Is your marketing missing this vital piece of the puzzle?

So your sales pipeline feels a little dry, and feels like the reach on a lot of your campaigns or emails just aren’t the same as what they used to be, or what they used to get. Maybe it’s time you need to go back and assess that top of funnel marketing strategy that you’ve got. Today we’re going to take our foot off the accelerator. We’re going to look back at your awareness campaigns. I’m going to share a few ideas on how you can use awareness campaigns and awareness marketing strategies with our business, and how we also do it with our clients as well.

My name is Jordan McFadyen, and welcome to the Marketing Mindset podcast, where this podcast challenges both you and I to reassess our marketing strategies, and share some new thoughts and new ideas on how you can move away from random acts of marketing, and actually help start to build a long-term marketing strategy as well.

And today what I want to focus on is top of funnel and visibility ads, because a lot of clients that we speak to, they talk around how reach might have gone down, that sales aren’t doing as well. And if we always go back and have a look at how it was when their perception of was doing really well, what we always find is that they just had so much better awareness content. I want to focus on brand building, brand building pieces of content that are as part of campaigns, or as part of their overall marketing strategy, which was helping to boost up their business.

And so that’s what I want to look at today, because if you are feeling like sales are a little bit dry, or that campaigns just aren’t getting that reach that you’re used to, maybe top of funnel is where some of that issue is. So firstly, let’s just have a look at the top of funnel: that first piece of content where someone doesn’t know anything about you or your brand, and they’ve first stumbled upon your business. And it’s that opportunity for you to really show that prospective client or customer about who you are, about what problem you solve, or that desire.

And then from there, hopefully the client or the customer, if they like what they see, they start to go down that funnel, and they start to get more content, and they see more of your social media or more of your campaigns or more of your emails, as they start to warm up to doing business with you.

And if you’re in a business like ours, so a service-based business, and a lot of our clients that we work with are service-based businesses, a lot of the time as well, you do really need to spend that time to actually warm up a client, warm up a prospective client, before they become a customer. You don’t have a low-ticket e-commerce item that you’re able to sell really quickly. So thinking about that top of funnel, and how we actually bring that prospective client down to becoming an actual client, an actual customer.

And oftentimes with visibility ads or awareness ads, what throws people a lot is that, what we will suggest is, there’s not usually a direct call to action that you need to put on that type of content. There’s not like a “go and download my lead magnet” or “sign up for my webinar” or do anything like that, because the goal of your awareness campaigns and your awareness pieces of content, it’s more around actually getting people to consume your content, whether that’s watching your video, going to your profile, going to your website, interacting with one of your ad campaigns. It’s actually getting them to do some sort of engagement, and engagement is really the aim of these awareness campaigns that we have.

Sales is obviously really important. However, if you don’t have an audience that you’re actually selling to, it can become really difficult. And for businesses like ours, and service-based, going back to what I said before, it can take a little bit of time. So we need to spend the time in actually warming up prospective clients, and the clients who we’d like to work with, so that they understand more about who we are, what we do, the problem that we solve, or whether the prospective client’s got a desire and we’re able to fulfil that desire with our product or service. That’s what we need to try and get across as they move through our funnel.

And a lot of times, we put a lot of work into our social media content, our videos and our content on LinkedIn and our emails, and not enough people are actually seeing it. And so this is where brand awareness campaigns can come in, and can become really valuable to us as marketers and to us as businesses. And it helps us to regenerate that new audience, which is going to essentially help the bottom line at the end of the day as well.

One of the first questions that we get asked when we start looking at that top of funnel is: what type of budget do you put to it? And that can be really difficult. What we would suggest is starting at around that 10% mark, so that 10% of your overall marketing spend. So how much are you putting into Facebook? Let’s say Facebook, for example, or a LinkedIn campaign, you’ve got a $1,000 budget. We would say maybe put around 10% of that into your brand awareness. And that’s like an always-on type of campaign budget as well. So $1,000 a day, let’s say, and it was going to be, you want to put $100 a day towards the brand awareness. So it is a small amount of the overall spend, but it’s large enough for users to actually be able to find you, see your content, and actually learn more about what you do. And then you can spend the rest of that budget on actually warming up those prospective clients as well.

So how are we actually going to use these awareness ads? Well, what we do is we call them a hand raiser. A hand raiser is essentially someone who sees your content and performs a certain action which tells you, hey, I’m actually quite interested in the product or service that you’re talking about here. So whether they watch a video for a certain amount of time, or they click through to your website, or they message you, or they do something that shows you as a marketer that they’re interested in that content, or they’re interested in what you were talking about with that piece of content.

So hand raisers is kind of the aim of these campaigns. It’s looking for those people that are actually willing to spend the time to watch your video, or to read your post, or to read your article, and take it that step further. So what we can do is we can use the hand raisers to actually help build data on each of those platforms and on your website as well.

And what we can do then is we can turn that data that we get from the hand raisers, and we can turn them into the remarketing campaigns. We can say, everyone that saw that first brand awareness campaign and they watched that video, let’s say it was for 25% of that video. So let’s say you had a one-minute video and they watched at least 15 seconds of it. And in that first 15 seconds of that video, you’ve been able to convey what you do and that problem that you solve. And let’s say that you’re happy that someone that watches 25% of that video has shown enough of an interest in your brand that they deserve to see the next part of what you offer, and another piece of content.

So that’s where we can turn that data into that remarketing campaign. So we can actually say to Facebook, people that watched 15% of that first video, can you now serve them this ad? And that ad is going to be more targeted towards your sales and your conversions: download our e-book, or sign up for our webinar, or one of those type of campaigns there.

And again, you’ll also want to have a look at that data that you’re collecting from the hand raisers. So the people that are raising their hand on your content, you’ve got to have a look at that data, and how we can actually use that to build what we would call a lookalike campaign. So that’s actually going to help you find and target your campaigns much easier to your cold audience in the future. So how can you actually take the lookalike audience and then put that back into your awareness campaign? Because it’s taking the data of the hand raisers, it’s sending that data to Facebook or LinkedIn, telling them to go find people who look like those people, and then it starts that whole process again. And we’re going to put them into that awareness funnel as well.

So all of that cold campaign data is really going to help us, A, get brand awareness and get your content and your business seen by as many people as possible. And it’s going to help you filter through the people that are actually interested in what you have to offer. So let’s just say, as a bit of an example, 100 people go to a landing page on your website. So then you’re able to tell Facebook, all those people that went to that page on our website, we either want to remarket to firstly, and we want to get back into their Facebook feed with a different offer. And we want to take all the data from those people, and we want to use that in our targeting of our cold traffic.

So hopefully that explains how we can actually use what we would call these hand raisers, and why it’s so important for us to build out these awareness campaigns and these cold awareness campaigns, and how we can actually use it.

And look, I also think that awareness campaigns can actually be really good if you don’t have the full funnel set up. So if you start relatively early in your business journey, or you’re just trialling a new product or campaign in your marketing strategy, if you don’t have that whole funnel set up, an awareness campaign can still work really well on their own. Even if you don’t have that full campaign and that full funnel set up, that can still work really well, because you are building that data up in the background.

So if we actually have a look at how we actually set these pieces of content up, from our experience, we find that video content is the best form of awareness building on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. And this is from my own testing, from the ads that I’m running from my own business, but also for the clients that we’re working with as well. And there’s a few reasons why, and the reasons I’ve even explained so far, but when we’re dealing with video content on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn, all those platforms, they’re actually looking at how people are interacting with those videos.

They’re looking at watch times: people that see the start of the video and keep scrolling, or people that see the start of a video and continue right until the end. The platforms are taking note of all of those different signals and those different hand raises. So that means that we can really define and make sure that we are talking to an audience that’s actually interested in the product that we have. So if your video focuses on a set of problems or desires about your product, that’s really going to help in defining someone, if they are actually interested, or they do have that particular problem and they’re interested to learn more about what you have to say. And that’s where you can then feed them that remarketing ad as well.

And I wouldn’t focus too much on vanity metrics as well. I would never focus on vanity metrics like your likes or your comments or anything like that on these particular campaigns. I would honestly be focusing more on the other engagement metrics, like the time. People are watching your videos for a certain amount of time. Or are they clicking through to your website? Those are the ones that I’m interested in. And the reason is, again, because those are the ones that we can, as marketers, use that data to help build that audience for the remarketing, and build that audience for our lookalike audience as well. So that’s the two metrics that I’ll be trying to focus on when you’re looking at that awareness building.

So the big thing I want to get across today is that the awareness campaign is so important, but it also needs to fit in with your existing marketing strategy. So make sure that you’re not going to make any changes to your tone of voice, or to your brand guidelines, or anything like that. You’ve got to make sure that it’s on brand, because that is potentially the first thing that someone is going to see about you and your business. So you’ve got to make that impression really count.

But the other thing with your brand awareness that I really need you to think about is: are you actually using those awareness-generating ads to your best ability? Are you actually collecting data on those people that are watching those or viewing those campaigns, those brand awareness ones? They are new eyeballs on your business. And if they’re actually becoming a hand raiser, they’re showing you that they are watching a video or they’re going to your landing page. Are you then helping to continue them down your funnel, to continue to share things about why they should be doing business with you, why you are the best solution for their particular problems that they have? That’s what I need you to think about today.

So if your sales pipeline is feeling dry, and if you feel like your reach or a lot of your campaigns or your emails just aren’t the same as what they used to be, I urge you, go back and reassess the top of the funnel marketing strategy. Is the content still even relevant in the first place? Is it still focusing on the same problems or the same desires that your audience actually want from you? And are you actually using the data that these awareness ads are generating to the best of your ability?

So again, are you actually making sure that people are going down your funnel based on how they have interacted with that first ad, or that first campaign, or that first piece of social media content that they look at? Or is it just a one-hit wonder? And we don’t want it to be a one-hit wonder. We want to move away from this random acts of marketing. And I know I say that a lot, but this is a good way of doing it: moving away from random acts of marketing with your awareness campaigns, and actually looking to see how you can incorporate that top of funnel into your overall strategy.

And look, if you want me to feature more tips or more ideas on how you can improve your ads, or how you can improve your top of funnel strategy, even if it’s to give your team better direction on where you need to head, please do email me your podcast ideas at jordan@donebynine.com. And if you’ve enjoyed today’s podcast, please consider hitting that follow button or giving us a star rating. It is really the best way to support me and this podcast and Done By Nine. So please do that.

And if you do need to make contact with us, you can do that on our website, donebynine.com. You’ll find all our contact details on there. Plus, we’ve got all our blogs and articles and podcasts. You can listen to all our previous episodes all online, so make sure you do check them out. And again, thank you for your support for listening to today’s podcast. So I hope you’re able to get some valuable pieces of content out of that. And we look forward to seeing you on the next episode of Marketing Mindset podcast.