Drive the conversion funnel from the brand
Building an effective brand is creating lasting relationships with people. This connection, like all emotional bonds, evolves over time. The advantage is that in branding there's a tool that clarifies the steps to take to create that spark and also a love that endures: the conversion funnel.
With the brand as a driving force and authenticity as your banner, any organization can guide its potential customers through a journey that begins with awareness and has its destination in recommendation and loyalty.
A strategic foundation
In a saturated market, where competition is fierce and options for activating a brand abound, the brand is an essential guide to leveraging the present and connecting with the future.
The theoretical tools of the platform, which encapsulate its essence to dispel doubts and reduce uncertainty, allow you to define an action plan with which to fulfill your purpose and achieve business goals. And that action plan must account for all stages of the funnel.
Funnel stages: from awareness to consideration
In the awareness phase, brand personas hear about you for the first time. It's the most challenging, because control is minimal. After all, until now there's been no opportunity to create a connection. At this point, visibility across multiple channels is key. Getting in front of their eyes and landing a first message, but not at any cost. Avoid FOMO and work the most relevant channels, those where there's real opportunity for the relationship to grow and solidify. Thanks to the brand pillars, we'll be able to generate attractive content ideas.
The second step is consideration. At this stage, your audience already knows you and is evaluating your proposition. That's why it's important to clearly communicate your positioning and competitive advantage. If the content resonates with your audience's values and needs, a full connection will form that will set you apart from the competition.
Decision, loyalty, and recommendation
Then comes the decision. After evaluating different options, the person chooses your value proposition, and communicating your purpose clearly can be the springboard for creating the perfect match.
Although it may seem like you've already won, you must maintain a coherent and positive brand experience at the moment of conversion, the fourth phase. Because if a person has decided to buy a product, but the digital experience isn't positive, all the previous work falls flat. We're talking about technical questions, like your website's interface, and also branding-related ones: you have to stay in the territory, that space where our brand shows itself fully.
Once the user has converted into a customer, the goal is for them to become an ambassador. At this point, personality and pillars play a crucial role in fostering loyalty and recommendations. Getting them to identify with and easily remember the countless benefits of the organization.
From theory to practice
Burning through the different stages doesn't happen spontaneously, of course. You need to design effective actions at each stage of the funnel, and for that it's essential to understand what brand personas think, feel, and do.
For example, in the awareness phase, they might recognize that the information interests them and resonates with them: ""This information interests me and speaks to me, but I'd never seen this page before." They might also feel doubt and question the company's reliability. That's why they take action and investigate.
Considering these three variables at each stage, and filtering them through the brand, ensures congruent and effective actions. Solid steps.
Plan the actions
The alternatives for activating a brand are nearly infinite: social media content, publishing papers, landing pages, launch campaigns, event organization… However, resources are limited and, while the brand acts as an initial filter, there are some tactics that help prioritize the most interesting initiatives.
- Prioritize channels. Distinguish between those that are primary (necessary to cover the entire funnel) and secondary (that can contribute, but aren't decisive). Limit channels in the advanced stages of the funnel to avoid spreading too thin.
- Define the intent of your actions. Use Robert Cialdini's principles of persuasion (reciprocity, commitment, consistency, social proof, liking, authority, and unity) as a foundation for labeling actions, choosing only those that reflect your values.
- Importance vs. complexity. Assign a relevance level and difficulty to each action to identify quick wins, the agile options with high impact.
- Zoom out/Zoom in. Maintain an annual, quarterly, and monthly vision with big objectives and milestones, without losing flexibility to make adjustments.
- Effort scoring. Calculate the resources you allocate to each action based on workload and time needed, to be realistic in planning and execution.
Measuring branding
After deploying each action, in the digital environment it's most common to measure its performance to iterate and optimize. Here comes the big question, one we've already reflected on: is it possible to measure branding across the funnel?
The simple answer is that we can't directly evaluate the direct return in euros that our work will have, but we can measure impact through some relevant KPIs, such as the number of leads generated—how many new contacts were acquired through campaigns or recommendations and mentions—how many times you're mentioned on social media and other channels, and in what context—for example.
Accompanying to endure
Approaching the funnel from a brand perspective means being there for your brand personas at every touchpoint. Making it easier for them to understand what you're offering and reducing friction, standing out in contexts where capturing attention is as difficult as it is necessary to build authentically and scale sustainably. Ultimately, enjoying a launchpad toward relevance and transcendence.
