Marketing funnels are a diagram demonstrating how potential customers go from being conscious of your brand’s existence to buying a product or product. The model comprises multiple stages of an organization’s customer interaction. Companies use marketing funnels to comprehend their customers’ requirements in each phase to optimize their marketing efforts to increase sales.
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What is the marketing funnel?
The marketing funnel can be visual to help understand how leads turn into buyers and vice versa, from an economic (and sales) standpoint. The idea is that similar to a funnel, marketers use a wide net to collect as many leads as they can and slowly guide those who are interested in buying decision process, narrowing these prospects at each stage that the funnel goes through.
The ideal scenario is that this funnel could be an actual marketing cylindrical, with all your leads would become customers. While this isn’t the case for all businesses, it is the job of a marketing professional to convert every lead into a customer as they can and thus make the funnel more spherical.
It is important to remember that there isn’t a standardized funnel design; there are many “stages” while others have only a few, each with its name and actions that consumers and businesses take. In the diagram below, we’ve attempted to identify the most commonly used and pertinent funnel stages, terminology, and actions, so that the information can be useful to all marketers.
Why are marketing funnels important?
It is imperative to stress the importance of implementing an effective marketing funnel. It will alter the way you conduct your company. Here are some ways marketing funnels can aid you with:
- The choice of a marketing strategy. The cornerstone of the marketing funnel is your customer’s journey. Understanding this allows you to determine what triggers people to stop making purchases and what methods and tools you could employ to keep them connected to your company.
- Consistency with your promotion. With a marketing funnel, you do not have to consider the next step to attract and keep customers. Instead, develop a strategy of marketing actions for each stage of the funnel. Then, you can communicate with prospects to motivate them to make purchases.
- Increasing your sales. Without a funnel, you’ll lose money if a prospective customer does not buy from you immediately. Instead, they simply drop off and don’t remember your offer. If you’ve got a marketing funnel, you can keep prospects to the point that they are ready to buy.
- Helps to close a deal. In B2B, closing deals requires collaboration between the sales and marketing teams. Marketing funnels equip your salespeople with comprehensive insights into leads’ behavior, giving them further tips on closing the deal.
- It saves time and energy. Knowing your customer journey and having a list of each step can help you automate your marketing. It can save you a lot of time and also helps you to achieve greater outcomes.
- Forecasting sales in the future. Marketing funnels enable you to see the effects of your marketing efforts more effectively. By knowing the leads to conversion for each step, you can estimate the percentage of leads that will eventually become paying customers.
- Retain customers. A plan of post-purchase marketing initiatives helps keep your customers interested and helps them return frequently. Maintaining your customers’ loyalty is more than five times less expensive than buying new ones.
Conversions and stages of the marketing funnel
Awareness: Awareness is the uppermost stage of the funnel of marketing. Potential customers are attracted to this stage through marketing and consumer research, and exploration campaigns. The trust is built, and confidence in thought-leadership is built through events, advertising trade shows, articles (blog posts or infographics), webinars, postal mail campaigns, online campaigns search, social media for media mentions, and more. Lead generation happens by collecting information, and leads are then incorporated into an account management system to nurture them further in the funnel.
Interest: Once leads are generated, they go to the stage of interest where they can learn more about the business and its products as well as any relevant information and data that it can provide. This is a chance for companies to build an association with the individuals in their lead database as well as present their brand’s positioning. Marketers can build relationships with leads via emails, posts that are focused on specific brands and industries, class newsletters, classes, and more.
Examination: In the phase of consideration, leads are converted into qualified leads for marketing and are viewed as potential customers. Marketers can offer prospects additional information on deals and products through automated email marketing as well as continue to nurture leads with specific information, case studies, trial trials for free, and many more.
Intent: To be able to reach a goal stage, buyers have to show that they’re looking to buy a particular product of a brand. This could happen through an online survey, after an online product demonstration, or even the moment a particular product has been added to the cart of an online store. This provides an opportunity for marketers to build a compelling argument for why your product or service is the most suitable option for the buyer.
Evaluation: In the evaluation stage, consumers make an informed decision on whether or not they want to purchase the product or service of a particular brand. Typically, sales and marketing are closely linked to helping nurture the process of making decisions and convince buyers that the product of their brand is the best option.
Purchase: You’re here! This is the phase of the marketing funnel in which a potential buyer has decided to purchase and becomes an actual customer. Sales manage the purchase. Positive experiences from the customer can result in referrals that feed the top of the funnel for marketing, and the process starts over again.
How to create a marketing funnel
Once you know how a digital marketing funnel operates, follow these steps to create one for your company.
1. Create content and ads.
The first step in the digital marketing funnel is about gaining awareness, so the first stage should be to design advertisements as well as the content. The objective informational and trust-building content will direct the viewer in the right direction and hopefully convince users to visit your site.
The list of advertising formats and content formats to be considered is lengthy:
- Social media advertising
- Pay-per-click ads
- Recommendation widgets
- Blog posts
- Videos
- Updates on social media
- Quizzes
- Checklists
- Industry studies
The content of your ads and the content you use will be based on who you’re aiming at, whether it’s businesses or consumers.
If you want to reach a b2c audience, you can create Facebook and Instagram ads that promote the advantages of products or services. Blog posts can be humorous, personal, and honest. Videos could be about general topics such as “how product x helps people get a good night’s sleep.” Widgets that recommend products allow you to present and expand your offer in front of millions of possible buyers from top publishers.
2. Make an appealing deal.
Suppose you’re looking to construct an online marketing funnel that is virtually filled with qualified customers. In that case, you must make an offer that will entice customers to learn more about the activities you are involved in. If, for instance, I owned an agency for copywriting, I could offer copywriting agency could provide an ebook entitled “The Ultimate Guide to Ecommerce Copywriting.”
The purpose of your offer is to entice the attention of visitors who are awaiting your offer by offering something that is truly valuable. This will encourage users to fill in their email addresses and sign up to receive further marketing.
Examples of popular deals (lead magnets) include:
- ebooks
- Webinars
- Trials for free
- Case studies
- White papers
- Instructional videos
- Reports
- Cheat sheets
- Images that are free to use
- Mini-courses
The nature of your product will depend upon whether your offer is targeted at B2C or b2b audiences. For example, professionals from the business sector are likely to be more interested in white papers or case studies than in eBooks. On the other hand, if you’re serious about publishing an eBook, make sure to include figures and stories of industry-related success to keep readers intrigued.
Social Media Examiner, the world’s most popular online social media magazine, provides a no-cost industry report for the email address of readers.
3. Create a landing site.
A landing page for your website is what your intended audience will be when they click your advertisement. It’s intended to house your offering, showcase your skills and expertise, and aid customers gain an understanding of your offerings, leading to the point at which they’re willing to purchase your product.
The most effective landing pages contain:
- A detailed explanation of what lead magnet you’re selling
- Simple yet eye-catching visuals
- An online form to fill in their contact details
- Security badges
- A powerful CTA (call-to-action)
Freshdesk’s landing page is brimming with everything. It features an attractive prospectus (free trial) with attractive images, a sign-up form and trust-building tools (testimonials), and an appealing CTA (I’m looking forward to signing up to receive a trial for free). ).
4. Create your email sequence.
The main sequence is a set of emails that will be sent out to those who sign up for your email list by providing their contact information. The emails are usually sent between 4 and 7 in approximately three weeks to help nurture prospects and bring them to an end at the bottom of your funnel. Make an email series that will keep your customers aware of your existence and keep providing them with useful content until they’re ready for purchase.
For instance, the first email you send to a prospective customer could contain the lead magnet and suggestions on getting maximum value from it. The second email you sent is a continuation of the points mentioned in the lead magnet. For the final email, you could provide your customers with an article demonstrating how beneficial it is to work with your company from a consumer’s perspective. The other emails will be used to build trust until you offer your subscribers an offering.
The contents included in an email may be different for a B2C recipient than for a subscriber to a b2b.
A B2C email sequence could be able to tap into the emotional state of the customer.
However, the b2b email sequence requires thought-leadership and must be able to address the issues of the customers they are trying to reach.
5. Connect the dots.
For your marketing channel to function, you must link the various components so that the people who sign-up for your newsletter receive the lead magnet and the email sequence is activated.
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