Here’s Why You Need A Full-Funnel Strategy To Power Your Science Marketing

Tempted To Ignore Awareness Content in Favor of Pure Lead Gen? Read This First. 

By CEN BrandLab

Reading Time: 4 minutes

When marketing to a scientific audience, developing content that only feeds the bottom of the funnel can be tempting. If you have a cool, innovative product, why not just tell your audience about it? However, only investing in content with the goal of lead generation can work against you. If your strategy skips awareness and education, you miss out on the trust and brand equity that ultimately closes deals. That’s why a full-funnel marketing strategy is key to meeting your sales goals. 

3 stage Marketing Funnel
The marketing funnel has many iterations. However, in its simplest form, it consists of three stages: awareness, consideration, and decision.

How to build a full-funnel science marketing strategy

Marketing is all about hitting the right person with the right message at the right time. With a full-funnel approach, you optimize your chances of doing that since you have different messages planned at different times. Stack the deck in your favor with these insights from science marketing experts on creating a full-funnel strategy.

1. Think long-term.

While the funnel metaphor for marketing makes a customer’s journey sound linear, in reality, data tells us that customers come in at all stages. Customers will follow their own path no matter how elegantly you’ve designed your content flow.

“When you look at the analytics on your website, you’ll find some people come in and engage with your bottom-of-the-funnel content first,” says Todd McKenzie, Marketing Programs Lead at Millipore Sigma. “From there, they’ll bounce around and find what interests them.”

It’s important to remember that not all customers engaging with your content will be at a decision point—only 5% of customers on your site will be there to convert. Creating a content strategy for the top and middle of your funnel serves the other 95%.

A full-funnel strategy keeps you top of mind, so when customers are ready to buy, you can cash in on that awareness.

2. Build in-house buy-in.

You often can’t draw a straight line from an awareness campaign to a sale. So, in the sciences, especially where much of business leadership has a technical background, it can be hard to show precisely why and how top-of-funnel content drives awareness and conversions. 

Contextualizing that work within a full-funnel strategy can more clearly show how all of the pieces work together to build a greater narrative, with more potential for scientists to become prospects and eventually convert to a sale.

A full-funnel strategy creates the justification for why we want to do the high-level stuff that might seem a little light and fluffy to product leadership but serves this need for creating this larger content ecosystem to create a more cohesive story for customers.“

– Todd McKenzie, Marketing Programs Lead at Millipore Sigma

Because it clearly shows the whole picture, a full-funnel strategy can also help you be an internal champion for your marketing team’s work. 

3. Get the most out of your science content.

Content and programming are a big investment of time and money. By thinking full-funnel, you ensure the juice is worth the squeeze.

At C&EN BrandLab, we see a lot of one-and-done projects—often white papers—that aren’t tied to any bigger campaign. It’s just one concept at this moment in time, which can sometimes make strategic sense. But, if you’re able to tie that one idea to a larger strategy, you’ll get more out of your investment.

For a significant lead generator like a webinar, for example, you could create shorter video assets, use the slides for a case study, or pull compelling graphs for a social post.

“If you have a large piece of content, try to use that in as many different ways as possible, adjusting the tone for the different channels,” says McKenzie. “If you’re sharing something on LinkedIn, for example, it will require a different tone than a newsletter. You can also create a few different versions of an asset based on the customer persona you’re trying to reach. You’re always repurposing and improving to get as much mileage as you can with what you have.”

Awareness Content Tips and Takeaways to Help You Make the Most of Your Full-Funnel Strategy

Content is often a user’s first introduction to a company. Most people have already researched you before you have your first call. Content is an opportunity to guide them and the first step in making a connection and sale.

Here are some tips on applying a full-funnel strategy to make the most out of your content.

  • Focus on the user first. Often, product teams want to highlight specific data and features, which is not always what the user is looking for. Instead, think about what points of friction your customer faces and how you can solve it for them.
  • Stay consistent. Consistent messaging across the funnel makes getting to point of sale feel like a natural progression from the high-level story to the concrete benefits of what you’re selling.
  • Be aware of the job the content is doing. When you plan your content, keep in mind what its strategic purpose is. Is it driving awareness? Is it educating? Use this information to ensure your content form is aligned with those goals. If your goal is to drive awareness, a product-specific white paper may appeal to too limited of an audience.
  • Repurpose, repurpose, repurpose. Content should have a life beyond its launch moment. Consider how you can reach new audiences with the same information.

If you’re looking for a partner to develop a full-funnel marketing strategy, C&EN BrandLab can help! Contact us for a consultation today.

Keywords: ,