Just because you get views doesn’t mean your content is successful.
Views are great. Engagement is great. But the point of marketing is to get people to take action.
When you build a funnel, you start at the top, building awareness. Then you take your audience down to the middle of the funnel and help them evaluate the action they need to take. Finally, at the bottom of the funnel, you create conversion.
Let’s look at the prospects at the bottom of the funnel and see how you can use your benefits to get people to take action.
BOFU vs. MOFU
Most funnel marketing guides you read will put benefits in the middle of the funnel (or MOFU). And yes, you do need to talk about your benefits there in order to keep the audience engaged and moving forward. But that’s not the only place that they matter.
The bottom of the funnel, or “BOFU” for short, is where you need your audience to act. If you want them to choose you, you need to give them specific benefits to choosing your brand. Your BOFU content has to answer one question very simply and clearly:
“Why should they do business with you?”
Use your benefits to answer that question.
There are a lot of different marketing tactics — social proof, demos, how-to guides, feature and price comparisons between you and your competitors. But all of these tactics have the same thing in common: they’re ways of showing that you’re the best choice for your audience’s needs. They help potential buyers get over the hump and take action. All the rest of the marketing you’ve done has led up to this point. If you don’t clearly answer “why should they do business with you,” your audience won’t act.
Give Your Audience a Reason to Convert
When you’re trying to get your audience to take that last step, you need a benefit-focused message to differentiate yourself from your competition. There are five major messages you can use to convince your audience to take action with you. Some of these may overlap; you probably won’t have just one reason for people to buy from you.
Explain how your product or service …
Saves Time and Effort
There’s a convenience store a half mile from my house. I go there pretty regularly to grab a cup of coffee. Sure, I could brew my own, but sometimes I just want to pay the extra dollar it costs to have someone else do it so I don’t have to spend the time. Most of the products are significantly more expensive than they would be in a grocery store — but they’re available in a shop right by my neighborhood, and I can get fuel for my car while I’m shopping. I’m paying to save a little time and effort.
Time and convenience are major benefits you can offer an audience. And it works on products larger than a cup of coffee too. There’s a company I know called Sourcify which charges a fee to help manufacturers do business in China without the hassles of finding trustworthy suppliers, dealing with a language barrier or learning a whole new set of regulations. That, too, is a benefit that saves time and effort and gives people a reason to choose them as their vendor of choice.
Is Easy to Use
Simplicity is another benefit that makes people take action.
One of the reasons the iPod and iPhone were such successes is the simplicity of the design. The iPod combined multiple functions into the scroll wheel for ease of use, which made it simpler than its competitors.
If your product is simpler or easier than its competitors, emphasize that. It lowers the barrier to entry and makes you stand out, which helps your audience take action.
Offers the Best Value
“Best value” can sound like “cheap” to some. That’s a trap.
Fighting to differentiate yourself on cost is very, very hard. It can be done — think Dollar General and Walmart — but only with economies of scale. It is not a reasonable strategy for most businesses, and it leads to dog-eat-dog, lowest common denominator business practices.
Avoid differentiating yourself on cost and focus on value.
For example, I drink a lot of Heaven Hill bourbon products. Walk into almost any bar around the nation and it’s a good bet their well bourbon is Evan Williams (a Heaven Hill product). And a lot will have Rittenhouse Rye for their rye and Elijah Craig as a mid-shelf bourbon option.
No one I know in the bar and restaurant industry thinks Heaven Hill makes the best whiskey on the market. But at the price points they compete at, you’ll be hard pressed to find better value.
Cost isn’t a good differentiator. Value is. It’s an important benefit and one of the best ways to get prospects to convert.
Has the Highest Quality
Do you have the highest quality product on the market? Embrace that in your BOFU call to action.
This is often combined with our next benefit (exclusivity), but it can stand alone too. For example, I have a Benchmade pocket knife I carry on a day-to-day basis. It’s a high-quality knife, but you can buy it in a lot of different places, and there’s no shortage of them if you go to outdoor stores.
Gucci, on the other hand, isn’t as widely available. It’s made with higher-end materials than a lot of clothing, and though people more interested in fashion could argue about it, their design is high-quality as well. There’s a reason people pay for it.
Think about something like website hosting, too. Most people might be fine with 95-98% uptime, but what if you want to get to 99%+? Higher quality hosting differentiates itself. For most companies that extra 1% wouldn’t be worth it, but if you’re Walmart or Boeing, you’re willing to pay more for each additional 9 … 99%, 99.9%, 99.99%. Make a case that quality is the benefit for selecting you and your prospects will convert.
Brings Prestige
Prestige often aligns with quality (or the perception of it.) Exclusivity brings prestige. It’s usually used by luxury or collector brands, or as part of a limited-time offer.
Fashion brands are known for using exclusivity as a benefit. Nike uses this in the streetwear market; every time Nike drops a new collaborative sneaker, it sells out. They take advantage of the exclusivity provided by a limited release.
There are three major ways to utilize this benefit: time, location and quantity.
Time is the limited-time offer, like a seasonal fashion release or coaching session. Location is tied to a single digital or physical location — for example, on the rare occasion I fly internationally, I look for whiskey releases that are only sold in duty-free stores. And quantity — like Nike’s shoe releases with a limited number of pairs of shoes — is one of the most common ways to use exclusivity.
Prestige can be artificial or real; many “time-limited” exclusives or “limited-release” runs don’t actually need to be limited. But for a certain audience, the idea of being part of that select group matters, and they convert to gain that prestige or exclusivity.
Use the Bottom of Your Funnel
You’ve given your audience content that got them interested. You educated them and pulled them down the funnel. Now you’re trying to seal the deal. They’re asking “why you?” Make your answer clear. No matter what your BOFU content, you need to use at least one of these five messages to differentiate yourself from your competition.
Need a hand? We can help. Just drop us a line, anytime.
Best Regards,
David Brandon
Copywriter
Rainmaker Digital Services