A marketing funnel is a vital part of a business’s marketing strategy. There are many different stages along your customer journey, but what does a marketing funnel in 2021 look like? Heads up: It includes SMS marketing. 

Texting is the most used data service globally, with over six billion texts sent daily. Understanding how a text marketing platform fits your marketing strategy is essential to keeping up with the needs and lifestyles of your modern consumers. 

This article will discuss the stages of marketing funnels and how text marketing can play a significant role in transitioning buyers through each stage. With the Community app, you can stay with your customers every step of the way — from building awareness through post-purchase follow-up.

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Understanding the Stages of a Marketing Funnel

Sales funnels can look different from company to company, so don’t worry if you think yours might need more or fewer funnel stages for your particular product or service. 

Currently, texting is the most up-to-date method of staying in contact with your audience members as they progress through your conversion funnel. Texting lets you stay in front of and connect directly with buyers as they journey through the funnel to purchase with your brand. 

Here, we’ll show how you can easily manage your audience relationships with Community. 

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Awareness Stage

At the top of the funnel (TOFU), your business is making potential customers aware of your brand. You can achieve brand awareness through signage, traditional advertisements, Facebook ads, blog posts, referrals, events, SEO, video marketing, and other places to promote your custom Community text number. 

Use your Community number to make new prospects aware of subscribing and learning more about your company. Members simply text to your Community number and are automatically added to your audience. There’s no requirement for audience members to download an app; they merely text a regular SMS message or click on your custom URL link to subscribe.

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Interest Stage

Once people convert to being official members of your Community by signing up via text, they are ready to be sent educational information on your product or service. You can text them a link to a blog about your company’s origin story or tell them about your company’s vision. 

Another important component of the interest stage is to be sure you gather as many details about your audience members as possible. Easily achieve this by having them text you the Keywords that you choose. 

For example, suppose you’re a clothing brand that wants to know what type of apparel a member may be interested in. In that case, you can ask them to reply with Keywords like Kids, Maternity, Fitness—whatever words you designate as appropriate descriptors. 

Community uses these Keywords to automatically sort your members into the corresponding subgroup of your audience. Moving forward, you can then send these subgroups the relevant content they’re interested in.

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Prospective Customer Stage

The prospective customer stage is for leads who are seriously considering making their first purchase with your brand. It is essential to stay connected with your audience and continue to nurture them with regularly scheduled contact during this phase. 

One study on whether consumers prefer texting showed that 72% of survey respondents claimed they were more likely to purchase from an online company that communicated with them in real-time. That means consumers are starting to expect faster, more timely communications from their favorite bands. 

You should be there to speak instantly and personally to all of your customers easily and directly with the Community app. Track and manage all of your conversations within the app while the texts appear as regular SMS messages. 

When messaging leads in your prospective customer stage, you can text out promotional offers or more education on using your products to help them transition to the next stage of your marketing funnel.

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Intent to Buy Stage

When your audience members enter the middle of the funnel (MOFU), it’s important to maintain a personal relationship with them. Community’s SMS platform lets you engage in real, 1:1 conversations with members so you can continually nurture these leads—and convert them into sales. 

When your audience responds to the texts you send out, you can reply to each one through the Response Management tool that groups similar messages. Using the tool, you’ll have personal conversations at scale, which will help you build customer loyalty and transition leads out of the intent to buy stage.

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Evaluation Stage

Stay in front of the eyes of your members when they are in the evaluation stage of your funnel. In this stage, prospective customers are making their final decisions to purchase with your company. They have products in their shopping cart, but that doesn't mean they're going to click "buy." Send text notifications on current deals and information that reassures them why you’re the best option out there.

Email and text messaging research show that Gen Z and Millennials find value in receiving personalized content from a brand and prefer to receive promotional notifications more than the preceding generation of Baby Boomers. 

Curate and personalize the content sent to members in the evaluation phase using the Communities subgrouping feature in the Community app. Easily customize different segments of your audience so you can send them the personalized information and promotions they want. 

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Purchase Stage

The bottom of the funnel (BOFU) is your final conversion in the purchase stage. It is essential to follow through the entirety of this phase by staying connected with your customers even after they complete their purchase. This is what creates loyal customers, customer retention, and brand advocates long after the marketing funnel stages are complete.

Send them an SMS that follows up on how their experience with your company went. You can text them a link to a survey, have them answer a quick emoji poll by responding with a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down,” or even request that they leave you a positive review. 

Continue to stay connected over text with your audience members even after their sale is complete. With Community’s SMS platform, you can keep collecting feedback and sending them personalized content to encourage them to stay engaged and ready for future sales.  

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How To Create and Manage Your Marketing Funnel

Whether you pursue a traditional marketing funnel or a digital marketing funnel in 2021, consumers are looking for more convenience, more personalization, and fewer obstacles when communicating with their favorite businesses. It's important to use a variety of marketing tactics and funnel marketing strategies across email newsletters, ads, and social media sites like Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. Still, texting is the simplest and most direct method of contact for both Community Leaders and audience members. 

After establishing the unique stages of your brand’s marketing funnel, you’ll begin to see areas where text marketing plays a role in strengthening your customer relationships.

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Not Your Average SMS Marketing Platform

The Community platform is unlike any other SMS marketing tool. Text messaging is the most convenient method for communicating with your customers—both for them and for you. Sign up as a Community Leader and access all of your audience’s data within our easy-to-navigate app, and send messages that appear as regular texts to your audience.

After you get your custom Community text number, you need to build your marketing funnel by promoting your phone number. You can post it on your social media or the signage in your store, or you can use the custom URL link that we provide. 

Your URL can be incorporated as a Swipe Up link in your Instagram stories or embedded on your website as a clickable button. It provides a super-fast way for members to subscribe to your account.

Promote your phone number and provide Keywords for prospective members to text back. Providing keywords will help you collect and organize as much information about each person as possible. Use that data to inform your interactions and keep their engagement high.

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Communities within Your Community

Easily nurture each audience member and establish personal connections by using our Communities segmenting feature. Group your audience based on their interests, lifestyle, or other defining characteristics. Your audience will appreciate that you’re taking the time to get to know them and that you’ve put thought behind your texts, which builds brand loyalty by drawing them closer.

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Final Thoughts

The Community texting platform is the tool you need to create your marketing funnel in 2021. Use SMS in your marketing campaign to lead your members along their pathway to purchase with you by nurturing relationships via convenient and personal text conversations. Through each stage of the funnel, you'll never worry about leaving a member of your audience on “read” with Community’s Response Management feature. You can text your audience individually or at scale, helping transition buyers through your marketing funnel. Today’s modern consumers are looking for companies that provide personalized content and fast communications—do it all with the Community text marketing platform.  

Sources:

Worldwide Texting Statistics | Vermont.gov 

Study Shows US Customers Prefer Texting With Businesses | PRNewswire.com 

Email and text reign supreme | Twilio.com