Week 2: The customer journey and the marketing funnel

Welcome back. Earlier in the course,
you learned how digital marketing and e-commerce are continuing to
change the business landscape. You found out a little about careers in
these industries including core skills, day to day responsibilities,
job titles, and career paths. Finally, you considered some of the skills
you already have that can help you advance your career. Now it’s time to explore the ways
that digital marketing and e-commerce create value for
companies and for their customers. In this part of the course, you’ll learn how companies use digital
channels to reach customers and explore foundational concepts that can turn
potential buyers into loyal customers. Lastly, you’ll learn why measuring
marketing performance is so important to success. Digital marketing is constantly
growing and changing. That’s part of what makes it
an exciting field to work in. But some things are always important. Like raising awareness,
fostering trust, and building loyalty. The methods may change, but learning
the fundamentals can help you adapt and grow along with the field. Are you ready? Let’s get started.

How digital marketing and e-commerce create value

Digital marketing and e-commerce have revolutionized the way businesses operate and customers interact with brands. By leveraging digital channels, businesses can reach a wider audience, engage with customers more effectively, and create value for both themselves and their customers.

Here are some of the ways that digital marketing and e-commerce create value:

• Increased brand awareness: Digital marketing channels such as search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, and paid advertising can help businesses reach a wider audience and increase brand awareness. When potential customers see a brand’s ads or content online, they are more likely to remember the brand and consider it when they are ready to make a purchase.
• Improved customer engagement: Digital marketing channels also allow businesses to engage with customers in a more personalized and interactive way. For example, businesses can use social media to answer customer questions, provide support, and build relationships with their customers. They can also use email marketing to send personalized messages to customers about new products, promotions, and other relevant content.
• Enhanced customer experience: E-commerce platforms make it easy for customers to shop online and have their purchases delivered directly to their door. This convenience and ease of use can lead to a better customer experience and increased customer loyalty.
• Reduced costs: Digital marketing and e-commerce can help businesses reduce costs in a number of ways. For example, businesses can use digital marketing to target their advertising more effectively, which can lead to lower advertising costs. Additionally, e-commerce platforms can help businesses reduce overhead costs such as rent and inventory costs.
• Increased sales: Ultimately, digital marketing and e-commerce can help businesses increase sales. By reaching a wider audience, engaging with customers more effectively, and providing a better customer experience, businesses can generate more leads and sales.

Here are some examples of how businesses are using digital marketing and e-commerce to create value:

• A clothing retailer uses SEO to improve its ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). This helps the retailer reach more potential customers who are searching for clothing products online.
• A software company uses social media marketing to engage with potential customers and educate them about its products. The company also uses social media to build relationships with its customers and provide support.
• A restaurant uses an e-commerce platform to allow customers to order food online for pickup or delivery. This makes it easy for customers to get their favorite food without having to leave their homes or offices.
• A travel agency uses digital marketing to target potential customers who are interested in booking travel packages. The agency also uses e-commerce to allow customers to book travel packages online.

Conclusion

Digital marketing and e-commerce are essential tools for businesses of all sizes. By leveraging digital channels, businesses can reach a wider audience, engage with customers more effectively, and create value for both themselves and their customers.

Fill in the blank: A successful digital marketing effort guides all of a company’s customer _____.

interactions

A successful digital marketing effort guides all of a company’s customer interactions. It allows companies to think strategically about how to reach customers through digital channels before, during, and after a purchase.

Did you know that over 60% of
the global population is online, and more people are joining them every day? That’s why every business, big or
small, needs an online presence to be competitive. But
it’s not enough just to have a website. There may be a lot of people online, but there’s also a lot of companies that
want their attention and their business. Your target audience needs to know
you exist, how you can help them, and what makes you different
from the competition. Breaking through this crowded field and
actually reaching potential customers— that’s where digital marketing comes in. Now, you might have noticed,
I haven’t mentioned anything about selling products yet. That’s because
digital marketing is bigger than sales. It’s not that selling products or
services isn’t important, but it’s only one piece of what digital
marketing can do for companies. Individual sales are easy to measure, but they don’t mean much if your target
audience doesn’t trust your brand or your customers don’t come back for
a second, third, or fourth purchase. A successful digital marketing effort
guides all of the company’s customer interactions. It allows companies to think strategically
about how to reach customers through digital channels before,
during, and after a purchase. It can be harder to measure
the value of these activities, but a well-coordinated strategy allows
businesses to thrive online and even grow. Let’s think through an example: Imagine a company that makes running shoes
decides to invest in digital marketing. They create some video ads and
place them on a popular news site. They create accounts for several social
media platforms and start posting content. But their posts don’t
get much engagement, and their ads don’t attract
many new customers. What’s worse, they don’t even know
why they aren’t getting results. They’ve wasted time, money, and resources
on a digital campaign that doesn’t work. Now, let’s think about what could have
happened if that same company made an effort to learn about their audience. Instead of posting ads on a news website, they targeted sites that
focused on running. Because they did research, they knew
where to find their new customers online. That knowledge also let them
create tailored content for their social media accounts
that reach the right audience. And, because they
researched their audience, they were able to set meaningful goals for
their strategy. With clear goals in place, they knew
exactly how to measure their success. The information they measured allowed them
to adjust their customer communication and improve their video,
social, and email campaigns. They were able to recognize opportunities
to reach potential customers and engage with them effectively. Yes, sales went up, but their well-planned digital strategy
also built awareness, trust, and loyalty. You’ll learn more about
how marketers create and execute strategies like this
one throughout the program. For now, let’s recap: Digital marketing
is more than running ads to drive sales. It’s a set of practices that can affect
a company’s customer interactions at all levels and during every stage
of the purchase journey. By learning about their customers,
digital marketing teams can reach their target audience in a crowded
online marketplace and nurture customer relationships over time. Coming up, you’ll learn more about
the value digital marketing creates for businesses and some of the challenges marketing
teams face when planning and executing strategies for
online engagement.

Hi, I’m Jen, and I’m a Shopping Specialist
here at Google. I work with large
retailers to help them improve their marketing
performance with Google products. One of the things that I
love about my role is that it’s really
quantifiable and measurable. The products that I
actually bring to market—I can see
how they transform retailers’ businesses
and how it helps them drive more revenue for their company and meet
their bottom line. I was recruited from
Howard University, which is a historically
Black university, which is really cool because, at the time, there was
not as much diversity, I would say, within the tech and e-comm industry
specifically. When I think about DEI
in the space of e-comm, I really think about how we’re connecting to our customers. We have to remember
that we’re representing and we’re trying to reach
a diverse customer pool, so our teams also
have to be diverse. I would think that we want to shape our teams, our community, our culture to be as open as possible, to reflect society. I came without any
e-comm experience, without any digital
marketing background. I really think that e-comm is a place where you can come
and grow in the role, and most folks that come from nontraditional
backgrounds are not classically-trained in
e-comm or digital marketing and are able to ramp
up and add value to their clients really effectively within a
short amount of time. When I think about
diversity, equity, and inclusion, I
really like to put it in the context of people. Diversity specifically,
I think about the breadth as well as
the depth of people. So having the same
opportunity set. And diversity is
making sure that everyone has access to that. When I think about equity
in terms of people, I think about compensation. We all want to make sure
that we’re being paid at a similar rate for the skill set that we’re
bringing to the table. When I think about inclusion, I really think about belonging, and really for me, that has to do with
whether my opinion is valued and
whether my input is accepted by the team and
sparks a dialogue and conversation in the same way
that someone else’s would. If we think about
society and we think about sometimes how folks are just trying
to check the box, sure, we can have a diverse
environment around us, but if everyone is not
being compensated fairly, or if people don’t
really feel like they belong and they are coming
from different backgrounds, it’s not really
making a dent and not really contributing
to the overall goal, which is, again, to be
representative of society. It’s important that we have all three because we can
have a diverse room, but that doesn’t mean that
everyone has an equal voice. The way I make sure folks who may not look
like me or talk like me or act like me are heard is sometimes I just like to
take a step back and listen. We often can fill up a room
with our thoughts, and you miss the input from
some of our more quiet, or reserved teammates. So sometimes I just like
to take a step back, take inventory of
the room and take a couple of meetings
to just listen, and that allows
other folks to have more room to voice their opinion and to
provide their input. And sometimes I even like
to ask folks directly who I know may not be more comfortable sharing their opinion
directly like, “Hey, X, what do you think
about this specific topic?” That’s a way that you can
make it open and friendly for someone to contribute without
them feeling uncomfortable, kind of cutting other people off
who may be a bit more boisterous. I think the goal is for e-comm companies and
marketing companies to look just like society. That is the ultimate goal, but the way that we can do
that is through action. So rather than using words and saying what we
believe we stand for, the way that you can demonstrate that you believe
in it is through actions and through creating that change that
you want to see.

[MUSIC] My name is Janice, and my role at Google is a Product Marketing
Manager on the Grow with Google team. Grow with Google’s goal is to create
economic opportunity for everyone, and through inclusive marketing, we can really
make sure that we’re representing everyone accurately and authentically. My favorite part about my
job is that I get to work directly with people that we impact and
serve. On Grow with Google, I get to be the person that partners
with non-profit organizations that can directly go up to people and say,
“Hey, I have an opportunity for you that will open up doors for a new job and a career that you probably
thought wasn’t possible before.” Representation is really important, not
just because it is the right thing to do. It’s important that people can
see themselves in your work, so that they feel like they matter, so
that they feel visible, but it’s also the right business decision. We did a study on inclusive marketing that
proved that people who saw themselves represented at work were
more loyal to that brand and actually more likely to purchase or
use that brand’s products and services. If you’re new to inclusive marketing,
there are a few things that you should think about when practicing
inclusive marketing. I think the first thing is saying, “Am I representing a group in a way that
can be harmful to them?” That is number one. Make sure that you’re not
offending a certain group. The second thing is to think about,
“Who am I trying to reach, and are they represented
in this piece of work?” And then I would also say to ask yourself,
“Who’s missing? Who is not in the room? Who are we trying to speak to that
we haven’t spoken to before and that we’re not representing in our work?” Understanding your audience is absolutely
critical to informing your inclusive marketing strategy. You are not going to be able to accurately
represent a group of people unless you truly understand more than
just what they look like. You need to understand their environment,
you need to understand their actions, their behavior, what influences them. I would start with the research, and
then from there, build your idea, build your solution, build your plan, because only then will
it be authentic and speak to your users. And so it’s really important to that work
up front to understand not just one type of person from this group but many different kinds of experiences
from that one group when you’re looking into inclusive marketing.

My name is Xiomara. I am a Product
Marketing Manager. A Product Marketing
Manager works on telling the story about why a product or a feature or some tool that we’re building
can be helpful for them. So you might think of that as
seeing a commercial or seeing an ad online and why that
thing is special for you. An inclusive marketing consultant
is someone who reviews creatives or campaigns at the company to make sure
they’re being more inclusive. So an example of that is thinking about what
users we’re showing and how we’re showing them and if the creative
is accessible so we’re creating a
website or we have an event and making sure that anyone is able to
attend that event, or able to see or
hear the website. Being an inclusive marketing consultant fits into my
role because I get to use that lens every day
when I’m reviewing my creative or
reviewing my campaigns. But on top of that, I also get to work with other teams and provide the knowledge
that I have about inclusive marketing, so they too can apply
those principles. My personal experiences, growing up low income, being a first-generation
college student, being part of a family that had small businesses, an
immigrant family— all those things come
into lens when I think about what
stories I want to tell, what users I want to show
in our marketing campaigns. And I think in terms of
work experiences— definitely being able to be an inclusive marketing lead
at the company has also given me the ability
to learn about other perspectives that I’m
not aware of personally, and then making sure those
stories are also being told in the marketing that
we put out in the world. We have the influence
and the power to tell stories that
a lot of people— millions of people—can see. The benefit of having
inclusive marketing is that you are building and telling authentic
stories in the world. That is not only
good for your brand, but it’s good for the
people who are seeing it. We’re telling stories
that matter to people. We’re making them feel seen
and represented in our work. One way you might see inclusive marketing
principles being applied is who you show. Are you showing a range of ages, people with disabilities, people from different racial
or ethnic backgrounds? Are you thinking
about geography? Are you showing people
in communities that are in a city versus
a rural area? Another way you might
see this is if you have a digital ad running and it’s a video, do
you have captions? Because not every user
has the ability to hear, so they need to read what
you’re saying in your campaign. Inclusion can be right from the beginning to the
end of your creative. Marketers can think about
inclusion early and often, first by starting with
their project brief, outlining who their audience is, what the story is that
they want to tell, whose perspective
might be missing. The next step might be
partnering with an agency, an organization, or doing
research with a set of users to then make sure that that story is
told authentically. Afterwards, when they’re
actually working on the creative, is getting
feedback early, getting feedback often, again, bringing back a lot of the users’ perspectives
may be missing on your team and making sure that that’s reflected in
the feedback process. Getting different
perspectives from a big group of people may seem
daunting in the beginning, but it does become an exercise that’s actually just
really important, no matter what
you’re working on, whether your intention is
being inclusive or not, it’s part of the process. As a marketer, you are
always managing a lot of perspectives or opinions from maybe your stakeholders or
from your team. Just think of it that same way. Now you actually
have another set of users who are also
providing a perspective, and you just have to get
the themes out of it and back to analyzing
data. It’s the same thing. What is the theme
that I’m hearing here, and how do I make
sure it’s being reflected? In the end, it’s really
worth going through all of this because you’ll
have really beautiful, successful stories that you’re telling and putting
out in the world. There’s always
room for learning. If you’re interested in learning about inclusive marketing, a great resource is Google’s All In Inclusive
Marketing Guidelines. If you’re learning about a particular audience
for the first time, if you want to get research or other insights, or want
to learn how to avoid stereotypes or even see really great marketing
campaign examples, this is a good
resource for you to go to if you’re starting
for the first time. Challenge yourself to get other perspectives to continue
building your knowledge. We all have biases,
and the people we surround ourselves with also help us build certain biases. By putting ourselves out there, by looking at things that
were not familiar with, we can challenge
ourselves to have other perspectives to start
removing the biases we have. That way we build inclusive marketing that’s
put out into the world, so we’re always telling
authentic stories.

The customer journey and journey maps in Digital Marketing

What is the customer journey?

The customer journey is the path that a customer takes from awareness of a product or service to purchase and beyond. It includes all the interactions that a customer has with a brand, from the first time they hear about it to the time they become a loyal customer.

Why is the customer journey important?

Understanding the customer journey is essential for digital marketers because it allows them to create more effective marketing campaigns. By understanding the different stages of the customer journey and the touchpoints that customers interact with at each stage, marketers can develop content and experiences that are relevant and engaging.

What is a customer journey map?

A customer journey map is a visual representation of the customer journey. It typically shows the different stages of the journey, the touchpoints that customers interact with at each stage, and the customer’s thoughts and feelings at each stage.

How to create a customer journey map

To create a customer journey map, you will need to:

1. Identify your target customer. Who are you trying to reach with your marketing messages?
2. Map out the different stages of the customer journey. What are the different steps that customers take from awareness to purchase and beyond?
3. Identify the touchpoints that customers interact with at each stage. What are the different channels and platforms that customers use to learn about your brand and product?
4. Document the customer’s thoughts and feelings at each stage. What are the customer’s needs and pain points at each stage of the journey?

Once you have created a customer journey map, you can use it to:

• Identify areas where you can improve the customer experience.
• Develop more effective marketing campaigns.
• Create personalized content and experiences for your customers.

Here are some tips for creating effective customer journey maps:

• Focus on your target customer. Keep your target customer in mind throughout the process of creating your customer journey map. What are their needs and pain points? What are their goals?
• Be specific. The more specific you can be, the more useful your customer journey map will be. For example, instead of simply writing “awareness,” try to identify specific touchpoints where customers become aware of your brand, such as social media, paid advertising, or word-of-mouth.
• Use data. If possible, use data to support your customer journey map. This could include data from customer surveys, website analytics, or social media analytics.
• Get feedback. Once you have created a draft of your customer journey map, get feedback from your team and from customers. This will help you to refine your map and make it more accurate.

Customer journey maps are a valuable tool for digital marketers. By understanding the customer journey and creating customer journey maps, marketers can create more effective marketing campaigns and improve the customer experience.

What is the customer journey?

The path a customer takes from learning about a product to getting their questions answered to making a purchase.

The customer journey is the path a customer takes from learning about a product to getting their questions answered to making a purchase. SkipContinue

Welcome back. So far, you’ve learned about some of
the things digital marketing and e-commerce can do for
e-commerce businesses. You know the advantages
of digital marketing and the challenges of reaching customers and a
crowded online field. You also know that the first
and most important step to any marketing strategy is
learning about your customers. Let’s get deeper into
that last point. It’s easy to think of a business’ marketing efforts
as being all about them— about ways to
bring in customers, boost profits, or grow
their online presence. But a really effective
marketing strategy starts with learning about customers
needs and pain points. Pain points are the
specific problems customers and potential customers
want to solve. Instead of asking, “How do
we sell more products?”, the most successful
businesses want to know, “How do we help customers address their pain points or
achieve their goals?” One is about the
company’s goals, the other is about
the customer journey. What is a customer journey? Well, think about
the last time you recommended something
to a friend. It could be a product,
like an app or a tool, or a service, like a
restaurant or a contractor. Now think about your journey with that product or service. How did you first find it? If you had questions, how did you get answers? What convinced you to try it? How did it help you solve a
problem or achieve a goal? Finally, what made you decide to recommend
it to someone else? The path you take
from learning about that product to getting
your questions answered to making a purchase is your customer journey. From your perspective,
the goal of that journey wasn’t necessarily to
purchase a specific product. It’s just the thing
that you ended up purchasing happened to
fulfill your needs. Here’s an example: Let’s pretend you’re in the
market for a new weather app. Maybe the one you have
isn’t reliable and you keep getting caught in
the rain without an umbrella, so you search online for best weather apps and
find some options. One stands out because
the name is familiar. You think a friend might
have told you about it recently or maybe
it was online ad. You narrow your options to a few candidates
and start reading reviews. Two have all
the features you want, but you pick the one
with the familiar name. It tops several best of lists, and it has a trial subscription. You download the app, but it’s not working right. You go back to the reviews and find out this is a known issue. You contact the support
through live chat. They help you fix
the problem quickly, which makes you feel
good about the company. You start the trial
and after a month, you’ve always had your
umbrella when it rained. You get an email reminder that your trial is about to expire, and you’re so happy
with the app that you purchase a subscription. Now you’re a loyal customer. Each interaction with
the brand during this purchase journey
is called a touchpoint. From the search to
the customer reviews, online ad, trial
subscription, live chat, and follow-up email, every touchpoint had the
potential to help or hurt your impression of the
brand and its product. A bad experience at any point can mean an
abandoned journey, so it’s in a company’s best
interests to make sure you get information and answers
you need along the way. With enough customer research, marketers can use
these touch points to create a customer journey map. A customer journey map is a
visualization of the touch points a typical
customer encounters along their purchase journey. You can even have multiple
journey maps based on the patterns and behaviors of different types of customers. Of course, it’s
impossible to know exactly what route
each person will take. But journey maps aren’t
about predicting the future. They help you
understand how and why customers are interacting
with your business. When you know how
customers are finding you, how they’re learning about you, and what problems
they want to solve, you can work to make
their experiences better. Better customer experiences
ultimately mean greater success for your
business. There you have it. By understanding
customer journeys, you can create better, more
user-friendly experiences. Coming up, you’ll learn
how journey maps work along with another tool,
the marketing funnel, to target their
marketing efforts and encourage potential
customers to make purchases.

Tutorial on the Marketing Funnel

What is a marketing funnel?

A marketing funnel is a visual representation of the customer journey, from awareness to conversion to loyalty. It is a model that helps businesses understand how customers interact with their brand and how to move them through the sales process.

The four stages of the marketing funnel

The four stages of the marketing funnel are:

1. Awareness: This is when a potential customer first learns about your brand. This can happen through a variety of channels, such as online advertising, social media, or word-of-mouth.
2. Interest: Once a potential customer is aware of your brand, they need to become interested in your products or services. This can be done by providing them with valuable content, such as blog posts, e-books, or case studies.
3. Decision: Once a potential customer is interested in your brand, they need to make a decision about whether or not to buy from you. This is where you need to focus on overcoming any objections they may have and persuading them to make a purchase.
4. Loyalty: Once a customer has made a purchase, you need to focus on keeping them coming back. This can be done by providing them with excellent customer service, offering loyalty programs, and introducing them to new products and services.

How to use the marketing funnel

To use the marketing funnel effectively, you need to understand each stage and what you need to do to move customers through the funnel.

Awareness:

• Create high-quality content that is relevant to your target audience.
• Promote your content on social media and other online channels.
• Run online ads to target potential customers.

Interest:

• Offer valuable content, such as e-books, white papers, and webinars.
• Create a lead magnet to capture the contact information of potential customers.
• Nurture your leads with email marketing and other marketing activities.

Decision:

• Create landing pages that are optimized for conversions.
• Offer free trials or demos of your products or services.
• Provide testimonials and case studies from satisfied customers.

Loyalty:

• Offer excellent customer service.
• Offer loyalty programs to reward repeat customers.
• Introduce customers to new products and services that they may be interested in.

The marketing funnel is a powerful tool that can help you grow your business. By understanding the different stages of the funnel and what you need to do to move customers through the funnel, you can create a more effective marketing strategy.

Here are some additional tips for using the marketing funnel effectively:

• Personalize your marketing messages. The more personalized your marketing messages are, the more likely customers are to engage with them and move through the funnel.
• Use automation. There are a number of marketing automation tools available that can help you automate tasks such as email marketing and social media marketing. This can free up your time so that you can focus on other aspects of your business.
• Track and measure your results. It is important to track and measure the results of your marketing efforts so that you can see what is working and what is not. This will help you to improve your marketing strategy over time.

By following these tips, you can use the marketing funnel to increase brand awareness, generate leads, and convert more customers.

Fill in the blank: A _____ is a visual representation of the process through which people go from first learning about a brand to becoming loyal customers.

marketing funnel

A marketing funnel is a visual representation of the process through which people go from first learning about a brand to becoming loyal customers.

Now that you know about
customer journey maps, it’s time to introduce a related concept:
the marketing funnel. The marketing funnel, also called the sales funnel
or conversion funnel, is an idea that’s older
than the Internet. In fact, marketers have used
it for over a 100 years. If it’s been around that long, it must be a pretty
powerful tool. What is a marketing funnel,
and how does it work? A marketing funnel is a visual representation of
the process through which people go from first
learning about a brand to becoming
loyal customers. The funnel is wide at the
top and narrows toward the bottom because a lot of potential customers will
enter the top of the funnel, but only some of them will reach the bottom to become
loyal customers. Of course, people will drop off at every stage in-between, so you want to make
sure you’re doing everything you can to keep them moving through the funnel. There are a lot of
different versions of the marketing funnel, and you’ll learn about
a few of them later. Right now, I’m going to introduce you to a
simple version of the funnel that has
four stages: awareness, consideration,
conversion, and loyalty. At the top of the funnel
is the awareness stage. This is when a
potential customer encounters a brand
for the first time, maybe from an ad or
a recommendation. At this stage, the
customer probably doesn’t know enough about that
company to form an opinion. They’re just aware it exists. Awareness is the widest
tier because even though a lot of people
might know about a company, only some of them will think about doing business with them. That’s why it’s
important to raise as much awareness as possible
among target audiences. A target audience is
the group of people most likely to purchase
a company’s products. They’re the ones whose attention your digital marketing
efforts should capture. Things start to narrow at the
next stage: consideration. This is when some
potential customers from the awareness stage
start to think about doing business
with a company. At this point, they could
be actively browsing the website or comparing
different brands, so making a good
impression is key. Those who move beyond consideration go to
the conversion stage. Conversion is when
someone decides to make a purchase and
become a customer. To increase the
chances of conversion, businesses should
demonstrate their value and provide a
user-friendly experience. The last stage is loyalty. It takes a huge amount
of effort to move potential customers from
awareness to conversion. Once a customer
completes a purchase, you want to give them
reasons to return. Making current customers
happy can increase trust and keep them coming
back for years to come. If you’re thinking that
this all feels pretty similar to a customer
journey map, you’d be right. Marketing funnels
and journey maps are related concepts, and they’re
best when used together. Here’s how they
complement one another. First, you know that
a journey map traces the customer’s path to purchase along
specific touchpoints. But a marketing
funnel is part of a business’s plan for moving customers along their journey. A journey map adopts the
customer’s perspective, but a funnel considers that same process from the
position of the business. Second, the structure of a marketing funnel is
simpler than a journey map. Customer journeys are
complex because they demonstrate how customers
might interact with the brand. Their paths to purchase are unique, and they can repeat
or loop back on themselves. In contrast, the funnel
is a linear model that breaks this journey
into broad stages. It’s not about how specific customers reach
consideration or conversion but what a company can
do to move lots of customers from one
stage to the next. Remember the weather
app example? Let’s think about a
few of the touchpoints our hypothetical
customer encountered and how they might fit
into a marketing funnel. The customer was
reminded of the app by the online ad
in search results, making these
awareness activities. The trial membership could be a consideration
offering since it helped the customer
learn about the product. But it was the reminder email that finally got them to commit, so that’s a conversion tactic. Funnels like this
one help businesses focus their goals and
marketing efforts, making their path
from awareness to loyalty as smooth as possible. They drive engagement
and make it more appealing for customers to
do business with a company. When used together, journey maps and marketing
funnels help marketers understand and serve their
customers better than either can alone. Let’s review: Along with customer
journey maps, a marketing funnel is a
powerful tool that allows businesses to focus and coordinate their
marketing efforts. To get the most out of a funnel, they should try to optimize
their work at each stage. From awareness to
consideration, conversion, and loyalty, a carefully-
planned funnel can help businesses
succeed online. Coming up, we’ll explore a
few different versions of the marketing funnel
and discuss how they evolve through e-commerce.
Meet you there.

Tutorial on “The top of the funnel: Awareness and consideration” in Digital marketing

The top of the funnel (TOFU) in digital marketing is where you introduce potential customers to your brand and encourage them to learn more about it. This is the first stage of the marketing funnel, and it’s important to get it right because it sets the foundation for the rest of the customer journey.

Awareness

Awareness is the first step in the TOFU. This is when a potential customer first learns about your brand. There are many ways to raise awareness for your brand, such as:

• Search engine optimization (SEO): SEO is the process of optimizing your website and content so that it ranks higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). This will help potential customers find your website when they search for relevant keywords.
• Paid advertising: Paid advertising platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads allow you to target potential customers with relevant ads. This can be a great way to reach people who are already interested in what you have to offer.
• Social media marketing: Social media is a great way to connect with potential customers and build relationships with them. You can use social media to share content about your brand, run contests and giveaways, and offer customer support.
• Influencer marketing: Influencer marketing is the practice of partnering with people who have a large following on social media or other online platforms. These influencers can promote your brand to their followers and help you reach a new audience.

Consideration

Once a potential customer is aware of your brand, they need to decide if they’re interested in learning more. This is the consideration stage of the TOFU.

During the consideration stage, you need to provide potential customers with the information they need to make a decision. This could include blog posts, product descriptions, case studies, and customer reviews. You should also make it easy for potential customers to contact you with questions.

One way to get potential customers to consider your brand is to offer them something of value for free. This could be a free ebook, white paper, webinar, or trial of your product or service. By providing potential customers with something of value, you can show them that you’re an expert in your field and that you have something to offer them.

Conclusion

The top of the funnel is an important stage in the marketing funnel. By raising awareness of your brand and providing potential customers with the information they need to make a decision, you can set yourself up for success in the bottom of the funnel, where potential customers become paying customers.

Here are some additional tips for running a successful TOFU digital marketing campaign:

• Create a buyer persona. A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer. It’s important to understand your target audience so that you can create content and messaging that resonates with them.
• Set goals for your campaign. What do you want to achieve with your TOFU campaign? Do you want to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or drive traffic to your website? Once you know your goals, you can develop a campaign strategy that will help you achieve them.
• Track your results. It’s important to track the results of your TOFU campaign so that you can see what’s working and what’s not. This will help you optimize your campaign over time.

By following these tips, you can create a TOFU digital marketing campaign that will help you reach your target audience and achieve your business goals.

What is the goal of the consideration stage?

To increase the chances that a potential customer will eventually make a purchase

During the consideration stage, the goal is to increase the chance that a potential customer will eventually make a purchase.

Hello again. Earlier in the course, we went over
the concepts of the customer journey and the marketing funnel. Now, let’s explore the funnel in a little
more detail starting at the top with the awareness and consideration stages. We’ll consider some of the things teams
can do to get attention from potential customers and
drive engagement effectively. First awareness, you already know
that awareness is when a potential customer encounters your brand for
the first time. This may seem like a simple idea, but how do you make sure your brand gets
in front of the right audience? The first step is research. Finding out who your customers are and
where they are online can help you focus your marketing efforts
in the right places. Getting to know your particular audience
allows you to pick the channels that have the best chance of reaching them. There are a lot of different tactics
a business can use to reach customers. One way is to improve their rankings and
search engine results. They can do this by optimizing website
content around specific search terms or paying to place digital ads on websites,
social media, email or video platforms. Forming promotional partnerships
with other brands or influencers can also help raise awareness. You’ll learn more about each of
these tactics later in the program. For now, just remember that
a strong top of funnel marketing strategy takes advantage
of multiple channels and creates a consistent
experience across all of them. It’s also important to keep in mind
that awareness isn’t a onetime event. Once someone knows about your business,
it can take days, weeks or even longer for
them to get to the consideration stage. So, once you’ve reached
a potential customer, the goal is to get them to remember you. Say your company sells refrigerators. That’s a big purchase and
not one that you make every day. So, even if a potential customer
knows about your business, they might wait until their old fridge
breaks to start thinking about a new one. Maintaining a consistent
online presence can remind them that you exist
when the time is right. That way, they’ll think of your business
when they do need your services. Now, let’s move on to consideration. You know that consideration is
the getting to know you stage. It’s when people start
exploring your business and finding out what makes you
different from the competition. During this stage, the goal is to increase
the chances that a potential customer will eventually make a purchase. They might be reading online reviews or
actively browsing your website by now, so you need to give them
reasons to stick around or to come back if they’ve already left. At this stage, some potential
customers will become leads. A lead is a potential customer who
has interacted with a brand and shared personal information,
like an email address. Let’s take that
refrigerator example again. Imagine that customer goes to your website
and checks out a few different models, but they don’t make a decision right away. Maybe they need more time to think about
it or want to compare different brands, or they could have just gotten distracted. You can engage that person again by
serving them ads based on the products and pages they visited. That makes it more likely they’ll
return to make a purchase. Once a potential customer is on your site, you should aim to educate
them about your offerings and explain how specific products or
services address their pain points. That can mean offering engaging,
useful content like blog posts, newsletters or webinars free samples,
tools or trial memberships can let potential customers test out
your services before committing. The goal is to start building trust
in the quality of your products and give customers what they need
to make an informed choice. To recap, the top of the funnel boosts
awareness and customer engagement. At the awareness stage,
marketers use a variety of tools and channels to connect with potential
customers and stay fresh in their minds. During the consideration stage, they
should make it clear what they’re offering and how they can meet customers needs. When executed carefully, awareness and consideration tactics can lead to more
people eventually becoming customers. Coming up, you’ll learn more
about marketing funnels and discover some ways to measure
awareness and consideration success.

Tutorial on “Measuring success at the top of the funnel” in Digital Marketing

The top of the funnel (TOFU) is the stage where potential customers first learn about your brand. It’s important to measure success at the TOFU stage so that you can see what’s working and what’s not, and make adjustments to your strategy accordingly.

There are a number of different metrics that you can use to measure success at the TOFU stage. Some of the most common metrics include:

• Impressions: The number of times your ad or content is displayed to users.
• Reach: The number of unique users who see your ad or content.
• Engagement: The number of users who interact with your ad or content, such as by clicking on it, liking it, or commenting on it.
• Website traffic: The number of visitors to your website.
• Lead generation: The number of new leads that you generate from your marketing efforts.

Which metrics you choose to focus on will depend on your specific goals for the TOFU stage. For example, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, you might focus on metrics like impressions and reach. If your goal is to generate leads, you might focus on metrics like lead generation and website traffic.

Once you’ve chosen the metrics that you want to focus on, you need to set targets for each metric. This will help you to track your progress and see if you’re on track to achieve your goals.

There are a number of different tools that you can use to measure success at the TOFU stage. Some of the most popular tools include:

• Google Analytics: Google Analytics is a free tool that provides comprehensive data on website traffic and engagement.
• Google Ads: Google Ads provides data on ad impressions, reach, and conversions.
• Facebook Analytics: Facebook Analytics provides data on Facebook reach, engagement, and conversions.
• Twitter Analytics: Twitter Analytics provides data on Twitter reach, engagement, and conversions.

Once you’ve collected data on your chosen metrics, you need to analyze it to see what it tells you about your marketing campaigns. For example, if you see that your impressions are high but your reach is low, it could mean that you’re targeting your ads to the wrong audience. Or, if you see that your engagement is high but your website traffic is low, it could mean that your landing pages aren’t relevant to your target audience.

By analyzing your data, you can identify areas where your marketing campaigns are working well and areas where they need improvement. This information can then be used to make adjustments to your strategy and improve your results over time.

Here are some additional tips for measuring success at the top of the funnel:

• Set clear goals. What do you want to achieve with your TOFU marketing efforts? Do you want to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or drive traffic to your website? Once you know your goals, you can choose the right metrics to track.
• Use the right tools. There are a number of different tools that you can use to measure success at the TOFU stage. Choose the tools that are right for your business and your budget.
• Track your progress regularly. Don’t wait until the end of your campaign to measure your results. Track your progress regularly so that you can identify any problems early on and make adjustments as needed.
• Analyze your data. Once you’ve collected data on your chosen metrics, analyze it to see what it tells you about your marketing campaigns. This information can then be used to make adjustments to your strategy and improve your results over time.

By following these tips, you can measure success at the top of the funnel and improve your marketing campaigns over time.

A digital marketer can measure the awareness of their ads by tracking what information? Select all that apply.

Impressions, Frequency, Reach

A digital marketer can measure the awareness of their ads by tracking impressions, reach, and frequency. Reach is the total number of unique individuals who encounter an ad across their different devices.

So far, you’ve learned
about some ways to raise awareness and engage with
potential customers. You know that selecting the right channels to reach
a target audience is one of the most important
things businesses can do to market
products online. But we haven’t gotten to
the most important part: how do you know if the tactics
you’ve chosen are working? Are there ways to improve
on what you’re already doing or do you need to start again with
a whole new plan? To answer all of these
questions is measurement. The fact is, no matter
how much research you do or how carefully you
plan a marketing strategy, none of it matters unless you
can measure your success. Measuring outcomes
at each stage of the funnel allows you to find out what
you’re doing right, what you’re doing wrong, and where you can improve. In this video, we’ll
discuss some of the metrics companies use to measure success at the
top of the funnel. A metric is a quantifiable
measurement used to track and assess progress
toward an objective. Marketing metrics can gauge different aspects of campaign performance and effectiveness, which can help businesses make improvements for the future. For example, to measure
awareness of their ads, marketers use tools
to track things like impressions, reach,
and frequency. Impressions are the
total number of times an ad appears
on people’s screens. That number includes users who encountered the ad
more than once. If an ad is encountered
200 times by 100 people, the number of impressions is 200, since it’s been
shown 200 times. In contrast, reach is
the total number of unique individuals who encounter an ad across their
different devices. No matter how many times
a person gets that ad, they’re only counted once. The reach of an ad
that’s encountered 200 times by 100 people
would be 100. Frequency refers
to how many times each individual encounters
the ad in a given timeframe. So if each of those 100 people
gets the ad twice in a week, their frequency would be two. These are just a
few of the metrics you can use to gauge awareness. You’ll learn more about
tracking and analyzing awareness measurements
later on in the program. The goal of the awareness
stage is usually to get ads in front of the right
people at the right times. By analyzing impressions,
reach, and frequency, marketers can find out how big of an impact
their ads are having. If the numbers are below the company’s goal
for awareness, they may decide to re-evaluate
their ad strategy. But businesses can also have more specific awareness
goals like getting a certain amount of visitors
to a page on a website. Exactly what you
choose to measure depends on what you’re
trying to achieve. That’s why it’s important to set goals for each stage
of the funnel. At the consideration stage, there are different ways
to measure success, but they all come
down to one idea: Engagement. How much, how often, and for how long are potential customers
engaging with your content. Analytics tools can
track things like how often customers search
for your business online, the number of first-time
visitors to a site, the number of pages per visitor, and how long visitors
spend on a page. Signing up for emails or newsletters is another good
measurement of engagement, and getting customer
contact information will make it easier to remind them you exist, and demonstrate your value later on. It may seem like more
engagement is better, but that isn’t always the case. If the goal is for customers
to find what they need quickly but customers spend a long time completing tasks, it may mean you need to re-evaluate the layout
of your website. Measuring website
interactions can give you a lot of insights. So knowing which numbers
are important and what they mean for your
goals is crucial. Even with clear goals and
accurate information, measuring awareness and
engagement is often more challenging than measuring bottom-of-the-funnel
concerns, like sales. Later in the program, you’ll learn how to
interpret this kind of information and how
businesses use it to improve their
tactics for moving leads from consideration
to conversion. Let’s review. Measuring
awareness and engagement is the most important
things brands can do to ensure success at the
top of the funnel. Marketing teams use analytics
tools to measure awareness through numbers of impressions,
reach, and frequency. Consideration can be measured
through website engagement, including page visits, detailed views, and
email sign-ups. Knowing what to measure
in order to reach your goals is an important
part of marketing success. Coming up, you’ll learn more
about the funnel and what to do at the conversion
and loyalty stages.

Tutorial on “The bottom of the funnel: Conversion and loyalty” in Digital Marketing

The bottom of the marketing funnel is where potential customers become paying customers and loyal brand advocates. It’s the most important stage of the funnel, because it’s where all of your hard work pays off.

There are two main stages at the bottom of the funnel: conversion and loyalty.

Conversion

Conversion is the process of turning leads into customers. It’s the moment when a potential customer decides to buy your product or service.

There are a number of things you can do to increase conversions, such as:

• Create compelling landing pages. Your landing pages should be tailored to specific audiences and should clearly explain the benefits of your product or service.
• Offer a free trial or demo. This is a great way to let potential customers try your product or service before they buy it.
• Make it easy to buy. Your checkout process should be simple and straightforward.
• Use social proof. Show potential customers that other people are using and loving your product or service.
• Offer a guarantee. This will reduce the risk for potential customers and make them more likely to buy from you.

Loyalty

Loyalty is the process of keeping customers coming back for more. It’s important to build loyalty because it’s much cheaper to retain a customer than it is to acquire a new one.

There are a number of things you can do to build customer loyalty, such as:

• Provide excellent customer service. This means being responsive to customer inquiries and resolving any issues quickly and efficiently.
• Offer loyalty programs. Reward customers for their business with discounts, exclusive offers, and other perks.
• Create a community around your brand. This could involve hosting events, creating online forums, or simply being active on social media.
• Personalize your marketing messages. Show customers that you know them and that you care about their individual needs.

By following these tips, you can improve your conversion rates and build a loyal customer base.

Here are some additional tips for optimizing your bottom of the funnel marketing campaigns:

• Use data to track and measure your results. This will help you identify what’s working and what’s not, so you can adjust your campaigns accordingly.
• Segment your audience. This will allow you to target your messages more effectively.
• Use retargeting. This allows you to show ads to people who have already visited your website or interacted with your brand in some way.
• Test and iterate. Don’t be afraid to try new things and see what works best for your audience.

By following these tips, you can create a bottom of the funnel marketing strategy that will help you achieve your business goals.

Which tactics can a digital marketer use to build customer loyalty? Select all that apply.

• Create a great customer experience during and after a purchase
• Offer a rewards program
• Send follow-up emails

A digital marketer can build customer loyalty by sending follow-up emails, offering a rewards program, and creating a great customer experience during and after a purchase.

Welcome back! In the last lesson,
we covered the awareness and consideration stages of
the marketing funnel. We discussed some of the things
businesses should do and measure to raise awareness and
boost customer engagement. Now let’s get into the conversion and
loyalty stages of the funnel. We’ll consider what teams
can do to drive sales and keep customers coming back again and
again. You know that the conversion stage,
also known as the decision or purchase stage, is when someone makes
a purchase and becomes a customer. Not everyone who considers
a purchase will convert. And potential customers make purchases when
they think that one company’s solution fits their needs better than others. So, it’s essential that they do everything
they can do to demonstrate and deliver value at this stage. You want customers to trust you and feel confident in their
decision to buy your product. The goal of the conversion stage is simple: It’s to turn potential
customers into buyers. But how different companies go about
making that happen depends on their products and audience. It’s also important to keep in mind
that different customers can get from consideration to conversion
through different touchpoints. But it is possible to identify trends in
customer behavior so you can personalize content and
improve target areas. You’ll find more about identifying
these trends later in the program. To set themselves apart
at the conversion stage, businesses should provide clear and
useful content and experiences. That includes everything from accurate
product descriptions to a smooth checkout process and
a clear returns policy. Well-placed, product-focused ads, and a clearly-organized website
can be persuasive, too. Whatever the methods, making it easy for
leads to find answers and take action makes conversion more likely. Now, some marketing funnels end
after the customer makes a purchase. But building and maintaining customer
loyalty can be just as important as converting them in the first place. Successful businesses balance customer
acquisition with retention because once you’ve made the effort to build
a relationship with a customer, you want to keep that relationship going. Customer loyalty depends foremost on
the quality and value of your product. But even if a customer
loves their purchase, that’s no guarantee they’ll come back for
more. Building loyalty is about creating
a great customer experience during and after purchase. Many companies use things like follow-up
emails, rewards programs, or social media engagement to nurture relationships
with customers on an ongoing basis. Those interactions should always
be purposeful and thoughtful. For example, email coupons can encourage
repeat purchases, but sending a coupon for something a customer just bought—they
probably won’t be too happy about that. When companies focus on creating
a positive post-purchase experience, they can drive future sales. And when
customers who aren’t just brand loyal but devoted fans. And that’s it! Let’s review: At the bottom of the funnel,
businesses focus on converting potential customers and encouraging
those customers to return in the future. During the conversion stage, they demonstrate value through
quality content and experiences. After a purchase, they build loyalty
by continuing to engage customers and build relationships. By optimizing these results at each stage, businesses can thrive in
a crowded online marketplace. Coming up, you’ll review what you
learned about marketing funnels so far and find out some things
businesses can do to measure success at the bottom of the funnel.
Meet you there!

Measuring success at the bottom of the funnel in Digital Marketing

The bottom of the funnel is where potential customers become paying customers and loyal brand advocates. It’s the most important stage of the funnel, because it’s where all of your hard work pays off.

There are two main stages at the bottom of the funnel: conversion and loyalty.

Conversion

Conversion is the process of turning leads into customers. It’s the moment when a potential customer decides to buy your product or service.

Here are some of the key metrics you can measure to track conversion success:

• Conversion rate: This is the percentage of leads who take a desired action, such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter.
• Cost per conversion: This is the average amount of money you spend to acquire a new customer.
• Time to conversion: This is the average amount of time it takes for a lead to convert into a customer.
• Average order value: This is the average amount of money that customers spend on each purchase.

Loyalty

Loyalty is the process of keeping customers coming back for more. It’s important to build loyalty because it’s much cheaper to retain a customer than it is to acquire a new one.

Here are some of the key metrics you can measure to track loyalty success:

• Customer churn rate: This is the percentage of customers who stop doing business with you over a given period of time.
• Customer lifetime value (CLV): This is the average amount of money that a customer is expected to spend with you over the lifetime of their relationship with your brand.
• Net promoter score (NPS): This is a measure of customer satisfaction and loyalty. It’s calculated by asking customers how likely they are to recommend your brand to others.

How to use conversion and loyalty metrics to improve your marketing funnel

Once you’ve measured your conversion and loyalty metrics, you can use the data to improve your marketing funnel. For example, if you have a high churn rate, you can identify the areas where customers are dropping off and take steps to address those issues. Or, if you have a low CLV, you can figure out how to increase the average amount of money that customers spend with you.

Here are some tips for using conversion and loyalty metrics to improve your marketing funnel:

• Segment your audience: This will allow you to track your metrics more accurately and identify trends that are specific to different groups of customers.
• Track your metrics over time: This will help you identify trends and see how your funnel is performing over the long term.
• Compare your metrics to industry benchmarks: This will help you see how your funnel is performing compared to your competitors.
• Use A/B testing to test different marketing strategies: This is a great way to see what’s working and what’s not, so you can make informed decisions about how to improve your funnel.

By measuring and tracking your conversion and loyalty metrics, you can optimize your marketing funnel and drive more sales and revenue for your business.

What information should a digital marketer track in order to measure conversion? Select all that apply.

Average order size, Average number of touchpoints, Cost per conversion

In order to measure conversion, a digital marketer should track the cost per conversion, the average number of touchpoints, and the average order size.

By now, you’ve learned a lot
about the marketing funnel and how businesses use it to raise awareness,
increase consideration, encourage conversion and build loyalty. You know some of the things they
measure at the top of the funnel and understand why tracking this information
is key to success. In this video, we’ll explore some ways to
measure success at the bottom of the funnel in the conversion and
loyalty stages. Let’s go! The most basic thing you can measure
at the conversion stage is the number of conversions. A conversion happens when a potential
customer takes the desired action, in this case, when they make a purchase. Seems simple, right? The number of conversions
is crucial information, but it’s not the only thing you
can measure at this stage. Tracking time to conversion,
cost per conversion, the average number of touchpoints before
conversion, or the average order size can provide valuable insights into how
customers interact with your brand. These insights also allow you to address
drop off issues like abandoned carts. Cart abandonment is when a customer
adds an item to their cart but doesn’t complete the purchase. Believe it or not, it’s estimated that
nearly 70% of online carts are abandoned. So finding out where customers drop off in
the checkout process can help you improve procedures and increase your conversions. Okay, it’s time for the last stage of the
funnel, loyalty, how a business chooses to measure loyalty depends on their
target audience and particular goals. Some common things to measure include
the rate of repeat purchases, the length of time between purchases,
the number of orders per customer and the rate of account
activation after sign-up. The level of engagement with rewards
programs is also another indicator of customer loyalty over time. Loyalty metrics allow
businesses to assess and refine strategies to keep customers,
boost sales, and save money. But they also reveal where they can manage
customer relationships more effectively. In the end, customer loyalty is
the truest test of how well the entire funnel served customers and
meets their needs. We’ll get further into how conversion and loyalty measurements are used
later in the program. For now, just remember beyond
completed purchases, conversion measurements also tracked behaviors
like time to conversion and order size. These measurements provide valuable
information that can enable teams to curb drop offs and increase sales. Loyalty measurements track
things like account activation, time between purchases,
and orders per customer. By measuring loyalty,
businesses can improve retention rates and build revenue over time. And there you go, measuring results
throughout the funnel is the best tool brands can use to optimize
their effort at each stage. And a well-planned funnel means they can
nurture leads effectively throughout their purchase journeys. Coming up, you’ll explore some ideas
of where the E-commerce industry might be headed in the future.

You did it. Congrats on finishing this
section of the course. You’re that much closer to starting or
advancing your digital marketing or e-commerce career. Before we move on, let’s reflect
on what you’ve already learned. In this part of the course, you learned that digital marketing is more
than just creating ads to drive sales. An effective digital marketing strategy
can affect every interaction a brand has with its customers. You explored the idea of the customer
journey and how businesses use journey maps to understand their
customers’ needs and motivations. You also found out how customer
journey maps can work together with marketing funnels to focus marketing
efforts where they’ll be most effective. Then you learned more about the top of the
funnel and the tactics businesses used to reach and engage with potential customers
in the awareness and consideration stages. You explored the bottom of the funnel and some ways to turn leads
into loyal customers. Finally, you discovered the importance of
measuring success throughout the funnel, and how the insights businesses gain can
help them improve the customer journey. By learning customer journey maps and
marketing funnels, you’re beginning to understand how to use digital channels
effectively to reach customers. In the next section of the course, we’ll find out what goes into building
a digital marketing strategy and learn more about some of the tools and
tactics you can use to carry one out. Meet you there.