Set Yourself Apart in Consideration
If you’ve read our previous blog posts on the subject you’ll already know the basics of the various stages of the funnel. At FieldTest we spend a lot of time focusing on these stages since they are the core outline for our campaigns, and sticking by them is key to achieving optimum performance. In previous posts we’ve covered the top of funnel stage, also known as Awareness. If you haven’t read our guide to building brand awareness at the top of the funnel go ahead and get caught up here, it’s a great place to start.
Today we’re talking about your mid-funnel stage, what we call Consideration. This stage is where your potential customers end up once you’ve made them aware of your brand but still need to convince them to purchase your product. See, whether you’re selling DTC products or B2B services you’re going to have competition and unless you’re already the biggest name in town you’ll have to convince your potential customers that you are the best choice for them. That may sound like a challenge but it’s really as simple as presenting your customers with everything that makes your product unique. In this blog post we’ll run through the usefulness of the consideration phase and some proven strategies to nail it, moving your intenders down the funnel towards final conversion.
Keep your data working for you
If you’re in this stage of the funnel you’ve likely already run an awareness campaign, introducing yourself to your predicted audiences and building out the groundwork for future targeting. Now you find yourself in a precarious position of being one of many options your customers can choose from. Don’t lose hope, this is a great position to be in! If you’ve run your awareness campaigns with FieldTest then you already have the most comprehensive model of your customer data available. That’s because the FieldTest pixel tracks everybody who clicks on your awareness creatives and browses your site. This allows us to create what are called lookalike audiences, or audiences whose browsing data is very similar to your target customers. This means not only do we have a ‘fingerprint’ so to speak of people interested in your brand, we can use it to model new audiences of thousands of intenders that are likely to love your brand with surprising accuracy! This is a foundational piece of your campaign’s long-term success and a prime example of how investing in your awareness stage pays off down the line. Each stage of the funnel leads down to the next, all leading towards conversion!
Stand out from the crowd with consideration
You may still be asking “how do we turn all these audiences and all this data in conversions?”, and the simple answer is by nailing your consideration stage creatives! How do you go about that? Let’s take a closer look.
As we’ve already covered, you’ve done your prospecting in the awareness phase and we’ve built out your lookalikes with that data. Now it’s time to show your new, highly interested audience just what sets you apart from your competition. This can mean a number of things depending on your product but it should always meet a few criteria; your ads should make you sound unique, they should show off your best product features, and more than anything they should be true to your brand!
If you’ve read our guide to building a successful CBD campaign you’ll already have a few ideas of how to set your brand apart from the get go. In that post we discuss how positioning your brand to resonate with specific groups from the start can help make your audience outreach efforts much easier down the line, advice that extends far beyond the world of CBD products. If you haven’t done this it’s not the end of the world, just ask yourself “what is it that makes my brand unique?” If you’re selling mattresses surely they’re more comfortable than your competitors! If you sell clothing then highlight the unique way you source your cotton or how great your designs are. If you sell sodas then put your flavors front and center! You’ve already proven to people that you exist, this is the stage where you really get to dial home what makes you the right choice in a crowded field.
Nail this creative step and you’ll likely begin to see some conversions start to roll in. This is exciting but now is not the time to rest on your laurels! Most consideration campaigns will result in valuable conversions, but you shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that this stage is all about expanding your interested audience data. This data will be used in your next stage to approach your proven intenders with specific calls to purchase, boosting conversion in a way that would be impossible without your top and mid-funnel marketing efforts. It’s all part of our full-funnel marketing approach and it all contributes to the long-term performance of your marketing efforts.
Final Thoughts
Consideration is where you separate your future customers from the window shoppers. If your awareness stage is the introduction and your action stage is the final sales pitch, your consideration stage is your proving ground - where you put your product and your marketing to the test. This may seem like a challenge but FieldTest is here to help you achieve marketing success throughout. We’ll help you expand your intender base and focus on only the highest performing segments in order to get the most from your advertising budget. When it comes to achieving full-funnel marketing success, that’s just one less thing you have to take into consideration.