In business,\u00a0a \u201cconversion\u201d is the desired action a business or marketer wants a potential customer to take<\/strong>. Typically, the action is making a purchase or starting a subscription.<\/p>\n Different models, known as \u201cfunnels,\u201d show the customer journey from first contact with a business to a conversion. As discussed in\u00a0our article about the marketing funnel<\/a>, the shape of the funnel depicts the size of the target audience as they move toward a purchase decision.<\/p>\n As potential customers move through the funnel, the audience size decreases due to various reasons like disinterest, affordability, or competition. This funnel shape represents the narrowing down of the audience until only those who decide to convert remain.<\/p>\n Any conversion funnel, no matter the concept, can be simplified by breaking it into three parts:<\/p>\n Each of these parts has unique features and each has\u00a0content marketing<\/a>\u00a0strategies that can increase their success in moving potential customers to the next step of your funnel.<\/p>\n In the next sections, we\u2019ll look at the Top, Middle, and Bottom of the conversion funnel. We\u2019ll explore different aspects of each stage of the funnel, including:<\/p>\n Ready to go? Let\u2019s start at the top of the funnel and work our way down.<\/p>\n The top of the conversion funnel is the stage where potential customers become aware of your product or brand.\u00a0The goal with the top of your conversion funnel is to generate interest, capture attention, and initiate the customer journey.<\/strong>\u00a0However, it\u2019s not as simple as driving as many people as possible into your funnel.<\/p>\n The main ToFu challenge is attracting the right customers. Getting the wrong people at the top can decrease the chances of converting them later. The solution to this challenge is to conduct thorough\u00a0audience research<\/a>\u00a0to make sure you\u2019re targeting the right audience segment.<\/p>\n Analyze any audience<\/p>\n with Semrush One2Target<\/p>\n<\/div>\n ToFu marketing tactics aim to attract and engage a broad audience in the early stages of their buyer’s journey. They generate awareness, interest, and initial engagement.<\/p>\n Here are 3 of the most popular top of funnel marketing tactics:<\/p>\n As an example, Dunkin\u2019 Donuts partnered with Charlie Damelio who has over 151M followers on TikTok. Here\u2019s a video of Damelio promoting Dunkin Donuts coffee.<\/p>\n These tactics help your business reach potential customers who were previously unaware or largely unfamiliar with your brand.<\/p>\n Top of the Funnel content is all about offering valuable content. Remember, at this point, your potential customers don\u2019t know who you are, so focus on making a great first impression.<\/p>\n Instead of trying to \u201csell\u201d something, be helpful in solving customer pain points for free. Help them get acquainted with your industry, find resources, and establish your business as a helpful leader willing to educate, support, and answer questions.<\/p>\n Some examples of top of the conversion funnel assets include:<\/p>\n Demonstrate your understanding of potential customers\u2019 pain points and your commitment to helping them using your specific expertise. For instance, Salesforce’s LinkedIn post showcases their expertise in sales and service, highlights their knowledge of AI, and offers free data with a link for further information.<\/p>\n While Salesforce products have AI integrations, they avoid being too \u201csalesy\u201d at this point. Instead, they offer value. Remember, customers are seeking answers and insights. They\u2019re not necessarily ready to make a purchase.<\/p>\n To measure the success of your ToFu marketing strategy, set a strategy for gathering conversion funnel analytics. By gathering data, you can better understand what ToFu strategies are working and which aren\u2019t. Then, double down on the winning tactics and make adjustments to less successful tactics.<\/p>\n Here are 5 useful funnel metrics to help you measure the impact of your strategy:<\/p>\n If you\u2019re looking to get data on these metrics for competitors,\u00a0Semrush\u2019s Traffic Analytics tool<\/a>\u00a0is a great place to start. We offer an example analysis in the last section of this article.<\/p>\n The middle of the conversion funnel is where potential leads become more deeply engaged.\u00a0The goal with the MoFu stage is to nurture and guide leads toward becoming qualified customers.<\/strong>\u00a0The focus is on growing their interest and educating them about the value of your offerings.<\/p>\n The challenge with the middle of the funnel is finding the right balance between the frequency and relevance of your communications to keep potential customers engaged without overwhelming them.<\/p>\n Uncover competitor purchase conversions<\/p>\n with Semrush’s Market Explorer Tool<\/p>\n<\/div>\n MoFu marketing tactics are designed to nurture leads, build relationships, and guide potential customers further along the buyer journey. Tactics in the middle of the funnel tend to be less about broad awareness and more about direct engagement.<\/p>\n Here are 4 effective MOFU marketing tactics:<\/p>\n For example,\u00a0nerdwallet.com<\/a>\u00a0offers a free mortgage calculator, along with mortgage rate comparisons from banks. This interactive content helps move potential customers closer to conversion.<\/p>\n Middle of funnel content focuses on nurturing leads, building relationships, and educating potential customers who have shown an initial interest.<\/p>\n Here are some well-suited types of content for the MoFu stage:<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a product demo from Sephora showcasing their tinted moisturizers:<\/p>\n Remember, the content in the MOFU stage is focused on deepening relationships, providing value, and cultivating leads. It helps leads better understand your offerings, address their pain points, and move them closer to the bottom of the funnel.<\/p>\n Mid-funnel metrics focus on nurturing relationships and encouraging ongoing engagement from potential customers.<\/p>\n Here are some MoFu metrics to measure:<\/p>\n The Bottom of the conversion funnel is where potential customers become ready to make a purchase decision.\u00a0The primary goal of the BoFu stage is to convert potential customers into actual customers.<\/strong><\/p>\n As any business owner knows, it\u2019s never as easy as asking potential customers to click \u201cbuy.\u201d There are several challenges at this stage of the funnel, including pricing, alternatives, and customer concerns about efficacy or support.<\/p>\n All of these potential issues can be solved with the right information and resources at the right time. Right resource, right time. This is the key for the BoFu stage.<\/p>\n BoFu marketing tactics are designed to turn potential customers into paying customers and brand advocates. You do this by creating confidence, clarity, and a sense of urgency that will encourage potential customers to make that final purchase decision.<\/p>\n 3 effective BoFu tactics include:<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a look at a pricing page from\u00a0mailchimp.com<\/a>. Notice they highlight different plans with different pricing and features. They also offer a questionnaire to help potential customers select the right plan for their needs.<\/p>\n BoFu content should help build customers confidence that your product is the right one for them and that now is the right time to buy.<\/p>\n Here are some common types of BoFu content:<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a buyers guide video from REI explaining the process for picking the correct hammock and setting it up for use.<\/p>\n With BoFu content, speak directly to the value of your products, how they solve customer pain points, why your offerings are better than competitors, and why now is the time to buy. This is the stage where it\u2019s appropriate to push the sale.<\/p>\n Here are a few key BoFu metrics to track:<\/p>\n Uncovering weaknesses here can help you look back across your entire funnel to streamline your processes and become more effective in<\/p>\n Now that we\u2019ve covered the tactics, content, and metrics involved in managing every stage of your business\u2019s conversion funnel, let\u2019s do an example analysis of a funnel built by another business. This kind of analysis can reveal the most impactful strategies your competitors use to convert your market\u2019s customers.<\/p>\n To do this, we\u2019ll pretend we\u2019re marketers for a company in the Apparel & Fashion industry. Using\u00a0Semrush .Trends<\/a>, we\u2019ll identify a domain with a strong funnel and gather data that can reveal various successful aspects of their conversion funnel.<\/p>\n The goal of the conversion funnel is to generate conversions, so when looking for inspiration for your own conversion funnel strategy, it\u2019s best to analyze successful businesses.<\/p>\n Using Semrush\u2019s\u00a0Market Explorer\u00a0<\/a>tool, we analyzed the Apparel & Fashion industry using the All Domains report. The tool gathered data for 1,000 top domains in the industry, and we filtered by Purchase Conversion to see which domain had the highest rate.<\/p>\n Here, we discovered\u00a0zennioptical.com<\/a>\u00a0has an unusually high Purchase Conversion of 6.62%. Let\u2019s dig in and see what strategies they\u2019re using to achieve this number.<\/p>\n Uncover competitor purchase conversions<\/p>\n with Semrush’s Market Explorer Tool<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Before looking specifically at their funnel strategies, it helps to understand what the competitor\u2019s audience looks like. This will make it easier to understand how their marketing assets are targeted toward various audience segments.<\/p>\n You can use One2Target to do audience research on up to 5 competitors within your market. Here\u2019s a look at Zennioptical.com\u2019s audience\u2019s demographic and socioeconomic breakdown.<\/p>\n It looks like zennioptical.com\u2019s audience is majority female aged 25-34. They live in households of 3-4 people (families), have a low income, work full time, and have a highschool diploma or college degree.<\/p>\n With this information about their audience, we\u2019ll be able to better assess their marketing assets to understand how their funnel works. It will also give us a better understanding of how we might improve our own funnel moving forward.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s look at zennnioptical.com\u2019s traffic acquisition strategy. To do this, we can use the\u00a0Traffic Analytics<\/a>\u00a0tool. Inside the\u00a0Traffic Journey Report<\/strong>, we looked at the total traffic breakdown. We deselected direct traffic to see what other channels the business is using to drive traffic.<\/p>\n Here, we can see Organic Search and Referral are strong channels for Zennioptical.com. Looking at the results over time, it looks like their referral strategy has seen a boost since December of last year. They\u2019re driving a lot of traffic into their funnel with this channel.<\/p>\n With this data, we could use other Semrush reports and tools to dig deeper into their backlink strategy or look more closely at their SEO strategy to get ideas for our own.<\/p>\n Using the\u00a0Traffic Analytics Top Pages<\/a>\u00a0report we can see which pages zennioptical.com is promoting through their Email, paid search, and paid social channels. Filtering by Email to bring the pages receiving the most email traffic to the top, we found this page highlighting glasses under $30.<\/p>\n On this middle-of-the-funnel page, there are a few features meant to increase customer engagement and help them move toward the bottom of the funnel.<\/p>\n The filters on the left hand of the screen make perusing styles simple, the \u201cFavorites\u201d option available with the heart icon makes building your custom favorites list easy, and the \u201cVirtual Try-On\u201d button allows potential customers see how the glasses look before moving to the bottom of the funnel and making a purchase.<\/p>\n Monitoring your rivals\u2019 marketing activity online can provide insights into how they\u2019re attracting potential customers and how they\u2019re engaging with them once they\u2019re inside their conversion funnel.<\/p>\nToFu, MoFu, BoFu: Conversion Funnel Analysis<\/h2>\n
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Top of Funnel (ToFu)<\/h2>\n
Top of Funnel Marketing Tactics<\/h3>\n
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ToFu Content: Building the Top of Your Conversion Funnel<\/h3>\n
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Top of the Funnel Metrics<\/h3>\n
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Middle of Funnel (MoFu)<\/h2>\n
Middle of Funnel Marketing Tactics<\/h3>\n
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MoFu Content: Building the Middle of Your Conversion Funnel<\/h3>\n
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Middle of the Funnel Metrics<\/h3>\n
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Bottom of Funnel (BoFu)<\/h2>\n
Bottom of Funnel Marketing Tactics<\/h3>\n
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BoFu Content: Building the Bottom of Your Conversion Funnel<\/h3>\n
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Bottom of the Funnel Metrics<\/h3>\n
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Competitor Conversion Funnel Analysis: Learning From Your Competitors\u2019 Conversion Funnels<\/h2>\n
1. Identify the Companies in Your Market Converting the Most Customers<\/h3>\n
2. Research Competitor Audiences to Understand their Targeting and Segmentation<\/h3>\n
3. Unpack What Traffic Channels Competitors Use Attract, Engage, and Convert Potential Customers<\/h3>\n
4. Discover How Competitors Deepen Engagement and Close Sales with Promos<\/h3>\n
5. Monitor Your Rivals\u2019 Online Marketing Activity to Pinpoint Strategy Shifts<\/h3>\n