About the Author
Corey is the owner and President/CEO of Voltage. He has spent 18 years working in strategic and leadership roles focused on growing national and local client brands with award-winning, ROI-generating digital strategies. He's a recent recipient of the KCDMA 2019 Marketer of the Year award.
Whether you have a mapped out customer journey or look at it like a marketing funnel, you know that there are stages before someone fills out a lead form, makes an ecommerce purchase, or takes whatever other ultimate conversion goal action you want them to take.
It is easy to focus on the bottom of the funnel or those that are in the final step of their customer journey. There’s nothing wrong with that and that’s often the best place to start as it can generate the quickest revenue when you’re well positioned for the person who is in buying mode and ready to take action now.
However, even at a basic level, a lot of purchase decisions start with becoming aware of a problem or need. Then, go into researching solutions. Then, you’re possibly looking at them getting to your identified goal. This could all happen within minutes, or could span years.
Knowing your funnel or customer journey is step one. Mapping out how you’ll provide value to your target audience and engage them in all the steps or levels of it is another. SEO doesn’t have to (and shouldn’t) be a bottom of the funnel focused channel. You can target terms and topics at each level fostering movement down the funnel or journey, and reach your ultimate goal.
Attribution models will often show us that we’re overlooking the power of being the thought leader and resource for someone on their journey. The more touch points, micro conversions, and engagement we can have along the way will lead to cheaper and more predictable conversion outcomes.
Check out my full article on how to Use SEO to target your audience throughout the funnel on Search Engine Journal.