Do you want to know a quick way to increase conversions?

Go and optimize the bottom of your sales funnel.

Why? Because customers who get to this stage are on the verge of buying. And yet, they can’t quite make the leap. Figure out what the resistance is and more of them will convert.

This is the low-hanging fruit of CRO. The place where we can find quick wins.

And today, I’m going to give you the lowdown on bottom funnel marketing. So that you can shred to bits the resistance that’s stopping BoFu customers from buying.

We’ll talk about:

• The common traits of people who get to the bottom of the funnel (BoFu)
• Your main goal when optimizing BoFu
• The best bottom of funnel content
• Bottom of the funnel metrics

That’s a lot to cover. So let’s start.

Who are the people in the lower part of the marketing funnel?

The lower funnel is the peak of all your marketing efforts. People here know about you. They’ve had some form of interaction with your brand. They may have read one or more of your blog posts, seen your social media posts, or consumed one of your lead offers.

They’re very warm leads. Hot as a potato fresh out of the oven.

But there’s a catch. 

They’re also as hot as a potato in someone else’s funnel — that of your competitors.

They’re on the verge of buying. But they’re not sure who to buy from or when to buy. They’re waiting for that perfect moment or the right company to give their money to.

They also want to make the right choice. They don’t want to be made to look like a fool and regret the decision. They’re looking for the assurance that they’re going to get the right product from the right company.

That’s your challenge. This means your lower funnel marketing tactics should address their common fears and solidify their belief in your brand.

Lower funnel marketing tactics that work

Your marketing goal at the bottom of the funnel is to convince BoFu leads of the credibility of your business and the quality of your products or services.

Think of it as the final tribal council in that reality show Survivor. You’ve got to prove you’re worthy of the prize.

How do you do this? What lower funnel marketing tactics work to assure leads that it’s worth handing you their money?

Here’s what you do:

• Build up their confidence in your product or service
• Strengthen their trust in your company
• Reduce their doubts and anxieties

Make the path to a “yes” as easy and as frictionless as possible and you’ll see conversions go up.

I know. I know. Easier said than done.

Your competition is also fighting for that coveted prize. That’s why you need a lower funnel marketing strategy that is effective at nudging BoFu customers to choose you instead of one of your competitors.

You do this by building bottom of the funnel content (BoFu) and offers that make a “yes” to your offer the obvious choice

Bottom of the funnel content is your chance to put your company on a pedestal. Sure. You still have to appeal to the emotional part of decision-making. But this time, you don’t have to be gun-shy about “bragging” about your products and the merits of your business.

Here are some of the types of content that do well in this stage of the marketing funnel:

1. Have different content for the common keywords people use in search

Customers use different keywords depending on where they are in the sales funnel.

For the bottom of the funnel, people use words like:

• discount
• sale
• coupon
• buy
• compare
• reviews
• testimonials
• brand x vs. brand y

Write different landing pages for each of these keywords. The more landing pages you have, the better. It makes your brand more visible in the search engines. The more customers see your site, the more top of mind you are when they finally make the buying decision.

2. Provide material that educates leads about your product

It’s not easy to buy products or services online. It’s not like being in a supermarket where customers have a visual and tactile experience to gauge if the product is what they really want.

So the burden is on you to recreate that experience for them. There are many ways you can do this online depending on what you’re selling.

Here are some things you can do:

1. Show a video walkthrough of the product
2. Offer limited trial accounts
3. Conduct webinars to show the most popular features of the product
4. Have Facebook or YouTube lives answering FAQ’s

Educating BoFu customers about the product and the brand accomplishes two things. First, it puts a face to the company. This increases trust which is highly valued at this stage of the funnel. Secondly, it reduces buyer anxiety and boosts confidence in your brand.

So how do you know what your buyers want to know?

One of the best places to look for common fears and doubts are your customer support tickets. Take the time to go through them and you’ll see a window to the hearts and minds of BoFu leads. Once you have this inside information, you’ll know exactly what type of content to build to address these concerns.

3. Have different case studies that cater to different segments of your market

Case studies are effective content for bottom of the funnel marketing. They give customers confidence in your product. Remember that they don’t want to look foolish. When there’s proof that what you sell has worked for someone else, it reassures them that fools they will not be when they hand you their money.

Here are two things to consider when producing case studies for your company

Have different content for every segment in your audience 

For example in Convertica, we have three different case studies: one for affiliate sites, another for lead generation companies and the third one for eCommerce stores.

There’s a reason for this. The more similar a case study is to the niche you’re targeting, the more persuasive the content is.

Make the content digestible and easy to share.

More than one person may approve the purchase of your product. So make case studies easy to share between them. For example, you can have them in slide decks or you can provide easy comparison charts in a PDF file. The quicker the information is shared between many decision-makers, the easier it is for them to say “yes” to what you’re selling, too.

4. Stand out from the competition

Lower funnel marketing is not the time to be timid about selling.

This is not the time to be vanilla. At this stage, you’re being compared against others in your industry. You’ve got to stand out so decision-makers notice you.

How do you do this? Emphasize your unique selling position. Sell what makes you different and better than others. Elevate the value that you offer in their lives that the competition can not provide.

5. Double down on the persuasion tactics

While a lot of content at the top of the funnel focuses on educating the prospect about their problems, bottom of the funnel content is all about making the hard-sell.

Make your product or service so tantalizing that customers can’t help but gravitate towards it. And one of the most effective ways to do this is by using persuasion techniques that give them a good reason to make the leap and buy.

Here are some that you can use. We’ve covered these before in the blog. So click the link if you want to know more

• urgency and scarcity
• social proof
• appeal to authority

6. Don’t forget the user experience

Sometimes, you get so focused on providing persuasive content that you forget how important user experience is at this point.

By this, I mean making sure that your sales or product pages are designed in a way that makes it easy for website visitors to buy.

Just because a customer has decided to buy from you doesn’t mean he’ll definitely give you the money. It’s not too uncommon for a buyer with a credit card in hand ready to buy to abandon the cart because the page is too confusing, overwhelming or frustrating.

This is, after all, the internet. And a web page that doesn’t make it easy for customers to buy will often lose to the competitor who does it well.

Bottom of The Funnel Metrics: How do you know it’s working?

You’ve got a lot of lower funnel content already. How do you know if your marketing is working?

I’d say if the conversion rate is going up month after month and your revenue reflects that, then you’re doing a great job. It’s also worth tracking the following funnel metrics to discover what to improve in your marketing:

Are these bottom of the funnel metrics going up?

• total purchases
• earnings per lead
• trial sign-ups or demo requests
• return on investment

Are these bottom of the funnel metrics going down?

• cart abandonment
• cost per lead

Recap

You now have the information you need to optimize the bottom of the funnel.

As you can see, it’s an exciting part of the sales pipeline. Customers are in the decision phase and are ready to convert. But it’s also a sensitive stage of the funnel. People have already narrowed down their choices to you and maybe a couple of your competitors. And it’s now up to you to do a better job than your competitors at convincing them.

You do it better than them, you get the sale. You don’t, you lose it. Simple as that.

But with the knowledge that you have now, you’re already one step ahead of the competition. All you have to do is do the work.

I would like to know how this works for you. Drop by at the CRO academy on Facebook and tell me all about it.

Author: Kurt Philip