Marketing Funnel – The Consideration Stage

At this stage, you have potential customers that are aware of the brand and the value it provides, but they probably need more time to be ready to buy. What’s next? You need to build interest in your product or service. That’s the goal of the consideration stage. The potential customer knows little about your product or service and needs to learn more. Keep in mind that the strategies for awareness also go into the consideration stage. For example, social media marketing can help sway consideration by showing more information about your products or reviews, maybe even from friends.

Related Article: Introduction to the marketing funnel

Content marketing is very important too. The difference between the awareness and consideration phases is the type of marketing strategy you use. For example, content during the consideration phase will need to be more in-depth and persuasive. Think about product videos, blog posts that showcase your creative ideas, and if you provide solutions to businesses, then case studies and white papers might be needed. Your ad targeting will likely be different as well, as you can target previous visitors to your site, even targeting people based on the pages they visited or where they are in the purchase process.

Here are some marketing strategies and tactics to build consideration.

Unique Reason to Buy (URB)

While many look at the Unique Selling Points (USP), I think it’s better to focus on the unique reasons to buy. Nobody wants to be sold. URBs explain how your product or service will be a better fit and add more value than the competition. You might want to think out of the box on this one a bit. For example, why do people stop at Starbucks on their way to work? I would argue it isn’t for convenience. My experience means a longer office commute and sitting in the drive-thru line. If it was all about convenience, then the coffee at the office or from a Keurig is a better fit. So if not convenience, what is the unique reason to buy? Once a potential customer is aware of your product or service, make sure that your URB is clear and repeated often.

Testimonials and reviews

Your existing customers can help by sharing their experience with your product or service. A well-crafted testimonial can build trust in potential customers, as they can more easily imagine how they will experience your products. Testimonials some in various forms; written, in audio, or video. And don’t be afraid of a bad review here or there. In fact, I personally don’t trust any product or service that has hundreds of reviews, all 5-star. The occasional bad review gives your other reviews more credibility. I’ve learned that even if you are giving away free gold bricks, someone, somewhere, is not going to like it.

Case Studies

Case studies are more in-depth and cover more complicated scenarios than a testimonial. They work really well for companies that offer a solution or whose projects may last several months They might explain how a business was able to increase their profits using a solution you developed for them. They’re most often in written format as they usually dive into some details and the whys, often giving a bit of history, the implementation process and ongoing results.

Remarketing ads

If you’ve ever done a search or visited a website and looked at a product and then magically, an ad for the company or even that specific product appears on your screen, you have experienced remarketing. Remarketing is simply ads are shown to previous buyers, subscribers, or visitors to a brand’s website or social media. These types of ads are common in eCommerce. You can have one or multiple retargeting ads, they each display on certain criteria, matching the ad to something the potential customer engaged with. If someone searched for it, they are interested in it. Remarketing is an effective way to stay in someone’s mind and hold their hand on the consideration journey.

Webinars

When it comes to educating potential customers and promoting your product or service, webinars are a great tool. Attendance is a huge challenge when it comes to webinars. Think about having a few at different times and days to accommodate various schedules and time zones, and making one of the recordings available for people that either didn’t know about the webinar or couldn’t make it. When hosting a webinar, make sure you’re providing something of value to your customers. Once you have finished a webinar, you can always make it available for other to watch. That’s a great way to give someone the benefit of your webinar, but at a time that’s convenient to them.

Email marketing

Sending promotional or educational emails to an email list is the most basic form of email marketing. When a potential customer becomes aware of your brand and would like more information, they can sign up for a newsletter. Or perhaps you require them to give you their email in exchange for access to a video. The goal is to build your email list and then build consideration by sending out relevant, educational, or even entertaining emails about your products or services. Include a testimonial or two in your emails.

Social media marketing

This works slightly different than it does in the awareness stage. In the consideration stage, potential customers might follow your account(s). Be sure to post consistently with varied content to build interest in your brand. Don’t always go in for the sell, instead, go for value. Remember, people don’t want to be sold. Let them see how others experience your products. If you sell pots and pans, post some recipes with pics or videos showing your pots and pans in use. When people understand the relevant value you offer to them personally, they will move you up the consideration ladder.

These are just some of the things you can do during the consideration stage. Think about your products and services and how to best communicate the value to your customers. If it’s baby products, then word of mouth from other moms will go very far. If it’s a refrigerator, then potential customers will probably want to see it in person, get an idea of how spacious it is, and test how easily it collects fingerprints. Now that your potential customers have considered and learned more about your product or service, it’s all about the conversion.