Marketing March 28, 2022

3 Platforms to Help You Manage Your Digital Marketing Funnels
Digital marketing funnels are the core of several businesses. Getting customers interested (as leads) then getting them into closing the sale remains a tried and tested formula. However, the digital landscape has changed how businesses approach the idea of funnels. Today’s massively connected infrastructure allows companies to reach more potential customers than ever before in history. Managing these leads and turning them into paying customers can be a challenge, especially for businesses with multiple products and sites to promote. Luckily, technology comes to our aid by providing platforms that can help us manage these increasingly complicated digital marketing funnels.
Are Marketing Funnels Still a Thing?
Traditional marketing is on a steady decline as the returns that businesses get from an investment are not significant enough to justify their continued use. In the past, traditional marketing requires a lot of legwork (and a considerable amount of sales personnel) to collect leads, follow up with them, keep them engaged, and finally close the sale. Early on in digital marketing’s history, the sales funnel was used as finalization to push qualified leads into sales. However, with time, the methodology evolved into what we know today as the digital marketing funnel.
Digital marketing is much more than just a sales funnel. It starts with developing a buyer persona and locating the best channels for advertising. Based on the sheer volume of potential customers, however, there’s simply no way that traditional methods could deal with the influx of leads. Digital funnel management solutions were developed to deal with the new face of digital marketing. A few tools stand out as being extremely useful in helping businesses manage their leads and keep them engaged within the funnel:
1. Keap (Formerly Known as Infusionsoft)
Keap is an email marketing solution that businesses can use to keep track of their leads. Developed focusing on small businesses, it integrates both customer relationship management (CRM) tools and marketing automation into a simple-to-use interface. Because of the utility’s easy approachability, first-time users can get up and running without too much of a hassle. On the downside, the company has had a long history of problematic customer service. Additionally, if you want to use more of Keap’s advanced features, you may need to spend some time learning the details of the suite. The company regularly offers discounts to users, but a base plan typically costs around $79 monthly.
2. Kajabi
This tool is built specifically for creators and those intending to sell digital courses to a broader audience. It incorporates the construction of landing pages, sales pages, and webinar pages, alongside a vast collection of templates for quick prototyping of a website. The suite includes a series of handy tools such as developing your own click funnels and memberships.
You can even build drip content that drives your users through the course dynamically, so they don’t feel stalled. Templated emails and in-depth marketing campaigns allow for good lead management and engagement. Kajabi’s selling point is that it offers a lot in a single package. The bundling of all of these tools into a single, unified software front-end is worth the base price of $119 a month. If you see a lot of traffic, you may prefer springing for the $319 a month option instead.
3. Kartra
Kartra is relatively new to the market, but it offers something that others don’t – full access to its suite of tools at the lowest price point. It’s also effortless to use with drag-and-drop page editing and a single dashboard where you can manage your affiliates and even include tiered payments. The suite also has the ability to offer one-click upsells, downsells, and cross-sells.
Email sequences can be targeted to user behavior, making for more pinpoint-accurate marketing campaigns. As with any software suite, the downsides of being new means having to deal with bugs. You won’t pay extra for Kartra until you start getting traffic. At that point, it can snowball, and you might end up paying as much as $499 a month at the maximum traffic level.
Balancing Cost With Returns
As with most things in business, it’s about understanding your costs and how they translate into benefits for the company. A cost-benefit analysis gives you an idea of what you’re willing to spend on marketing management services. While these are among the most useful ones, they are far from the only suites out there. Developing a single location to manage your digital marketing funnels is an integral part of ensuring you keep your customers engaged.