10 Bottom of Funnel Marketing Strategies to Drive Conversions

by The MNTN Team

7 Min Read

Most marketers spend a lot of time thinking about the beginning of the sales funnel: how to capture the attention of prospects and draw them further into the pipeline. To be fair, it’s the sexiest part—the Mad Men-est part, if you will. But if you can’t also capture the bottom of the funnel, all your coolest top of funnel efforts will be for naught.

At this point, you’ve likely already put in a lot of work to bring prospects through the earlier funnel stages. When this audience reaches the bottom of your sales funnel, they’re here. They’re engaged. And they’re ready to take action. But you still need the right strategies to close the deal and complete their journey.

Let’s explore what bottom of funnel marketing is, as well as the tactics you can use to help convert your qualified prospects into customers.

What Is Bottom of Funnel Marketing?

Bottom of funnel marketing hones in on the last stage of the buyer’s journey: the “decision” stage. You’ve winnowed down your target audience to those interested in purchasing. At this point, you have a smaller pool of highly qualified prospects, but now, it’s time to nudge them the rest of the way — toward a purchase. The right tactics, offered at the right time, can help drive late-stage buyers to make their decision.

Upper Funnel vs. Lower Funnel Marketing

In the upper funnel, your main goal is to grow brand awareness and build trust with your audience. This stage is about introducing your target audience (those that you think will be most interested in your product or service) to what your brand has to offer. In the later stages, however, you’ve already established that trust. Now it’s time to engage more closely with your prospect, building confidence in your products or services, and convincing prospects to choose you over your competitors.

Learn More: Upper-Funnel vs. Lower-Funnel Marketing: What’s the Difference?

To get those conversions, you need to focus on your marketing strategy. Here are a few bottom of funnel marketing strategies that will help you drive leads through your conversion funnel:

1. Remarketing Ads

Ad remarketing is a tactic that targets those who have already shown interest in your product, usually through a website visit or a demo request. This audience doesn’t need to learn about what your brand has to offer. Instead, they need to be reminded of your offering and persuaded to make the final purchase.

Your remarketing (also often called retargeting) audience is an incredibly powerful one that marketers should be taking advantage of. Create unique assets that have a strong call-to-action (CTA) to purchase, and set up a campaign specifically for this remarketing segment.

2. Free Trials or Demos

Prospects want to feel confident in the business they’re patronizing and the product or service they’re investing in. Offering a free trial or a demo of your product is a great way to give them hands-on experience that makes them feel more confident about taking the next step. Prospects will see how your product or service fits into their needs and hesitate less about taking the plunge.

3. Cart Abandonment Emails

Almost 70% of online shopping carts are abandoned. However, cart abandonment offers an opportunity to target customers who are on the verge of making a purchase. Sometimes, all it takes is a final nudge to convince them.

A cart abandonment email (“Hey, you forgot this!”) can act as a friendly reminder to keep customers engaged with their purchasing journey. You can add calls to action, product images, and even coupon codes to draw them back to the checkout page.

4. Customer Testimonials and Case Studies

When a prospect enters the bottom of the funnel, they’re faced with a hard decision. Whatever product or service you offer, they’re still making an investment, and they want to be sure it’s worthwhile.

Customer testimonials and case studies can be persuasive tools to show these customers what your business can do for them. They allow the customer to see for themselves how your product or service can resolve their pain points.

5. Limited-Time Offers

If you know your customer is in the crucial decision-making stage, they might need a push in the right direction. A limited-time offer not only provides an incentive to make a purchase but also adds a sense of urgency. If they don’t take action right away, they could miss out on the benefit you’re offering, whether that’s a discount or an offer of add-on services.

6. Personalized Recommendations

Personalized recommendations are another data-driven strategy to target bottom of the funnel customers. Using each buyer’s behavior and interests, you can make custom recommendations on the products and services they would benefit from the most. When your potential customer feels seen — and educated — it can inspire them to purchase.

7. Product Comparison Pages

The final decision stage is the best time to start drawing comparisons. Chances are good that your prospects are already comparing your services to the competition, so why not make that easier for them? Break down your products and services vs. those of your competitors to show exactly why you stand out.

Retargeting isn’t just an effective strategy for advertisements. It’s also something to keep in mind when creating social media content. If your content strategy is focused on the upper funnel, you could be missing out on the chance to capture more sales and build deeper relationships with customers. (You might easily scroll past a generalized ad for a department store, but a carousel of clothing items that are just your style? Much more compelling.)

Don’t forget to post content that keeps you consistently on the minds of customers who are already interested in your product or services. Consider the kinds of messages that would help nurture your relationship and push them toward a final conversion.

9. Live Chat and Customer Support

When prospects are at a critical moment in the buyer’s journey, they may have questions that need to be answered before they’re ready to invest. That’s where great customer service can be an asset for your business.

The best way to address their questions? Live chat. 41% of customers prefer live chat over phone and email support. The right live chat feature can address questions instantly, so prospects don’t have to wait to get the support they need.

10. Upselling and Cross-selling

Ever thought to yourself, “If I’m paying $10 for shipping, I might as well get a few more things while I’m here”? Prospects at the very bottom of the funnel are in the perfect position for upselling or cross-selling. They aren’t just interested in what you offer — they’re at the checkout page or have already agreed to make the purchase — and they’re amenable to deals.

This is a moment where you can upsell or offer an upgraded or premium version of their purchased service or item. You can also cross-sell, offering separate products or services that can complement the initial purchase.

Related: Learn How to Build a Sales Funnel

How CTV Advertising Can Keep Your Funnel Full

Linear TV ads have traditionally been a top of the funnel tool, used to make an introduction to new viewers and build brand awareness. But Connected TV ads have expanded the power of television advertising to encompass the full funnel. They take the impactful sight, sound, and motion of television and combine it with the digital DNA of modern advertising solutions.

So, while CTV advertising can still bring results for upper-funnel marketing, it can be especially effective for the bottom of the funnel. Thanks to its audience targeting capabilities, attribution model, and real-time data, CTV has transformed TV into a high-impact, mid-funnel and lower-funnel tool.

The right CTV partner—like, coughcough, MNTN Performance TV — allows you to easily create, manage, and measure campaigns. Prospecting campaigns allow you to capture the top of the funnel, while retargeting (and even first-party CRM) campaigns can encourage users to make a purchase. And with MNTN’s proprietary attribution technology, Verified Visits™, you’ll be accurately tracking all the conversions that these efforts drive.

Learn more about how MNTN Performance TV can drive results for your bottom of funnel marketing strategy or see it for yourself by requesting a demo today.

Lower Funnel Marketing: Final Thoughts

The audience at the bottom of your sales funnel might be the most engaged with your offerings, but they’re also much smaller. Still, they’re at a critical stage of the buyer’s journey, which means they’re seeing how you compare to the competition. To stay one step ahead and convert those customers first, you need to optimize the bottom of your sales funnel.

It takes high-value content with the right messaging to make a convincing argument, but it also takes effective targeting strategies, including retargeting, to seal the deal.