You may have put your heart and soul on starting a business and creating a website to offer your services or products, but if the results are not as expected, it’s you, not your customers, who needs to change.
This means you need to be able to identify every pain point of the customer journey to figure out where people are losing interest in your offering. Then, you’ll have to come up with an alternative and assess whether the problem is solved. The marketing funnel will give you all the tools and data you need to do so.
WHAT IS THE MARKETING FUNNEL?
The marketing funnel is a visual representation of all the steps a visitor has to go through before they purchase a product or service. Its origins date back to 1910, when American philosopher John Dewey introduced the five stages consumers go through before, during, and after purchasing a product or service.
This buyer decision process included the following stages: Problem/need-recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision, and post-purchase behavior. Over time, this idea evolved into the contemporary marketing funnel, which focuses on the different stages from the moment people first hear about a business to the moment they make a transaction.
But why is it named funnel? Marketing efforts start with as many leads as possible, which are later nurtured through the journey until they purchase a service or product. As people advance through the different stages, many abandon the process and the crowd thins. Thus the resulting visual representation takes the shape of a funnel.
BENEFITS OF THE MARKETING FUNNEL
Now that you know what the marketing funnel is, you’re probably wondering if you should start using this system for your business. Ask yourself the following question: Do I have a service or product I intend customers to purchase? If the answer is yes, then you should definitely do so.
As a business, your success does not only depend on the quality of your offering but also on the way in which it’s presented. Everything from your website layout and color scheme to the microcopy and navigation of your site also plays a huge role on your customer’s journey through the marketing funnel.
Having a clear view of the customer journey will allow you to identify roadblocks and improve your conversion rate. Based on this data, you’ll be able to redesign your website to offer a better user experience, create successful sales campaigns, and find the best places to promote your business.
STAGES OF THE MARKETING FUNNEL
While the basics of the marketing funnel have remained mostly unchanged for more than a century, there isn’t a global consensus on what the different stages actually are. Below, you’ll find a visual representation of the most commonly used marketing funnel stages, as well as a description of each of them.
Other highly popular marketing funnel versions include:
AIDA: Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action
TOFU-MOFU-BOFU: Top of the funnel (Generate leads), Middle of the funnel (Generate prospects), Bottom of the funnel (Generate sales)
1. AWARENESS
Awareness is the highest-level stage of the marketing funnel. This is the point where customers first learn about your brand through market research and targeted marketing campaigns. Here is where lead generation takes place, as potential customers’ information will be used to guide them through the rest of the marketing funnel and into sales.
2. INTEREST
Leads who show an interest in your business and services move onto the next stage of the marketing funnel, aptly known as interest. At this point, lead generation turns into lead nurture as brands start working on establishing a connection with all the contacts gathered during the previous stage. E-mail marketing is one of the most common practices in this stage, as it allows business to reach out directly to leads with relevant, branded content.
3. CONSIDERATION
In the consideration stage of the marketing funnel, leads start getting treated as prospective customers. At this point, businesses start using marketing automation to send targeted e-mail campaigns with actionable intent. These can include anything from free trials and sales announcements to exclusive access to webinars and forums.
4. INTENT
Once a prospective customer demonstrates a clear intent to purchase a product or service, they move down the marketing funnel to the “intent” stage. Ever left something on your online shopping basket and received an email about it a day or two after? That’s what entering this stage feels like. For businesses, this is the time to prove why their offering is the best option for the prospective customer.
5. EVALUATION
Lead nurture meets sales in the evaluation stage of the marketing funnel. This joint effort is meant to convince prospective buyers to take the leap and make a purchase. Much like the previous stage, the focus is kept on positioning the business’ offering as the ideal choice.
6. PURCHASE OR ACTION
The pot of gold at the end of the marketing funnel rainbow is known as the purchase stage. This is where prospects finally decide to buy the service or product. At this point, sales teams take over to manage transactions.
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