Understanding Your Digital Marketing Funnel
Your marketing funnel maps out the journey that you are taking your potential audience member on, from the point of becoming aware of your artistic brand to getting them to take action or convert into a sale.
Your Arts Marketing funnel is made up of 3 core steps:
1. Reach: Your creative organisation has identified it’s target market within its goals. Reach is about how we are going to grab the attention of those potential prospects and draw them into our funnel (onto our website).
2. Engage: Now that we have reached our target audience and brought them into our funnel, we don’t want them to bounce straight away. Engage is about capturing their attention and keeping them in our funnel.
3. Convert: When we have engaged with the prospect the final step is to convert them. Convert is about getting the target to take action.
How do I REACH my target audience?
To reach your target audience we have 3 standard channels called our ‘Owned’, ‘Earned’ and ‘Paid’ Media Channels.
Your ‘Owned Media’ are the platforms that you have total control of. For example your Website, Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube etc.
Your ‘Paid Media’ are the channels that you pay for to promote your artist brand. For example your Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Pay Per Click (PPC), Banner Advertising, Retargeting, Paid Influencers, your Social Media Marketing (SMM) -Facebook, Instagram etc. Note: when considering your paid media you must take into account the Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) Versus the Lifetime Value (LTV) of the target.
Your ‘Earned Media’ are any mentions of your artistic brand online. Testimonials, Recommendations, lists of people you work with (client logos), Shares/Retweets, reviews, reposts, backlinks, mentions, traditional online press. Your Earned Media is considered the most important channel in terms of influencing your target.
How do I ENGAGE my target audience after I have reached them?
After we have reached our target audience by optimising our Owned, Earned, Paid Channels we engage them by:
Having a clearly defined Value Proposition on the homepage that lets your target audience member know that they have landed in the correct destination. Optimising your websites User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) so that they do not bounce or exit after landing on your website.
Earned Media Typically after the user has read your value proposition you will engage them further with a piece of Earned Media. This could be; A testimonial video from your show, a quote from a previous audience a member or a list of the companies you have worked with. This will build trust and influence their decision to convert.
After I have reached and engaged my target how do I get them to CONVERT?
Users will not take action unless you tell them them to. Now that you have spent your time and resources bringing them into your funnel you must tell them to take action. We call this our “Call to Action” (CTA).
Depending on what your goals are, your call to action may vary. If you’re selling a theatre ticket it could be ‘Book Theatre ticket Now’ if you are growing the reach of your artistic brand it could be “Join our mailing list”.
Sometimes people are not ready to convert into a paid sale, in which case you need to be creative and focus on “Lead Generation”. An example of lead generation could be “Download our course programme” whereby requirement to download is that the user enters in their email address and phone number -Creating a ‘lead’ for your cultural organisation.
An example of a marketing funnel for an online Art Magazine could be:
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