Could Brands Sustain Without Spending On The Upper Funnel?
By: Abdelnabi Alaeddine, Regional Director – Digital Planning and Investment, UM MENAT
In a highly competitive world of marketing, brands are always seeking ways to drive conversions and transactions on their sites and apps. While lower funnel tactics, such as precise targeting and retargeting continue to play a critical role in driving ROAS, it’s essential to recognize the massive impact of upper funnel media on the overall customer journey.
Upper funnel media, which is also referred to as brand awareness campaigns, covers a wide range of tactics and strategies aimed at introducing potential customers to your brand which you haven’t been communicating to earlier. Also, it establishes a positive perception about your brand in order to generate interest. This initial phase of the customer journey is often overlooked, as it doesn’t directly lead to immediate sales. However, its influence on lower funnel conversions and long-term customer loyalty is undeniable.
Does focusing on the lower funnel sustain in the long run?
Focusing on the lower funnel with no focus on the upper funnel is considered a short-term marketing strategy. Short term marketing will show a positive impact on sales but not for so long. Multiple studies state that a short-term marketing strategy will reach a saturation level after a 2 months of media activation as the demand will start declining on week 10. This proves brands must invest in the upper funnel in order to build their brand and drive consideration in the long term.
How The Upper Funnel Media Influences Lower Funnel Conversions?
- Increased Brand Awareness and Consideration: The Upper funnel media effectively introduces your brand to a wider audience, making it more likely for potential customers to recognize and consider your products or services when they are ready to make a purchase.
- Positive Brand Image: Consistent and impactful upper funnel messaging helps shape a positive brand perception, building trust and credibility among potential customers, making them more likely to choose your brand over competitors.
- Relationship Building: The Upper funnel initiatives, such as informative blog posts, engaging social media interactions, and attending industry events, foster relationships with potential customers, keeping your brand top-of-mind and increasing their likelihood of doing business with you in the future.
- Enlarging your pool of in market audience: With upper funnel campaigns, you keep increasing your pool of audiences including website visitors and engaged audience for remarketing on a later stage.
- Impact on search volumes: I believe everyone would agree that search generates usually the highest numbers of conversions. However, we tend to hit a saturation level especially on branded terms if volumes are limited. Therefore, it is crucial to keep investing on the upper funnel to drive audience to search for your brand and increase volumes.
The impact of upper funnel campaigns has been proven by different studies. By moving from last click attribution to Data Driven Attribution, the studies showcase at least 40% of conversions are attributed to upper funnel campaigns. In addition, some brands have been investing in modeling exercises which have proven the contribution of upper and mid funnel campaigns on sales and conversions.
What is the ideal split between upper and lower funnel?
Research by Les Binet and Peter Field found that the ideal split is 60/40 towards upper funnel. With this split, brands will be able to continue generating sales on their sites but are able as well to build a brand love and maintain top of mind awareness. This approach will allow brands in the long term to less depend on media to generate sales which will improve its ROI.
We need to keep in mind that the split might differ between well established brands vs new brands, but upper and mid funnel budgets will always need to be higher than lower funnel budgets.
In summary, Investing in Upper Funnel Media for Long-Term Success
By incorporating effective upper funnel media strategies into your marketing plan, you lay the foundation for long-term success. By generating awareness, nurturing leads, and building relationships, you position your brand for lower funnel success and drive more conversions. Remember, the customer journey is not a linear process; it’s a continuous cycle of engagement and nurturing, and upper funnel media plays a pivotal role in keeping your brand at the forefront of your target audience’s minds.
Abdelnabi Alaeddine
Abdelnabi has been in the industry for more than 13+ years and worked across large number of clients within different industries. He played a major role in developing golden rules of digital planning for multiple clients based on their need and industry. Moreover, he had several initiatives which resulted in being more efficient and effective in digital planning such as: the development of incremental reach calculator which helped planners and clients to plan online video campaign to compliment TV campaigns, proving the role of upper funnel campaigns in impacting conversions and many others.
