Optimizing Your Digital Marketing Funnel With Search at Its Core

The digital marketing funnel helps you visualize customer behavior and establish strategies to connect with customers at each stage of their journey. 

But what if you could streamline things further by aligning everything with user intent? That’s exactly what happens when you make search the foundation of the funnel.

What Is a Digital Marketing Funnel?

Regardless of how you garner attention to your brand, relatively few people commit to immediate purchases. In most cases, your customers begin their journey without much knowledge of your business. From there, a proportion will eventually convert if nurtured.

In this way, your audience resembles a funnel, with the most people at the top — the awareness stage — and a smaller proportion trickling down to the purchase point. Knowing this, it becomes easy to plan content and marketing strategies that align with user intent, guiding customers toward the funnel’s end.

To do this, you need to break the funnel down into its main layers:

• Top-of-the-Funnel (ToFu): Awareness that your brand and products exist
• Middle-of-the-Funnel (MoFu): Consideration of your brand as a solution to a problem
• Bottom-of-the-Funnel (BoFu): Decision to commit to a purchase

Some would argue there’s also an “unaware” stage that’s before ToFu. It can be helpful to create content for these individuals who don’t know they have a problem that your product or service can fix. For example, we’ve created content about “how to get more people to your online store” that would fit the bill. These people don’t know about SEO, but they want more site traffic.

There’s also significant value in optimizing customer loyalty and retention at the end of this process. Some businesses consider this part of BoFu, while others separate post-purchase marketing into its own category to highlight its unique challenges and opportunities.

But why is search relevant to all of this? And why should it form the core of how you approach a sales funnel? 

Well, digital marketing, like all data-driven pursuits, benefits from trends and insights, and search engines provide highly relevant data.

Imagine you’re planning a few blog posts to target ToFu customers and build awareness. How do you do it? What topics attract the most attention, and how do you shape the content to extract the most value from it? It all comes down to how people use search engines.

Queries evolve depending on the stage of the buyer’s journey someone is in. Learn how people search for things, and it’s easy to not only maximize your traffic but also propel customers from awareness to consideration or from consideration to purchase.

Top-of-the-Funnel (ToFu): Awareness and Search Visibility

You can think of people at the top of online marketing funnels as prospects. They may or may not be aware of a problem, but they’re generally searching for high-level information. This corresponds directly with search engine optimization (SEO) and how people use search engines.

People at the top of the funnel enter queries with an informational intent. These queries contain phrases such as:

• How to…
• What is…
• Benefits of…

Besides matching this informational intent, your target keywords should have a relatively high search volume and low competition. Remember, only a proportion of your traffic will convert, and this stage of the digital funnel focuses on bringing in as many people from your target audience as possible to maximize your returns.

Ahrefs and Semrush can help you find broad, informational queries that align with your products or offerings. They also reveal the search volume and provide insights into the level of competition you might face. 

For example, the Ahrefs Keywords Explorer includes a feature that lists question-based queries that could form the basis of ToFu content. You can also use the Related Terms report to help with keyword themes and topic clusters.

After selecting the most lucrative keywords, the next step is to create comprehensive, evergreen content around these terms. You’ll generally want to focus on specific types of content, including the following:

• Blog Posts: Cover common questions and problems to build authority.
• Videos: Break down more complex concepts with multimedia.
• Infographics: Share statistics and other valuable information at a glance.

Middle-of-the-Funnel (MoFu): Consideration and Search Intent

Customers in the middle of the digital marketing funnel are solution-aware. They understand how specific products or services may provide the solution they need but haven’t committed to a purchase yet.

MoFu SEO acknowledges a shift in user intent toward commercial queries and interactions. At this stage of the funnel, search engine queries fall into a few categories, such as:

• Comparative queries. These are phrases that compare products and help users find the ideal solution. Customers may search for “product A vs. product B” or “best product for XYZ problem.”
• Problem-oriented queries. These searches prioritize the problem itself. For example: “best credit cards for travel rewards” or “best cars for large families.”
• Product-oriented queries. These phrases indicate a desire to learn more about a product, such as “Amazon Prime benefits” or “Bosch dishwasher quiet operation.”
• Review-oriented queries. These are searches for testimonials. MoFu SEO should typically target broader review queries that focus on solutions, while product and brand-specific testimonials fall more into the BoFu stage.

Overall, queries become incredibly diverse at this stage of the buyer’s journey. Likewise, content needs to match whatever you’re targeting. To simplify this process, follow these steps:

1. Begin with keyword research to identify relevant terms.
2. Perform SERP analysis to check the user intent and determine how top-ranking pages optimize for each keyword.
3. Perform content gap analysis to identify ways to optimize existing content and improve rankings.
4. Develop new content using content optimization tools such as MarketMuse.
5. Iterate, improve, and repeat while also regularly updating older content.

The type of content you produce depends largely on search intent and the focus keywords, but ideal MoFu content includes:

• Solution-focused blogs and how-to guides.
• Comparison guides.
• Problem or product-specific case studies.
• Video demonstrations.
• Expert interviews.
• Product and service-specific FAQs.
• Buying guides.
• Workshops.
• Webinars.

Bottom-of-the-Funnel (BoFu): Decision and Conversion Through Search

Customers at the bottom of the digital marketing funnel are purchase-ready. As such, their search engine queries become laser-focused and often include brand or product names alongside other conversion-oriented phrases, such as:

• Buy, purchase, or order.
• Near me.
• Best [product name].
• Reviews.

These terms carry the highest intent, so they’re also the most competitive. Your content must align as closely as possible with your customer’s expectations while also minimizing sources of friction that could impact conversions.

So, what types of content best target customers at the BoFu stage? You should generally focus on:

• Landing pages.
• Product and category pages.
• Service pages.
• Review and testimonial pages.
• Case studies and success stories.

Whether it’s a landing page or a success story, the overarching goal is to create persuasive content that outlines your brand’s unique value propositions. From there, monitor the performance of your content using metrics such as bounce rates, dwell time, and conversion rates. You can gain further insights into engagement through heat maps and session recordings. These tools are also great for ironing out pain points in the user experience.

A/B testing is another important part of BoFu SEO because it allows you to compare performance after optimizing your content. It helps you action what Google Analytics and other performance-tracking tools reveal.

Essentially, you will spend most of your BoFu efforts on optimizing content. However, for maximum returns, you could focus on:

• Implementing structured data to improve the visibility of ecommerce pages.
• Prioritizing local SEO if relevant.
• Creating in-depth FAQ sections based on real customer questions.
• Optimizing for voice search and mobile-friendliness.
• Leveraging user-generated content such as product photos.

The Post-Purchase Stage: Retention, Advocacy, and Ongoing Search Optimization

The post-purchase stage is the last part of the sales funnel. Online marketing strategies in this phase focus on maximizing customer satisfaction through methods such as:

• Customer feedback surveys.
• Loyalty programs.
• Email remarketing.
• Ad remarketing.
• Referral programs,

While you may have the means to contact past customers directly, this isn’t always the case. That’s why targeted SEO is still essential here, just like in every other stage of the customer journey.

Your SEO should leverage content such as:

• Product guides. Provide step-by-step guides on how to use or maintain products.
• After-purchase-oriented FAQs. Provide answers to common after-purchase questions customers have based on keyword research.
• Checklists and tips. Provide materials customers can use to improve product performance.

Social media and email campaigns should also align with the goal of maintaining engagement. Consider running competitions or fostering discussion between customers through forums and other user-generated forms of content. Keeping your brand at the top of people’s minds is the key to winning their next purchase.

Many tools help with remarketing and customer retention, but the most essential include the following:

• Customer Relationship Management Tools: CRM platforms like Salesforce and HubSpot CRM help you track repeat purchases and monitor customer behavior. They also automate follow-up interactions and personalized marketing campaigns.
• Email Marketing Tools: Email is one of the most accessible ways to reach past customers. Platforms like Mailchimp and Klaviyo simplify everything with powerful features such as audience segmentation and dynamic content.
• Feedback Tools: Measuring customer satisfaction is crucial to improving click-through rates and conversions. Feedback tools such as SurveyMonkey and Qualtrics make this easy by helping you run surveys and then streamlining the process of finding pain points and shared sentiments.

Nonlinear Funnels: Adapting to Modern Search Behavior

It’s common for people to come close to a purchase but then discover new information that prompts further research. Customers don’t always move directly through the digital funnel. Marketing strategies must be flexible enough to adapt to this unpredictability.

So, how do you ensure your SEO is comprehensive and adaptable? Here are a few tips:

• Produce content for every funnel stage after performing keyword research to find the most likely touchpoints.
• Use pillar pages and topic clusters to create in-depth content. Interlink everything, allowing customers to move back and forth between awareness, consideration, and decision-oriented content.
• Use analytics tools’ AI and machine learning capabilities to track how your customers move through each stage of the funnel and optimize your website’s user experience accordingly.
• Optimize for long-tail and conversational queries to cover various types of intent.

Overall, modern search behavior demonstrates a desire for fast answers and micro-interactions across multiple types of devices. Upfront answers and a user-friendly, responsive site are crucial for engagement.

Measuring Success: Key Metrics and Tools for a Search-Centric Funnel

Data prevails at any stage of the funnel. Online marketing needs to track various metrics throughout the customer journey, including:

• Organic traffic and keyword rankings to measure search visibility.
• Bounce rates, time-on-page, and pages per session to measure engagement.
• Conversion rates, goal completions, click-through rates, and return visitor rates to measure content optimization.

At the bare minimum, you need to use a tool like Google Analytics to track how customers reach and engage with your site. Google Search Console is also vital, as it reveals situations where you could be attracting more traffic by tweaking your keywords or content.

Other helpful tools include:

• Heat maps like Hotjar or Crazy Egg.
• A/B testing tools like Google Optimize.
• Technical SEO tools like Screaming Frog.
• Competitive Analysis tools like SpyFu.
• Comprehensive SEO tools like Semrush or Ahrefs.

Building a Future-Proof Digital Marketing Funnel Centered Around Search

Search is relevant to every stage of the digital marketing funnel because it shapes your marketing campaigns around how customers seek information. It also insulates you against shifts in the market or customer behavior by following trends.

Ready to make search the core of your marketing funnel? Contact us for a free SEO consultation, and our consultants will plan a tailored strategy for you based on actionable data.