For companies primarily existing online, the marketing funnel has been a central focus for a while. The idea of turning casual interest into paying customers through a series of steps has captivated marketers, leading to a surge in both expert advice and dubious solutions.

From our video ad ideas post. While general guidelines on creating an effective marketing funnel are useful, each business has unique factors influencing its success. A flawless customer conversion system is rare, so any improvement significantly impacts revenue. After all, the bottom of your funnel directly impacts your bottom line. This post outlines my top strategies for boosting conversions at the bottom of your marketing funnel, covering:

• Challenges specific to bottom-of-funnel marketing.
• The effect of lower-funnel performance on revenue and the upper funnel.
• 6 practical tips and powerful tools to boost conversions at the bottom of your funnel.

Why is the bottom of the funnel so challenging?

The hurdle many online businesses face when converting leads into customers often arises in the lower-middle section of their marketing funnel. This is where individuals have engaged in higher-value actions, like starting a free trial or attending a product demo or webinar. Converting these individuals into sales or subscriptions should be straightforward, but frustratingly, it’s not for most. This impacts the top of the funnel, potentially rendering lead generation efforts ineffective. Putting aside the intricacies of trial processes and business operations, there are ways to encourage user conversion. Considering the bottom-funnel’s impact on both revenue and top-of-funnel efforts, finding ways to increase conversions at this stage is critical.

Focusing on the Lower Funnel: Why It Matters

Significant time and resources often go into “filling the top of the funnel.” Both new and established businesses understand the value of a consistent influx of new leads and the consequences of its absence. While they know how to attract leads, the process of converting them into sales or paid subscriptions is often inefficient or non-existent. While building and refining a lead nurturing strategy over time is advisable, there are ways to accelerate this process through various mediums. Using paid media for this purpose might seem counterintuitive. After all, if you’re paying to acquire leads, why pay more for the chance to convert them? While this is partly true, if you have a substantial number of leads close to converting, especially across all channels, reinvesting in retargeting this refined audience can be profitable.

Using Paid Media to Boost Bottom-Funnel Conversions

Whether through paid search, social media, or display ads, paid media offers several ways to enhance the bottom half of your funnel.

1. Remarketing

From a paid media standpoint, leveraging remarketing audiences through lists or URLs in paid social and search is the most effective way to influence the bottom of your funnel. Assuming you have the necessary tracking in place (like pixels or analytics connected to your Google account), you need to decide whether to use URL-based retargeting, a list, or both. If you use “thank you” pages after form submissions, using those URLs is generally the easiest way to build these audiences. You can include multiple URLs, so if leads across your site belong to the same category, you can group them into one audience or separate them based on size. Facebook allows you to create audiences based on on-platform actions. This means if you’ve used Facebook Lead Ads and gathered a significant number of submissions, you can easily create a retargeting audience:

Alternatively, if you only have email or contact information, you can upload and map them within the platforms using a CSV file. Facebook and LinkedIn make this simple, while Google has specific account requirements. Once these audiences are generated within the platform, you can market directly to them. Paid social makes this easy. When creating a new ad set, select your created audience (once populated) from the custom audiences section.

2. Include remarketing audiences within search campaigns

Paid search differs slightly. With a large enough audience, you can directly target them through display ads. Alternatively, include these audiences within search campaigns using the “Observation” setting, which allows bid adjustments for specific audiences. For example, include your low-funnel audience in observation and increase bids to guarantee top placement for your offer. Another approach is setting the audience to “Targeting” instead of “Observation” to only target them when they search for specific terms. For the latter, break those ad groups into a separate “low funnel” campaign.

Using Promotions to Boost Bottom-Funnel Conversions

Several promotional strategies can engage and convert leads at the bottom of the funnel. If your product is valuable or “sticky”, these strategies shouldn’t negatively impact long-term churn rates.

3. Promo codes

If your target users understand your core product and its value, leverage promo codes or discounts. While short-term margins may be affected, converting them into satisfied customers allows you to focus on long-term revenue. The discount’s duration and amount depend on your product and existing system. Some businesses may find it structurally challenging to implement discounts without additional internal engineering. In such cases, consider alternative approaches for this audience.

4. Upsells

Building on promo codes, use paid media ads to target these users with upsell opportunities. While it might seem like upselling requires a paying customer, this isn’t always true for those using free trials or freemium versions. Special offers on additional features or tiers can be effective, especially if users are unaware of benefits beyond their current tier.

5. Business development representatives

This strategy is independent of paid media but can significantly improve mid-funnel progress as you scale. While not every business can hire additional sales staff, having extra help with lead vetting from an operational standpoint almost always boosts revenue. Building complex lead nurturing, scoring, and deployment processes can be difficult and time-consuming. Having an extra set of hands to contact and qualify incoming leads can alleviate this burden.

6. In-product tools

Various tools help web apps and tech-driven businesses engage and convert existing users and customers. Companies offering free trials or freemium versions can communicate directly with these users without resorting to email marketing or paid advertising. Proponents of “product-led” growth recommend using your existing customer base as a foundation for scaling. A great new tool on the market that can help with this is Ucentric.

Integrating Ucentric’s widget into your product lets you create and publish notifications delivered directly to users. Use this tool for general announcements, updates, marketing promotions, or notifications. The editor allows hyperlinks, promo codes, images, videos, and anything else to deliver relevant information to your users.

While fantastic for product engagement, Ucentric truly shines as a marketing tool. The key lies in its advanced segmentation, which allows the creation of user segments similar to remarketing audiences on paid platforms. Using AND/OR logic, build targeted segments within Ucentric and craft tiered promotions that align with your business structure. For instance, for numerous free trial users, you can keep them engaged with timely notifications and create time-sensitive promotions, discounts, or other conversion incentives. This allows product-led companies to market within their platform, increasing MRR, ARR, and overall customer satisfaction.

Unlike tools like Drift, Ucentric offers greater personalization and versatility on a per-user basis than a conversational widget. It also allows product managers, marketers, and engineers to send “nudges.” These push notifications appear within the user interface (like Google Chrome extension notifications). Reaching user groups already engaged within your product with timely, targeted promotions surpasses any ad platform with premium click costs.

For low-funnel marketing, in-product engagement is king. However, its use extends beyond free trial prospects. It can supplement existing customer engagement and encourage upsells on features they might not know about. Creating effective in-product notifications and offers follows similar guidelines to running paid ads, considering segmentation (targeting), messaging, and creative elements. However, with such a tool, you’re no longer limited by Google or Facebook’s publishing rules. Whether leveraging paid media or in-product tools, there are many creative ways to enhance your marketing funnel and improve lower-funnel performance. These tools and strategies can be the difference between a lead going cold and becoming a loyal customer. If you’re investing in the top of your funnel, don’t forget those who need a little push towards the finish line.