Where is SEO in the Marketing Funnel?
When you’re thinking about your next marketing campaign, it is important to consider how your customers find your brand, work through the decision-making process, and make a decision to buy or pass on your product or service. The customer’s journey process is often referred to as the marketing funnel. However, they are leaving out the most critical aspect of success: SEO.
SEO, or search engine optimization, is a strategic action that involves targeting specific keywords to attract attention and drive sales. Understanding how SEO affects the customer’s buying journey gives you the skills to create better, more successful digital marketing campaigns in the future. When used correctly, SEO drives the customer’s decision-making, truly making it the SEO marketing funnel.
Understanding the SEO Marketing Funnel
To understand the SEO marketing funnel, you must first understand the three parts of the customer’s buying journey, represented in the funnel. The SEO marketing funnel breaks down how your customer finds your brand to the point when they complete a sale. It is an easy-to-understand representation of each stage of the buying process for the customer, and it is generally understood in three parts.
Top of the Funnel
The top of the funnel (awareness) represents where the customer first discovers your brand. This is when a customer has a problem or a need, and you’ve made them aware that your company and its services or products are available. This is where you are trying to reach as many potential customers as possible, getting attention and brand recognition.
Initially, you’re casting a wide net with your website content. However, the information you put online should be purposeful. It should be targeted—at potential customers and not just anyone who could learn you exist. You don’t know which people will become customers, but you’ve identified those who could. SEO works at the top of the funnel by guiding users with keywords to your website when they might not have otherwise found it.
Middle Funnel
The middle funnel (interest / desire) is where customers begin weighing the pros and cons of a product or service from different brands. The customer is seeking a solution to their problem. Will you have the product or service? Is your brand a viable option to try? Will you be able to meet their needs?
Customers at this stage of the buying journey may think they know what they need, but they are often still learning and considering multiple options. Keywords used by the prospective customer will match your content, giving them the information they want. The SEO marketing funnel works to bring users to service or product pages, your blog, or even videos that explain more about what you provide.
Bottom Funnel
The bottom of the funnel (action) is where the customer makes their choice. Prospective customers become customers and complete the sale. They have found the solution to the problem or need. SEO works at this point by bringing them to a point at which they take action. SEO brought them to the website, gave them the information they sought, and finally, to the point where they took action. SEO is present at every part of the customer’s journey, including the end.
How SEO Works
Now that we’ve identified the basic parts of the funnel, let’s explore how the SEO marketing funnel functions. Generally, SEO can be used as part of an initial search, the point at which a user is looking for more information, and even when they are at a point where they want to make a choice.
Organic Search
SEO is often used to capture organic search results. When a company did not pay for its website to show up on top of the search results (also known as a "SERP", short for Search Engine Results Page), but the customer found you in a natural, organic way, that’s organic SEO. Your business appeared because your information met their needs.
The customer is typically looking for information when they find a website organically. When using organic search, marketers might incorporate keywords into blog posts, like this one, or within the web pages on the site.
When you cast a wide net to capture people looking for a product or service you offer, SEO will guide prospective customers to your business. When prospective customers take more time to learn about their options, SEO will naturally guide them to the information you provide, whether it’s on a services page or a blog post.
Paid Search
Paid search typically appears in digital advertising, like a sponsored search result or an ad on Meta. People click on the ads, and the company that placed the ad pays for those clicks. Different ads cost different amounts based on the search volume of the keywords used.
Paid search is commonly referred to as PPC or pay-per-click marketing. Paid search still uses SEO in the ad content, but the company essentially pays for the keywords in the advertisement. This is a great option for targeting a specific audience or prospective customer base. PPC is commonly used in Google Ad, Meta, YouTube, and TikTok, among other platforms offering PPC advertising.
Where is SEO Most Commonly Used in the SEO Marketing Funnel?
Some marketers debate if SEO should be more heavily used at one part of the SEO marketing funnel over another. Due to its versatility and effective functionality, SEO serves a purpose at each marketing funnel stage. SEO can be used to target prospective customers in the right demographic for your product or service at the top of the funnel. It can be used in the middle of the funnel to help inform prospective customers of their options. It can even be used at the bottom of the funnel to secure an action by the customer.
How SEO Can Help Your Marketing Campaign
SEO is a tool that can improve the results of any marketing campaign, whether as a tertiary support system to a print campaign or as its independent digital marketing campaign. When you think about your next marketing campaign, consider how the SEO marketing funnel can help your strategy.
Target Audience
SEO helps you target prospective customers, putting your brand in front of the right people. SEO is excellent for improving local search results, and it can even target certain demographics depending on the keyword used. For example, if you only want to target wholesale businesses, incorporating that keyword might help weed out retail users searching for similar products or services. This is perfect for the top of the funnel.
Gets Traffic to Your Website
SEO drives traffic to your site. If someone is searching for something, the words they use are found by search engines. The search engine then attempts to match those keywords with websites where the keyword is present. The goal of the search engine is to produce results that directly apply or answer the question or provide a solution to a user.
When you have keywords included meaningfully in the content of your website, people will find it. This is especially helpful to those customers in the middle of the SEO marketing funnel, where they are looking for more details before they purchase.
Always follow SEO best practices when it comes to implementing keywords. Search will produce results from ethical websites, meaning they only use white-hat SEO. White hat SEO means the company is following Google’s rules, and it’s not loaded with keywords where it doesn’t make sense. Being purposeful with your marketing is commonly known as inbound marketing.
Generate Qualified Leads
SEO is also an excellent way to generate qualified leads. While there are plenty of ways to capture people on the web, SEO can help you get leads from people who are likely to convert to a customer because you’ve specifically targeted them to be a customer. This could be geographical or a result of another parameter.
How The Creative Momentum Helps
The Creative Momentum helps businesses like yours with marketing, implementing digital strategies to drive traffic and get results. We use a customized SEO marketing funnel to determine how SEO can best benefit your business according to your customers’ typical buying journey. We are nationally recognized and offer the best in both talent and skill. No matter where your customers are located, we can develop an SEO strategy to target the right people at the right place.
Get Expert SEO Marketing Funnel Help
Do you find SEO and digital marketing overwhelming and complicated? Let us help! Our team can help you evaluate your current processes, website, and marketing plans to identify pain points and opportunities. From there, we’ll be your partner and create a comprehensive digital marketing plan that drives traffic and results. Reach out today to get the ball rolling— we’d love to hear from you!