Upper funnel vs lower funnel marketing

The funnel, explained.

From initial awareness to final purchase; the marketing funnel (also commonly known as the sales and/or conversion funnel) captures each stage of the buying journey.

When it comes to marketing, it’s your job to ensure that your strategy applies to all stages of the journey; capturing those who’re unaware of your brand or their need for your product, educating those who’re aware but need telling why it’s you they should choose, and persuading those that’re aware and in-market, to purchase. Often, capturing each addressable market requires a well-executed omnichannel strategy, creating a seamless experience for customers across both on and offline channels/touchpoints.

Before you can ensure your strategy is ticking all of the boxes, you’ll need to understand the funnel more deeply.

The nitty gritty…

The funnel is more often than not, split into 3 tiers; each representing a market and dictating the type of information they need to digest in order to become a buyer (and eventually, a loyal brand advocate):

The aim of the game is for your marketing activity to address each stage of the funnel, driving customers through each stage of their exploration/consideration journey, to buy from you.

A common mistake people make is to hone in on one tier of the funnel (often the lower funnel) and focus all of their efforts there. While this may bring you a return in the first instance, eventually returns from this audience segment will ‘dry up’, leaving you with a dwindling acquisition stream.

Ideally, you’ll address each tier with your activity in order to continue to generate a stream of purchasers at the bottom of your funnel.

Addressing each tier.

The upper funnel: Awareness & interest

The upper funnel is where potential customers who are not yet aware of your brand and are not yet in the market for what you have to offer, sit. It’s your job, therefore, to make them brand aware and interested in what you have to offer.

The upper funnel is always represented as the broadest part of the funnel, as it represents the largest potential audience – a broad audience unaware of your brand and even your product/service, too.

So, how do you make them aware and capture their interest?

Well at this stage, you’re casting your net far and wide in an attempt to try and get noticed, so you’ll need to show up in the right places and be as engaging as possible, in order to do so.

How to engage an upper funnel audience

Where to show up

Social media campaigns, display ads, influencer and affiliate marketing, content marketing, events and PR tend to be the channels that’re considered to be the most effective at the top of the funnel.

What to show up with

Understand your audience’s needs, and leverage them. Show up to solve a problem that they have, that they don’t necessarily know they need solving / that can be solved.

What you want your audience to do

At this stage, the aim of the game is for your audience to visit your website / follow you on social media / download a guide or other soft conversion metrics. It’s the next stage of the funnel where you’re aiming to fully engage your audience so for now, concentrate on just piquing their interest enough to hook them in to do something – ideally by giving you a follow or landing on your website.

How to know it’s working

Track awareness-based metrics such as; reach, impressions*, engagement (e.g. social followers) and website traffic at this early stage. If you see these numbers increase, you’re doing the right things.

The middle funnel: Consideration and evaluation

Mid funnel is where your audience knows what you offer, and are considering whether your offering is right for them. They’re more engaged and likely to buy from you than they were at the top of the funnel, but they need more convincing before being able to make an informed decision. It’s your job therefore, to show them that your product/service is exactly what they need, and that you’re the business they should buy it from.

How to engage a mid-funnel audience

Where to show up

At this stage, you’re still casting your net fairly wide – you just need to be more targeted in how you do so in order to deepen the relationship you have with those you’ve reached via your upper funnel activity.

Showing up where you appeared first – across social media (via both own-brand content and influencer content), search engine results, affiliate networks, paid Google ads etc – is still important. With an added layer of email marketing and retargeting across your paid-for channels.

What to show up with

At this stage, your audience is in what Google refers to as the ‘messy middle’, demonstrated below:

They’re sitting in the thick of the exploration/ evaluation phase of the buying journey and they need your help to know it’s you they need to buy from, and why.

It’s your job to provide them with as much useful content as possible; answering any questions they may have, leveraging their pain points, showcasing trustworthiness and providing solutions to their everyday problems. All while showcasing your uniqueness and leading them to choose you to buy from.

Utilising use-cases, product demos, user guides, testimonials, FAQs and other similar educational content that focuses on explanation and demonstration will allow you to nurture the relationship with your audience.

What do you want your audience to do

You want your audience to have been led closer to conversion, without you having to directly ask for it, as yet. While you’re looking for more of a sign than just an Instagram follow, you’re not yet looking for a purchase. Instead, the happy middle e.g. signing up to your newsletter, engaging with more of your social content, reading articles on your site or signing up for a product demo.

How do you know it’s working

If your click-through rate (CTR), website dwell time / engaged sessions per user, email subscribers, social engagement, demo sign-ups and even form submissions are on the rise – you’re doing the right thing.

The lower funnel: Decision/purchase and loyalty/advocacy

The bottom of the funnel is where things get real. Your audience knows who you are, what you’re about, what you can offer them and now they’re weighing up whether to take the plunge and purchase from you, or not.

At this stage, it’s all about conversion. And you giving your audience the (polite, if that’s your brand) push they need to go for it, and purchase.

It’s also important to consider that your bottom-of-funnel audience won’t have the same motivations to convert, nor will they use the same methods, necessarily. So it’s wise to model several different conversion persuasion tactics (e.g. free trials, discounted first purchase offers etc) and a few different ways your customers can convert, too, in order to capture everyone that has the potential to.

How to engage a lower funnel audience

Where to show up

In short, show up in the places where your audience is likely to convert. Search ads, shopping ads, remarketing ads and social ads are all places where consumers are conditioned to covert. So utilise them.

What to show up with

Your bottom of funnel content is a good opportunity in which to re-enforce the trustworthiness you showcased to your audience while they were in their consideration phase. Influencer & affiliate marketing are considered such strong marketing mediums for this reason – who better to encourage someone who has been considering purchasing from you to do just that, than someone they already trust.

Re-enforcing trust by showcasing your reviews, testimonials and case studies, while utilising your influencer and affiliate content will further validate your offering and give prospective customers the confidence to purchase from you.

Simplicity is key – keeping your bottom-of-funnel content simple, yet powerful, is the key to conversion; in order to make sure your message resonates and encourages your audience to take action, fast. This is why PPC activity works so well at this stage; it cuts through the noise, highlighting the key benefits concisely while providing a clear next step – conversion.

Incentivising conversion is always a useful strategy, too, especially for first-time-buyers; in order to give them the final push they need, as well as limited-time-only offers, to create a sense of purchase urgency.

What do you want your audience to do

Sounds obvious, but clear calls to action are more important than you’d think. Using strong, clear CTAs to tell your audience what you want them to do and how, will significantly assist your conversion rate. In short, telling people what to do and making it easy for them, works.

How do you know it’s working

You’ll see the benefits via an increase in:

• Revenue
• Conversion rate
• Return on ad spend
• Average order value
• Repeat purchases

And a decrease in:

• Cost per acquisition
• Bouncing users on site

Other positive knock-on effects include (but are not limited to):

• Increased brand sentiment
• Increased social media followers and engagement

Upper vs lower

When comparing the upper and lower funnels in a nutshell, the main difference is that the upper funnel is about building awareness and generating interest, whereas the lower funnel is about encouraging conversion, loyalty and advocacy. To repeat our aforementioned point; we believe it vital for your strategy to focus on all funnel stages as each stage wouldn’t work without one another; in particular the upper and lower stages.

You wouldn’t be able to convert anyone at the bottom of the funnel if no one knew about you / your business / your offering.

Similarly, any awareness efforts made at the top of the funnel would be wasted should those aware not then be driven to convert.

To sum up

The marketing funnel is something that’s not been re-written or reworked much over time because it works. And it works as a sum of its parts, too. Ignoring one stage might work for a while, but isn’t sustainable long-term. Each stage in the funnel has its own marketing tactics and customer concerns/behaviours to consider, emphasising the importance of your marketing strategy including sub-strategies for upper-, mid- and lower-funnel marketing.

And although this may seem time/budget-consuming, in the long run, it’ll save you both, and increase your revenue, return on investment and turn your customers into repeat purchasers and loyal advocates of your business.

*Curious about the difference between reach and impressions? 

Reach = the total number of unique visitors that have seen your content

Impressions = the total number of times your content has been displayed, including multiple times by the same users

Both are useful as reach allows you an understanding of the breadth of your audience while impressions allow you to understand how often your content is being seen and how frequently users are exposed to you.