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Why A Full Funnel Marketing Experience Is Key In Your Marketing Strategy

By: Ashanti Sears    April 29, 2022

Marketing strategies that aren’t taking the initiative of developing full-funnel strategies are missing out not only on a competitive advantage but also on a higher ROI and incremental sales percentage. According to a case study done by Nielsen and Google, additional investments in upper- or lower-funnel tactics with Google Ads drive 52% more incremental sales than investing in mid-funnel tactics alone. They also found brands that traditionally focus only on upper-funnel tactics experience 20% more incremental sales when they also invest in mid- or lower-funnel tactics with Google Ads.

This was proven for beauty brand Aveda when they moved to a full-funnel YouTube Ads strategy to increase awareness and brand desirability after not meeting sales expectations for new customer recruitments. After implementing their full-funnel strategy, Aveda saw double-digit increases in website sessions, a double-digit Year over Year increase in search impressions and significant increases in searches for “Aveda salons near me.”

The marketing team at The Kraft Heinz Company had a similar experience after implementing a full-funnel strategy as well, except it was a lower-funnel strategy they were missing. “It is critical for us to leverage lower-funnel tactics, like search, because it helps fuel our first-party data strategy, as well as answer consumers’ questions when they have them,” explains Sanjiv Gajiwala, U.S. chief growth officer of The Kraft Heinz Company. “What better way to reach them when they are literally searching for answers?” A part of the YouTube strategy is to further lean into machine learning to find the right person to serve an ad to at scale. To enable this, they leaned into Video Reach Campaign formats on YouTube, and as a result have seen increases in view rates and an 11% Year over Year decrease in costs-per-impression.

Another tactic The Kraft Heinz Company adopted was to become “Customer Obsessed.” Being customer obsessed means to be so interested in and aware of customers’ desires and needs that you spend a great deal of time interacting with them to understand them more deeply. To be customer obsessed means to focus on:

1) Consumer Insights – Look at the key trends that are affecting customers and impacting customer behaviors, then decide what would be the most helpful for customers at that moment. Once that’s understood, then you can look at your brand and think about the role the brand uniquely plays. You do this by stripping the brand to the studs and building a new foundation tied to consumer insight. Look at those behavioral trends and zero in to identify key audiences. Some advice to be successful: Do not make perfect the enemy of good, and experiment as much as possible.

2) Cultural Relevance – Meet the consumer where they are, listening to them and participating in their conversations. Going from advertising to engagement provides the opportunity to gain so much insight on what customers want by giving them the opportunity to openly express themselves.

3) Data-Driven Marketing Funnel – Advertising makes customers aware; answering customer questions helps them consider your brand as a choice; and providing the necessary channels to buy is helpful in converting. Doing all these things makes helping a client decide to choose you easy. Utilizing tools that help you collect data to better understand who’s looking for your product, what you should be saying/answering, and where you should be to have the opportunity to do both those things is key in being successful. We are moving into cookieless times, so strategically directing consumers to a position where you can collect first-party data and legally collect comprehensive third-party data is key to developing a personalized, targeted, customer-obsessed strategy.