So, the story is an interesting one. For context, I am 44 years old, which means I was born in the 70s, and I was a child of the 80s. I was one of these children who grew up with a very early stage home computer, and in those days, there were very few games. Lots of children in the 80s were quite highly motivated to learn the basics of programming so that we could play games. So that was my first taste, and then I went to university and studied programming there. When I came out of university, in the mid-90s, there was a significant shortage of computer programmers. I mean, we think there is a shortage now, but back then, there were barely any. Therefore I was quickly able to get quite good jobs.

Alongside computers, my other passion was travelling, and with that, I had the opportunity to go out and work in Silicon Valley. I went in 1999, which was right in the middle of the dotcom boom. Websites and e-commerce websites were getting built for the first time. Amazon was an up and coming company. Google was an eight-person company. I worked there alongside thousands of programmers from all over the world who were working for these startup companies.

However, in the year 2000, it was the dotcom bust. These companies were funded on the premise that they were going to start to turn a profit but they didn't. In Silicon Valley, people were relatively tech-savvy, but the broader consumers just weren't ready to put their credit cards into a website at that time. As a result, customers didn't arrive at these websites, and the whole industry went bust, most of them never survived. Amazon and a handful of others saw through that recession that followed and went on to become huge companies. What I took away from that experience was that you could build the most amazing website, but if no one knows about it then it's not going to make you any money.

Yeah, so whether you're a small business or a global brand, I think marketing is about knowing your customers and your target customer groups. Most marketers will have a good idea about what this looks like. But you can also sketch it out to create the user journey. So, first of all, what is a good fit between you and your customers? Can you describe that customer? And that becomes the persona.

So, right at the top of the funnel, we have suspects, which are people that would be a good fit. However, you don't know each other yet. So, you've got to create awareness at the top of the funnel. This is where things like social media advertising can be effective as you don't need to know your customers, you just need to know where to find them. Once you have the right demographics then you can turn a suspect into a prospect, which means they are aware of your offer.

So in the middle of the funnel, customers might be aware of us. They might have been on our website, and they might have had a look at our product or service. When purchasing any significance, most customers are unlikely to buy at their first visits. So, they need several touchpoints. If a potential customer has been on our website, we want to motivate them to come back to the site to do some more research. One of the ways that we can do that is through remarketing. If we can also capture phrases via SEO, organic search, and even paid search, then we're bringing visitors to our site that are both relevant and almost ready to buy. So, search and remarketing are just two key tactics that work in the middle of the funnel.

The interesting thing about the bottom-funnel is that it's industry-specific. If you focus on repeat purchases, then it's about getting customers to buy more from you. Some companies, like holiday destinations, might not have the same customers coming back every year. However, they might want to motivate customers to leave a positive review as it will increase the likelihood of new prospective customers from engaging with the reviews and potentially converting. So, the bottom of the funnel depends very much on your strategy and what type of business you are.

I think this is where data and analytics come in. The aim is to have the correct data and use the right analytical tools. If they are all aligned then we can pull this data into Google Data Studio and have a live dashboard that shows the marketing team what's going on during each stage in the funnel. They can then identify if one part of the funnel needs adjusting.