In our recent webinar, The Digital Power Couple and The Messy Middle: Navigating the Marketing Funnel, we explored actionable strategies to optimise the customer journey—from awareness to conversion—and how to address the often chaotic “Messy Middle.” If you missed it, here are the key takeaways and insights.
The Marketing Funnel: A Strategic Framework
The marketing funnel remains a foundational model for understanding and guiding the customer journey. It’s divided into three essential stages:
- Awareness (Upper Funnel): At this stage, the focus is on capturing attention and generating interest. Brands reach a broad audience through ads, social media and outreach, aiming to build initial recognition.
- Consideration (Mid Funnel): Once potential customers are aware of your brand, they begin evaluating their options. In this phase, nurturing that interest is crucial. Tactics like retargeting ads, email marketing and informative content can help build trust and keep your brand in front of consumers.
- Conversion (Lower Funnel): The goal at this stage is to turn interest into action—whether that’s a purchase, a sign-up, or another desired conversion. Optimising this phase is key to driving tangible results from your marketing efforts.
Moving potential customers through these stages strategically is critical to maximising the effectiveness of your campaigns.
The Power Pair: Broad Match and Performance Max
One of the major highlights of the webinar was the explanation of Google’s "Power Pair"—a combination of Broad Match and Performance Max (PMax) campaigns. These two tools work together to enhance both reach and targeting.
- Broad Match Search Campaigns: Broad Match allows your ads to appear for search queries that are broadly related to your keywords. It helps you reach a wider audience by considering synonyms, related terms and contextual variations of your keywords. It also uses signals like user behaviour and natural language processing to expand reach to queries you might not have anticipated but are still relevant. Broad Match acts as a superset, covering a much wider set of queries, ensuring that your ads capture new relevant audiences that might be missed with more specific keyword strategies.
- Performance Max (PMax): PMax gives you access to all of Google's platforms—Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps. Using Google’s advanced machine learning, PMax optimises ad placements and targeting in real-time, ensuring that your ads reach the right people at the right time. PMax functions similarly to Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs), which focus on matching queries with the themes of your website content. While it’s limited to the content it can match on your site, PMax complements Broad Match by ensuring your ads remain highly relevant when users show strong intent.
- Pairing PMax with Broad Match Search: Combining PMax with more traditional Search campaigns, particularly Broad Match, has produced remarkable results. This synergy, powered by Google’s AI, allows for maximum coverage across relevant search queries and keywords. By uniting PMax’s multi-channel reach with Broad Match’s expansive query matching, we’ve seen decreased CPA (Cost Per Acquisition), increased conversions and significant customer acquisition improvements. This combination truly capitalises on the full capabilities of Google’s AI.
Why Use the Power Pair? The Power Pair is the ultimate AI flex, when it comes to machine learning and smart bidding, we haven't seen a combination of campaigns that harness the power of artificial intelligence and instinctive targeting in such an impactful way.. Broad Match allows for wide-reaching targeting by capturing searches that don’t exactly match your keywords, while PMax fine-tunes your campaigns by aligning user queries with specific themes within your website content. Together, they not only reduce costs and increase conversions but also provide a seamless connection between users' online behaviour and the information in your ads. Broad Match, in particular, uses signals like landing pages, keywords in the ad group, user behaviour, and even location, ensuring your ads are seen by the right people at the right time.
In essence, Broad Match creates a holistic approach that leverages multiple signals, enabling AI to target with greater precision and drive better campaign performance.
The Power Couple: Combining Brand Awareness and Bottom-Funnel Tactics
In addition to the Power Pair, the webinar introduced the concept of the "Power Couple"—a strategy that combines brand awareness campaigns with bottom-funnel tactics to create a more efficient and streamlined funnel. This approach is particularly effective for guiding customers from discovery straight to action, bypassing the traditional consideration stage.
- Brand Awareness (Top of Funnel): Brand awareness efforts, often focused on platforms like Meta (Facebook and Instagram), aim to capture broad audiences through video reach campaigns or social media content. The goal is to introduce your brand to people who may not yet be searching for it but could become potential customers. By focusing on top-funnel campaigns, you create brand familiarity and recognition early in the customer journey.
- Bottom-Funnel Tactics (Conversion Focused): At the other end of the funnel, bottom-funnel tactics, such as targeted search campaigns, focus on users who are ready to convert. These tactics are designed to push high-intent users to take that final step—whether it’s making a purchase, filling out a form, or completing another desired action.
- Why Use the Power Couple? This evolved strategy accelerates the customer journey by seamlessly moving users from awareness straight to conversion, bypassing the traditional consideration phase. By pairing top-funnel brand awareness with bottom-funnel conversion efforts, you streamline the funnel and maximise performance. It’s an efficient way to convert customers quickly when time and resources are limited, yet the goal is to drive maximum conversions.
However, it’s essential to remember that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to digital strategy. We always tailor our strategies to meet the unique needs of each client, considering their budget, target audience, market conditions and the strengths and weaknesses of the platforms they’re using.
Navigating the Messy Middle: Understanding Today’s Consumer Journey
The “Messy Middle” describes the unpredictable, non-linear phase of the customer journey, where potential customers bounce between exploration and evaluation before making a decision.
- Exploration: Consumers explore their options by searching for products, reading reviews and checking out different brands across various platforms.
- Evaluation: They compare those options based on factors like price, reviews and brand reputation. This continuous back-and-forth can make it challenging for brands to stay top-of-mind.
How to Influence the Messy Middle To capture customers during this chaotic phase, brands need to focus on retargeting, interactive content and social proof:
- Retargeting Ads: Re-engage users who have interacted with your brand but haven’t yet made a decision.
- Interactive Content: Use engaging content like polls, quizzes, or videos to keep customers interested and learning more about your product.
- Social Proof: Leverage reviews, testimonials and case studies to build trust and confidence in your product or service.
Case Studies: Real-World Success with the Power Pair and Power Couple
During the webinar, we shared two case studies that showcased how these strategies deliver measurable results:
- E-commerce Success: A leading wine retailer saw a 6:1 Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) and an 86% increase in Average Order Value by using the Power Pair of PMax and Broad Match. This strategy allowed the retailer to reach high-intent users across multiple channels while continually optimising ad performance based on real-time data.
- Luxury Real Estate Developer: By using the Power Couple—brand awareness combined with bottom-funnel tactics—a luxury real estate developer increased qualified leads by 172% and boosted engagement by 300%. This approach helped the developer guide potential customers through the funnel more efficiently, resulting in high-quality leads and better conversion rates.
These examples demonstrate the power of integrating top- and bottom-funnel strategies with smart AI-driven tools to achieve significant improvements in campaign performance.
Addressing the Messy Middle with a Multi-Channel Approach
To truly capture the potential of the Messy Middle, it’s essential to adopt an always-on, multi-channel approach that keeps your brand present throughout the customer journey.
- Search and Social Strategies: Combining Broad Match and PMax ensures that your campaigns cover a wide range of user behaviour, while social media platforms like Meta (Facebook, Instagram) and LinkedIn help you engage users where they spend most of their time.
- Always-On Strategy: Maintaining a continuous presence across platforms ensures that your brand stays top-of-mind as customers explore and evaluate their options. Whether through retargeting ads, email marketing, or interactive content, staying engaged with your audience is crucial to converting those caught in the Messy Middle.
Final Thoughts
The key takeaway from our webinar is that today’s digital marketing success requires both flexibility and precision. By leveraging the Power Pair (Broad Match and PMax) and the Power Couple (brand awareness and bottom-funnel tactics), you can guide customers through the funnel efficiently while addressing the chaotic behaviours of the Messy Middle.
If you’re ready to implement these strategies in your marketing efforts, we’re here to help. Our team can help you create a tailored approach that drives results and fits your specific needs.
