketing funnel.
The cause
A few years ago, generating leads was the last stage of the marketing funnel. That was the goal line and to get there we had to build campaigns for all the stages. There was an entire plan behind to turn website visitors into leads.The so called hot leads.
Well, that has changed. Getting users to submit forms and share information became too easy. Today, building online campaigns no longer requires marketing specialists. Almost everyone can do it. You just need to click on your desire (e.g., website views, conversions, etc.) and the campaign structure automatically adapts to your needs. Landing pages are based on already tested templates and they are at a distance of a google search. With a few clicks you are good to go, you can turn on your campaign and soon leads will come.
But I have noticed these leads are different from the good-old leads we were used to. They are not so responsive. Email reply rates have dropped. We are getting more and more answers like “I’m not interested” or “I don’t remember to request more information”.
On my perspective the stage where we generate leads has shifted. We are now acquiring leads on the top of the funnel, cold leads. Leads that are not aware of who you are and what you do.
The funnel still exists
We need to bring these leads all the way down the funnel, but how? By building campaigns to educate the lead about your brand and your value proposition. So make sure you build a funnel where the last stage is not the lead acquisition but a declaration of intent from the user such as a positive email response or a valuable interaction with your website or sales team.
We’re used to build exclusion lists with people that converted from our campaigns but today I believe they now deserve their own marketing campaigns. They need this so they can cross all the levels until the end of your marketing funnel. Otherwise they’ll get stuck in the top of the funnel forever without knowing who you really are and what you really do.
