From Leads to Conversions: Effective Middle of Funnel Strategies

Hey everyone, and welcome to this week's Agency Accelerator podcast where we discuss all things connected to running and growing a profitable, sustainable and enjoyable agency. Now, in today's episode, we're going to talk about the importance of focusing your marketing on those middle of funnel activities. And that means providing genuine value in your marketing, which I think too many agencies are scared of doing because they don't want to give too much away. Now of course we always constantly striving to attract and retain more customers, but I see too many agencies focusing on those top of the funnel activities, which is like attracting new people into their world, yet they neglect the middle stage. However, the middle of the funnel is a critical stage where potential clients are actively considering their options and seeking more information. So it's important that you focus on those middle of funnel activities to nurture those leads, educate them, provide them with genuine value, to help them move closer to making the purchase and making the purchase from you. In addition, providing genuine value in your marketing can help businesses build trust, can help you establish authority, and help you increase customer loyalty. Because when potential customers feel that the brand is genuinely interested in helping them solve their problems or achieve their goals, they're much more likely to trust that brand and choose their products or services over the competitors. So in this episode we'll dive deeper into this middle of funnel marketing activities, talk about what they are, why they're important, and how to effectively create strategies that provide genuine value to your potential customers. So let's get on with the show. I'm Rob Da Costa and this is the Agency Accelerator Podcast. As someone who has stood in your shoes, having started, grown and sold my own agency, I know just how it feels in the ups and downs of agency life. So this podcast aims to ease your journey just a little by sharing mine and my guests experiences and advice as you navigate your way to growing a profitable, sustainable and enjoyable business. Hey everyone. So as I said, I want to talk about the middle of funnel marketing activities and let's kick today's episode off by talking about exactly what I mean by all of that. So you need to picture a sales funnel which is wide at the top, narrow at the bottom, and at the top of the funnel we've got new people coming into your world. This is where we're building awareness through such activities as social media, networking, content on your website and so on. And as I said, I think a lot of agencies are pretty good at generating lots of new leads coming into their business. But what they're not so good at is the next stage. Which is the middle of the funnel. And this is where you are creating like, or you're creating consideration. And this is really important because no one is going to go from I don't know who you are, I've just discovered you, to buying from you. That will happen in one in a hundred times. So the rest of the time we've got to find a way of nurturing our audience and to help educate them and show them that we really understand them, so that when they are in enough pain, they reach out to us and not someone else to buy from. So, as I said, the goal of the middle of the funnel is to nurture these new leads, to educate them and to provide them with some genuine value to move them closer to making that purchase decision. So some examples of middle of the funnel marketing activities could include email nurturing campaigns, it could include webinars or free trainings, detailed case studies. It could be a free trial, or it could be a strategy call or a free consultation, which is one of the things that I do. Now. These activities really help to build trust and establish a relationship, which you have to do, of course, with your potential customers, which is crucial for ultimately converting those leads into customers. Now, it's important that agencies focus on this middle of funnel activity because it's a critical stage where potential customers are actively considering their options and they're seeking more information. And without that effective middle of the funnel activities, potential customers may forget about you, lose interest, not be sure that you can actually help them, and ultimately choose someone else, one of your competitors, which is really annoying. So we want to be alongside our prospects as they're making this consideration about who to buy from. And we want to be constantly demonstrating that we understand them and that we understand the pain that they have and that our products or services can solve that pain. So in the next part of the podcast, I want to focus on defining what genuine value means in your marketing, why it's important, and how it can benefit your business. Now, I really think that a lot of agencies and businesses in general, to be honest, are too scared about giving too much away because they believe if they give too much value away, then why would someone buy from them. But I think a really important point here, something that I've learned over the years, is that everything you can do for your clients, for example, if you're an SEO business or a social media agency, someone can go on the Internet and Google and find loads of YouTube videos and try and figure this out for themselves. The information is already out there, but that's not why they buy from you. They buy from you because they want someone to do it for them or they want someone to guide them and they want someone that has a proven track record of actually delivering the ROI that they are looking for. So you shouldn't be afraid of providing genuine value and when you do, it has huge benefits, such as I said, building trust, building authority, and increasing loyalty with you to the point when they buy from you. So a really good example in our world of a business that provides genuine value in their marketing is HubSpot. And they offer a ton of educational content to help their customers and their potential customers with their marketing efforts. And of course, in doing that, they are demonstrating to their clients that they really understand them and that's going to make them much more inclined to ultimately want to use HubSpot. I hope I'm a good example of this as well. My podcast is a really good example of providing value. I have lots of free ebooks and training sessions and webinars on my website that are all genuinely providing value. And I'm not fearful of the fact that I'm actually providing some of the stuff that I would provide my paid clients because what my paid clients get from me is that hand holding that, that feedback and that support and that accountability which you're not going to give in your marketing. So I'm not scared about giving value away and neither should you. Okay, so let's move on to some tips for creating effective middle of the funnel value marketing activities. Now, this all starts really by having a clear niche and really understanding your customer. Because if you don't understand your customer, then you're trying to serve everybody. And in trying to serve everybody, you serve nobody. So I'm not going to jump into the whole topic of niching and understanding your ideal target client because I've recorded many episodes on that before. I'll link some in the show notes. But you get it that you need to have a clear niche and you need to understand your ideal client because you want to make sure you're focusing on your client's pain points. So you want to address some of the specific challenges or concerns that potential customers may have that keep them awake at night and then start to provide the solutions to those problems. So that's the first thing which is focusing on the customer's pain points. The second thing is don't be afraid of providing educational content. I always call the middle of the funnel education based marketing. And this is where you're drilling much deeper than you would at that top of the funnel awareness stage and you're offering valuable insights, you're offering tips, you're offering advice that can help your customer and help them make a more informed decision to hire you when they need a particular service or a particular problem being solved. Now another tip here is to personalize your messaging as much as you possibly can. So you want to tailor your messaging and content to the specific, specific needs, interests and preferences of your audience. And this can be achieved through things like segmenting your email list if you've got that far. If you haven't, don't worry. Just make sure that the people in your list are all your ideal target customers. So as I said, you need to provide education based content. So that means things like ebooks and white papers and detailed webinars and trainings or case studies that provide genuine learnings and insights and advice that will help your customer and therefore help them make a decision to hire you. Now another tip here, and this is something that I used to be really wary of, which is to offer free trials or free demos or free consultations. I used to not want to offer those free strategy sessions. But you'll see now on every page of my website, I offer people a free 30 minute strategy session. This basically gives your customers a chance to try your product or you or your service out for free to demonstrate that you really understand them, to demonstrate its value and how it solves their problems. Now, in the middle of the funnel, you're really building trust with your audience. So you want to be really authentic and transparent with the information that you provide about your brand or your products and services. And this can be supported by things like social proof, customer testimonials and partnerships with companies that are well respected. Now my fifth tip is the importance of engaging with your audience. So you want to do this through interactive content and through social media. And this can really help you build a relationship with your audience and creates a much higher likelihood of conversion. So you can do this through the obvious things such as just posting regularly on social media. And my advice always is to do a few things and to do them consistently well. So if LinkedIn is your main social media platform, which it should be for most B2B businesses, then you need to be in there daily, not just posting, but also engaging with other people's content. And you can also do this through interactive quizzes, video through social media polls, and so on. But just make sure that you are finding a way to engage directly with your audience. Now it's important to say that everything I've talked about so far needs to be measured by tracking metrics such as open rates, click through rates, conversion rates, engagement, and so on. At the end of the day, if you don't measure it, you can't improve it, you don't know whether it's working, you don't know whether you should do more of it or less of it. So having that data can really help you refine and optimize your your middle of funnel marketing activities to improve their effectiveness and ultimately do more of what works and less of what doesn't work. Now, in the spirit of providing value and really focusing on those middle of funnel activities, I'm really excited to let you know that I am going to be launching a live Zoom training session every week, focusing on all things to do with the challenges that you have running your agency. So I'm going to be tackling such challenges as you're not being profitable enough, you need more business, you don't know how to grow your agency, you wish every everything didn't sit on your shoulders, you don't have enough hours in the day, you want to build up a team, and so on. So I'm going to be tackling them in a weekly session at 9 o' clock on a Wednesday morning. Now these sessions will be 45 minutes long with absolutely no selling or value. So it'll be half an hour of me doing some training around some of those topics and then 15 minutes Q&A. So I'm going to put a link to register into the show notes and I really hope you will join me on this all value, no sales session where I'm putting into practice everything I've talked about in today's podcast. And by the way, these new sessions are called Agency Accelerator Lives and they will be Wednesday mornings at 9am UK time. And I would really love you to join me to get some genuine value on how to overcome some of the biggest challenges that I see going on in agencies today. And our first session is on May 10th at 9am and it's tackling the problem of I am not profitable enough. So we're going to be talking about the profitability mindset, how to shift your thinking and boost your bottom line. So make sure you join me for that first session and all the following sessions on a Wednesday at 9am so I'll jump off my soapbox there and say I hope you join me. And of course, if you enjoyed today's episode, please do leave a review, share it with your colleagues because that helps me reach more people. But other than that. Have a fantastic week and I hope I'll see you at the first agency accelerator live on the 10th of May at 9am That's Wednesday, the 10th of May at 9am it.