Happy Sunday! I hope that you had an amazing week and that you’re currently sitting on your couch, relaxed, with your feet up, and ready to dive into how you can drive more awareness. This isn’t some fluff or thought leader content today… we’re going deep into tactics. You should be able to leave this newsletter with 1-2 ideas of how you’ll drive more top-of-funnel for your brand.
In case you missed it, season 7 of Limited Supply is officially over. Moiz and I ended with what we like to call the listener's mailbag episode, our version of an AMA. We cover landing pages, how we spend our time each week, 3PL issues, what’s going on with Meta, how to use your Meta reps, and a whole lot more. We’ll be back in a couple of weeks, but in the meantime, catch up on old episodes on Apple or Spotify!
By the way, my newsletter’s referral program is back and functioning again! Use your link at the bottom to share the newsletter with colleagues, peers and others in the industry. Here are the tiers and prizes I put together (2 people have already gotten a Jolie)!
- 1 referral = in-depth guide on building an email program for your brand (flows, campaigns, strategies, etc.)
- 20 referrals = $25 Visa gift card
- 50 referrals = Limited edition hoodie that says, “Happy Sunday”
- 100 referrals = Clutch Max portable phone charger
- 250 referrals = Jolie filtered showerhead
- 500 referrals = Apple AirPods Max
- 1,000 referrals = Apple MacBook Pro
Scroll all the way to the bottom of this email to see your sharable link and a link to track your progress toward prizes!
Okay, now, let’s get into today’s newsletter…
Regardless of how amazing your performance marketing skills can be, there is no denying that having strong brand recognition or awareness helps drastically reduce your customer acquisition cost. I know that brands like Jolie have a much more efficient cost to acquire a new customer than any of their competitors. Why? Because their brand is well known. This is why celebrity brands also do so well, granted the talent involved understands how to drive buzz/awareness. It is also the gateway to not being held hostage to a single ads platform.
This week, I want to discuss marketing funnels and 12 ways to move your customers from top-of-funnel awareness to middle-of-funnel engagement to bottom-of-funnel conversions for your brand. I’ll provide some tactical insights on the best strategies for each stage. If any come to mind for you, reply and share them — I’ll compile all the answers and share the link when my site goes live shortly.
Alright, let’s dive in:
What are funnels, and what is the AIDA framework?
In short, inside the world of marketing and sales, almost everything we do is driven by the concept of converting customers through some kind of funnel.
Your “funnel” represents the full customer journey from someone’s initial awareness of your product all the way to their final purchase decision. Think of that upside down cone, that funnel.
It’s visualized as a funnel because at each stage, there is going to be some percentage of dropoff in the total number of people who graduate from the next step. It always gets narrower and smaller the further down the funnel they go.
The most common framework for talking about funnels is the AIDA framework, which was invented in 1898 by Elias St. Elmo Lewis, who was an American advertising and sales pioneer. AIDA stands for attention, interest, desire, and action.
Lewis believed that in order for a customer actually to buy something from you, they needed to progress from being aware of your product to being interested enough to learn about the product's benefits and value props, to then having the desire to benefit from your product.
He also believed that the fourth stage, action (or the decision to buy), would naturally result from a marketer simply doing their job to move the customer through the first three stages of the funnel. Here’s my interpretation of the AIDA framework and what you need to know:
A) is for Awareness: This is pure top-of-the-funnel marketing. The goal here is to get as many potential customers as possible to become aware of your product and brand. This stage is about capturing the attention of your target audience through any means necessary, including organic content, ads, partnerships, sponsorships, affiliates, influencers, TV, PR, billboards, etc, to drive the largest possible awareness for your product or offer.
I) is for Interest: After becoming aware of the brand, you want potential customers to show interest in learning more. At this stage, your goal is to educate the consumer on more of the specific benefits and differentiators your product offers to get them more excited to buy. You should do this through different kinds of ads, more educational content in your newsletter, a podcast, SMS marketing, product-in-use content, comparison charts, FAQs, etc. The goal is to nurture their awareness into genuine interest by guiding them to the next stage.
D) is for desire. This is when you need to use marketing to make them desire to buy. The best way to do this is through emotionally driven content. I like story-driven lifestyle and product-in-use content, and strong testimonials. In general, people buy something because it either A) solves their problem, B) makes them look or feel good, or C) helps them gain new status around their peers. In general, you want to show them what life will be like after they buy. Reviews and strong testimonials also work incredibly well here, as consumers want to know that others have purchased and received the end result or experience they are looking for as well.
A) And the final A is for action. This is when they either decide to buy or churn. The goal here is to hit them with the right hook to purchase. The best way to get them to convert is typically to offer one more final incentive like a free gift with purchase or a percentage off. If you have done a good enough job in the first 3 stages, they will feel compelled to buy.
With the tragic losses we continue to have with tracking capabilities, from a content and creative standpoint, everything should feel full-funnel. Meaning that whether someone is at the top of the funnel (doesn’t know your brand) or at the bottom of the funnel (ready to buy from a website retargeting email), all your content/creative/landing pages should properly educate and sell. You never know which user wasn’t properly tracked and may get served the wrong ad or shown the wrong email flow.
To expand your top-of-funnel reach, you have to use all of the tools in your toolkit to generate awareness and demand. These are my go-to recommendations:
Meta and Google Ads: The Holy Grail of Top of Funnel
Meta and Google, specifically YouTube, are the two of the biggest ad platforms for a reason — they work. Most of your top-of-funnel ad dollars should still be spent on these two channels, with the majority going toward paid social and maybe 20-25% toward YouTube. The key to standing out isn’t in the campaign setup, it’s all in the creative. Invest in creating quality content that tells your brand story, who you are, why you’re better, what gives you the right to compete in your category, etc.
TV: The King’s Still Here
TV is the next best place to get massive top-of-funnel awareness beyond paid social. I still recommend using Tatari to buy, manage, and measure your TV spend. The CPMs on remnant TV are incredibly competitive (can be as low as $3) and convergent TV inventory (linear and streaming channels) still add massive ability for your performance paid social to scale efficiently.
You can start simple — produce one engaging 60-second founder story commercial. Think of this like paving the road with reach, and then the Ferrari driving on that road is your performance ads. The better the road is paved, the smoother that ride will be.
Podcasts: The New Frontier of Product Discovery
Podcasts are a sleeper channel and have become a great place to discover or learn about new products. I know podcasts aren’t anything new, but let me tell you what is… cult-followed influencer podcasts.
You can go to different exchanges to buy inventory on random health podcasts, crime podcasts, etc. But when you sponsor something like The Skinny Confidential or the Melissa Wood Health podcast, you’ll drive some insane numbers. People aren’t there just for the content. They’re there to absorb and try to replicate the lifestyle of the host. These listeners also know the hosts aren’t going to promote products they don’t actually believe in — it’s similar to customer acquisition through influencers on YouTube a couple of years ago.
Short-Form Content
It’s obvious but short form video has been and still is dominating social platforms and new product discovery for so many brands. Platforms like Instagram Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts are surfing the wave of content consumption. Use these platforms to answer the basic questions about your brand and product. Engage with your audience through comments and DMs, and use their curiosity as inspiration for your next video.
The way these platforms can immediately drive hundreds of thousands of views right now, completely for free… it’s a shame if you’re not taking advantage of the reach right now. Talk all about your product, show behind the scenes, explain why you started it, put up 35 videos pitching 35 different reasons people should buy your product, etc.
You can jump on trends to try and get views while riding a trend, but that doesn’t need to be the strategy to get views. Genuinely talking about your product in a way that’s exciting to listen to is all you need. Just pretend you’re explaining your company to a 6th grader.
Creator Seeding: The Influencer Effect
When influencers share your product, it's not just the direct engagement that benefits you. Platforms like Instagram notice who views these posts, lowering your CPM and significantly boosting your awareness in a way that’s also a co-sign by the poster. Remember, it's about who sees your product, not just the immediate sales.
Brands like Jolie, Aritzia, Cadence, and others do a fantastic job of this. Their fans/customers help them promote new products, new ways to talk about the products, or just help drive awareness in new pockets and communities. This is something that either has to be done at scale or not done at all. It may not be worth it if you’re only seeding to a few people a month (aka less than 100 minimum).
minisocial is actually a great way to easily seed product to creators at scale and get content in exchange for it that you own the rights to.
Affiliate Marketing: Generosity Pays Off
You can encourage affiliates to promote your product by offering a higher commission rate. Amazon affiliate programs generally pay publishers/affiliates 3-10% commission on various products. Brands usually offer 10-15% commission. Goli used to do something smart: instead of running promotions for their customers (i.e., get 30% off this weekend), they’d tell their affiliates that that weekend, they could earn 30% commission instead.
Remember, you’re already likely paying Facebook 50-100% commission, so if getting a promotion from another channel where you’re even paying 15%, 20% 30% or even 40% can still be worth it. For a previous brand, I would pitch premium publishers that I’d pay them 30% comission because it was a win-win for both of us — they’d place us high on lists and often on their site and we’d pay them more for it!
Brand Collaborations: Mutual Benefit and Visibility
Collaborating with another brand can significantly increase your general visibility. It can be as grand as launching a collaborative product like the recent Liquid Death x Elf Cosmetics collab, but it can also be as light as swapping branded post cards in each others shipper boxes or doing an Instagram giveaway.
The whole point is to cross-polinate audiences that you believe have benefits from being exposed to the other. American Express and Equinox. Vacation sunscreen and Prince tennis. TRUFF and Hidden Valley Ranch. All these overlaps create a win-win for both brands, and a win for the customers who’s a fan of the brand.
Another interesting form of collabs I've been seeing is similar to licensing. Disney, specifically, has been approaching brands like Sanzo and Immi to create a collab product that advertises a movie of theirs. It's using the brand as a platform to reach the audience they want, and it's helping the brand by giving it the Disney co-sign, as well as advertising rights to reach the fans there.
Product Launches: Enticing New Customers
Launching a new product can attract a fresh audience and serve as a great way to build new interest. By solving a new problem or targeting a different demographic, you can tap into a customer base that was previously out of reach.
Limited Edition Products: Creating Urgency
Releasing products in limited quantities can spur fence-sitters into action. This strategy works well for brands that can offer unique or exclusive items with limited availability.
If you have a sizable customer list, limited product drops are a fantastic way to drive up engagement and LTV from exisitng customers, as well as create buzz.
Out of Home (OOH) in Major Cities: Get Drive/Walk By Awareness
Billboards on the 101 or in NYC can be great for top-of-funnel awareness. I definitely wouldn’t count these out as a way to drive visibility for a new product launch or a great offer for your brand. Similar to creator seeding, you want to go big or not go at all here, if you’re doing billboards. Just having 1 or 2 won’t do much.
If you have a smaller budget for OOH, I would recommend one of the following for maximum impact:
- Running truckside billboards (like these) where they drive around major cities and get in front of thousands of people per day.
- Run taxi-top inventory — this is efficient and high impact.
- Put up a big posters/bills campaign around a major city with loud creative.
P.S., I’ll be speaking at the Outdoor Advertising Association of America’s 2024 OOH Media Conference in San Diego. Join me and Brian Rappaport from Quan Media Group there. Brian does all the OOH ads you see for brands like Skims, Dagne Dover, Olipop, The Farmers Dog, etc.
Native Ads: Unlock Billions of Page Views on The Open Web
I wrote an 8-page email about how to leverage native ads and why they matter. Just search your inbox for “8 pages on the $100BN/yr ad category that you aren’t leveraging today!” if you want to read it.
The top native ad platforms (Taboola and Outbrain) allow you to place ads programmatically on major publishers for competitive CPMs. Both companies claim to have access to over 7,000 publisher sites, including nearly all mainstream media sites that each generate billions of page views per month. The product works.
A funnel you can rely on here is driving native ad traffic to an advertorial you know converts and then testing it across different publishers. You’ll likely find that 3-10 publishers will work well for you out of all your testing, and then the rest may just be okay or not perform that well.
Traditional PR: Borrow Brand and Distribution From Top Publishers
Traditional PR isn’t as powerful as creating your own content, but it’s definitely a quick way to borrow someone else’s brand and get fast distribution. Getting covered in Forbes, Town and Country, or CNBC (or just a great newsletter like Wirecutter) can still be very effective if you can do it. It’s also another great way to get social proof, which helps you earn trust and validation from potential customers.
What else would you add?
I’m going to turn this into an article on my website when it goes up in a couple of weeks, along with all of the other past newsletters. If you’d add something to this email, reply with it and how you want to be credited, so I can add it.
Now, onto some fun stuff…
Vendor of the Week:
Northbeam — The attribution software leader now has accurate Media Mix Modeling (MMM+) to counter privacy-tracking issues and better project ROI.
As I mentioned earlier in this email, one of the unfortunate realities of digital advertising is we are losing access to data that allows ad platforms to better target, report, and attribute ad performance. With cookie depreciation, platform walled gardens, and the rise of channel usage among CTV, influencers, and podcasts, the best way to attribute performance for brands spending more than $3M/year (more than $250k/month) is with Northbeam’s Media Mix Modeling.
The new MMM+ product also accurately predicts (to nearly 100% accuracy) which campaigns you can squeeze more dollars out of, and then lets you track that increased spend to ensure it’s properly delivering on its intended results.
If you’re spending less than $250k/month, you’re better off with Northbeam’s MTA (multi-touch attribution) model. But let me tell you why I’m excited about Northbeam’s MMM+ product:
- This is now the first attribution dashboard with predictive power. You can focus media budgets in the right place because Northbeam helps you understand where you’re likely to see the highest return on investment.
- You can model diminishing return scenarios. The point of diminishing return is when you’re spending more than the channel wants to support, which causes your CPA to go up for no reason. At a previous brand I was at, we found out the hard way (aka by losing a few hundred thousand dollars), that our point of diminishing returns was about $1.5M/month on Meta ads. Had we used MMM+, we would’ve seen that ahead of time.
- MMM is a white-glove product offering from Northbeam, so you can customize the model to fit your business reporting needs and overall business goals.
MMM+ feels like an analyst, an FP&A employee, and advertising attribution software all in one platform. There’s no reason you shouldn’t take a demo and see how your brand could benefit from better attribution, modeling, and reporting.
There’s a reason companies like Hexclad, Jones Road, MUDWTR, and Blenders all use Northbeam — the product is like a co-pilot for their media teams.
Click here to set up a demo and see how MMM+ can supercharge your brand!
That's all for this week
I hope you enjoyed today’s newsletter and found one or two things you’ll try to generate more awareness. I had fun writing it and filling out the details of each one. Generating that buzz is THE hardest part of any consumer brand’s journey.
Tonight is Easter Sunday, so I hope you had an amazing day celebrating however you do, and plan to get 9 hours of sleep tonight. Have an amazing upcoming week. Get a workout in. Call a friend you haven’t spoken to in a while. Find 1 way to make your daily routine more beneficial to you.
I’ll see you next Sunday… same time, same place!