If you want to reach as many potential customers as possible with your marketing, then you need to factor in your passive audience as well as your active one. That means hitting different parts of the customer journey and optimising every step of the way. Digital advertising can be a powerful ally in making this happen as you strive for that full funnel approach.

Here is a marketing funnel that you may be familiar with:

• Awareness
• Interest
• Desire
• Action

This is the typical step by step process that most customers will take. Until now. In our modern day world, where we’re able to reach and convert a passive audience in ways not seen before, there needs to be one step further up the funnel. And we think that needs to be “Discovery”.

Discovery and Awareness

It’s accepted in marketing that you need to make people aware of your brand and what you’re selling before they’ll buy from you. Your blogs, your social media, your newsletter, your videos, your SEO and anything else you do in marketing are all there to convince your target audience to buy from you instead of your competitors.

But what about the people who aren’t interested in your blogs or your content, that have no intention of searching for you online, and that don’t even know they need your products or services? You couldn’t be further off their radar. What do you do then?

They’re not going to be aware of your brand because they’re not in the market for what you are selling. However, you’ve identified that they could still be your ideal customer. They just don’t know it yet. They’re your passive audience.

There could be a higher number of them than your active audience. Convincing them that they should look into you could open up a whole new market for you. It’s an exciting prospect, but it takes a different approach to get them to listen.

This is going to take more than good brand awareness. You need to grab their attention first. They need to discover that they need your solution, and only then will they be open to anything else you have to say.

There are many clever ways to reach a passive audience utilising modern day digital advertising tools. Location based marketing tools, such as geofencing, can help you to be incredibly targeted, choosing people based on geography, demographics, but also social interests.

The more you can think outside the box on how to grab the attention of your passive audience, the better the success you’re likely to see. Our tips:

• Don’t overlook how important brand awareness is and fall into the trap of going straight for conversions. If you get people comfortably sitting at the top of the funnel, you’ll have a much greater chance of converting them than if you try to sell straight away
• Begin with a geofencing campaign that is purely there to make people think that maybe they do need your product or service, even though they might have never considered it before
• Follow this up with some contextual brand awareness, and start to blend that initial discovery into warmer brand awareness

Further down the funnel

When you’ve got your prospective customers nicely warmed up, the next step is to get them to look into you, and show a desire to buy from you. Utilising a range of channels here is very important, but this is also where some digital advertising tools can help to improve conversions. Our top tips include:

• PPC can help to ensure your active audience that is already interested is being pushed to your site
• A Facebook pixel can give you unrivalled data as to who is looking at your website and what action they took
• Creating a carefully thought through retargeting campaign can make all the difference here. But we encourage you to be savvy with your retargeting. Really consider where this person is in the journey and what you want their next steps to be. Don’t fall into the trap of making simple decisions. Retargeting can be far more powerful than most people believe

Customer

You’ve done it! All that hard work has paid off, and your fantastic multi-channel marketing has converted that new customer. But the work shouldn’t stop there. Could you upsell or cross-sell? What other opportunities are there?

Retargeting can be used in clever ways here. Your client bought those red shoes. Let them know there are black and navy versions with some well placed retargeting ads. Keep them in the loop about the bag that matches. While email has long been a tool that’s used for such activities, don’t overlook the power of digital advertising for encouraging your clients to spend more.

Tools

As with most things in our modern day, digital advertising tools and techniques are always evolving. If you have a clever idea today, there are probably numerous ways of executing it. What you need to find is the right process and the right blend of tactics.

If you’ve got some good ideas but you’re not quite sure how to optimise geofencing or retargeting to get the best results, the team of experts will be very happy to work with you to make it happen.

We offer a full Managed Service, where we can take your creative ideas (or even help you to come up with new ones) and then find the right balance of tactics to optimise those touch points through every step of the funnel.

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