Sprout Social explains that a marketing funnel consists of various phases that delineate the customer path from becoming aware of a product to making a purchasing decision. The purpose of the marketing funnel is to inform companies of what actions they need to take to impact customers during specific phases to boost sales and enhance brand loyalty and recognition. If you are hesitant about incorporating a marketing funnel in your digital marketing plan, this guide presents additional insights and offers instructions on how to get underway.
Defining the Marketing Funnel
The customer’s experience with a business can be illustrated by a marketing funnel. Initially, the funnel depicts the process of transforming leads into paying customers. Similar to how a funnel traps a large volume at the top and directs it towards the bottom, the marketing funnel strives to attract numerous leads. These leads gradually progress through the funnel’s stages and eventually result in conversions, boost brand loyalty and awareness, and generate more revenue.
Why is Creating an Effective Marketing Funnel Important for your Digital Marketing Strategy?
It is crucial to establish a successful marketing funnel as a significant number of leads make their way into the funnel’s top, akin to any other funnel. Nonetheless, with every stage of the funnel, numerous leads are filtered out.
The main inquiry at hand is how to ensure that a larger number of leads progress through the marketing or sales funnel. At each step of the funnel, there are a few essential factors to bear in mind.
Stages in Your Funnel
Stage 1: Raise Awareness
To establish an effective marketing funnel, the initial step is to elevate knowledge about your product or service. This is the stage just prior to potential customers entering the sales funnel, presenting an opportunity to showcase your abilities and devise innovative and convincing strategies to lure appropriate clientele.
Gain a thorough comprehension of the demographics of your target customers.
Prioritizing research is essential for developing a successful marketing funnel. Studies indicate that lack of comprehension regarding market trends and customer issues frequently leads to failure amongst start-up companies.
It is recommended that you devote some time to creating optimal customer personas as this effort will pay off in the subsequent stages of the process. Understanding the characteristics of your potential customers can prove advantageous.
Spread awareness about your product or service.
After identifying your target customer demographics, it’s essential to promote your product or service to them. Increase visibility by developing strategies to inform potential customers about the features and benefits of your product or service.
The primary objective during this phase of the funnel is to generate leads. A smart way to begin is to invest in paid advertising and SEO/SEM promotions. Familiarize yourself with the essential SEO strategies that every local business should implement to increase traffic and promote expansion. This phase is also an excellent opportunity to pay attention to On-SERP SEO. You should aim to reach the widest possible audience.
Make sure to seize any chance to promote your brand. As an illustration, you could produce a product video to kick off your marketing initiatives. Additionally, various video formats can help strengthen your brand, increase business and revenue. Consider collaborating with micro-influencers or brand ambassadors to advertise your brand. Finally, you might explore creating a marketing plan focused on your brand’s mission to attract potential customers to the first stage of your marketing funnel.
Stage 2: Build A Relationship
After you have established a viable strategy or plan for increasing the visibility of your product or service, the subsequent move in devising a potent marketing funnel that generates sales is to foster your leads through the development of significant connections. During this phase, potential customers have already made their way into the marketing funnel. Consequently, it is incumbent upon you to maintain the relationship and keep those prospects engaged via your marketing endeavors.
Key to success lies in the exchange of information.
To establish robust and efficient bonds with potential clients, it’s recommended to initiate an exchange of data. Numerous enterprises employ the tactic of requesting their email address as a bargaining chip to offer them useful content or additional details. Integrating your content marketing game plan is vital in constructing an efficient marketing funnel that generates income. Gradually, you can forward them valuable content to form a connection that etches your brand in their memory when they’re prepared to purchase.
Offer an exit intent pop-up.
The pop-ups that appear when we attempt to close a website tab or window are familiar to everyone. These windows usually offer an opt-in choice, and research has indicated that a single pop-up has the potential to increase conversion rates by at least 10%.
Foster a more robust bond with your followers via email advertising.
By incorporating email marketing, you can maintain consistent communication with subscribers who have shown interest in your company, product, or service. It is important to develop effective email marketing strategies to encourage regular engagement and boost sales. With the aid of marketing automation, you can move leads down the funnel and enhance the likelihood of converting them into customers. Additionally, utilizing both email marketing and marketing automation will allow you to effectively plan out your marketing funnel for every phase of the customer buying process.
Stage 3: Conversion
Lead conversion is the ultimate phase of the marketing funnel. After putting in a lot of effort, commitment, and financial resources into your prospects, they have come to a decision to purchase your product or service. Nevertheless, your objective should be to transform these lead conversions into loyal purchasers.
It is recommended that you increase your investment and exert more effort in cultivating relationships with your current clientele in order to reap the benefits of repeat customers, who hold a 60-70% likelihood of conversion. Consistently delivering a distinctive and appealing customer experience is key for sustaining marketing-driven sales. Employing data-driven creativity can aid in improving the customer experience and concurrently develop trust and loyalty in your brand.
BONUS: How to Choose the Right Digital Marketing Strategy for Your Business
Implementing online marketing has become essential in promoting a thriving, rivalrous enterprise. Nonetheless, the extensive selection of digital marketing alternatives and platforms may seem daunting. The tactics that drive outcomes for one organization or sector may not yield success for your business.
To select the appropriate digital marketing approach, it is essential to comprehend your products and clientele, which can help in devising a tailored plan for accomplishing targeted marketing objectives. Our discussion will cover the measures you must undertake to determine the appropriate digital marketing strategy for your business, as well as offering additional insights into online marketing.
How to choose a digital marketing strategy for your business
To achieve a fruitful digital marketing plan, it is not advisable to experiment with the latest digital marketing fads or assume your customers’ demands. Rather, it entails relying on insights that are supported by data.
According to Jess Reilly, chief marketing officer at Rebel Interactive Group, successful marketers comprehend that scalable digital marketing has evolved into people-based advertising, which entails delivering the appropriate message to the correct individual, on the appropriate platform, at the appropriate time.
To select a digital marketing approach, you must create purchaser personas, establish your objectives, pick suitable digital marketing instruments, and evaluate your plan to confirm its effectiveness.
1. Build buyer personas to understand your target audience.
Fictional characters known as buyer personas are created to represent ideal customers that may display interest in your brand. These personas serve as a tool for promoting your products and services towards this specific demographic.
According to Reilly, the process of developing buyer personas can shed light on the identity of your buyers, the challenges they encounter, and most crucially, their objectives. This knowledge can then be utilized to devise a messaging strategy and shape your marketing approach.
When creating customer profiles, take into account the subsequent details regarding your intended audience.
- Job type
- Interests
- Age
- Gender
- General demographics
- Most-used social platforms
- Beliefs and values
Afterwards, tailor your approach by taking these specifics into account.
A helpful suggestion is to gather feedback and opinions from customers through online surveys, email, or text to gain insight into the pain points and desires of a particular market.
2. Identify your goals, and align them to your strategy.
What specific marketing goals do you have in mind? You may aim to establish brand recognition, boost product sales, or expand your social media presence. To ensure productive efforts, it is crucial to clearly define your objectives. Further, let us delve into some precise illustrations.
If your goal is to heighten brand awareness:
Is your brand recognized by your intended consumer? Do they exclusively purchase from established brands? Do they possess enough trust or familiarity with your brand to complete a transaction?
If your utmost focus lies on building brand recognition and enhancing your organization’s image.
If your goal is to raise consumer awareness:
Your company may experience low search volumes for your target keywords due to the fact that consumers may not comprehend how your product or service can benefit them.
If your sales process and website traffic are not the issue, then it’s possible that there is a general lack of consumer knowledge. In this case, your digital marketing objective should be to inform potential customers about a particular problem they may face, and then present your solution.
If your goal is to increase traffic:
For many business owners, traffic is considered a crucial key performance indicator (KPI) as it often leads to a higher volume of promising sales leads and successful transactions. Therefore, better traffic quality is highly valued as it can translate into increased revenue.
To achieve a strong traffic flow, it is advisable to prioritize pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, a well-executed search engine optimization (SEO) plan, and effective implementation of email marketing.
If your goal is to increase leads:
Generating leads for your sales team to pursue would be a better strategy for expensive or complex products, rather than expecting customers to make their first purchase online.
If your goal is to increase sales:
Using email marketing strategically and driving more traffic to your website landing page is likely a necessary step in boosting sales.
3. Choose digital marketing tools based on your primary goals.
Marketing encompasses a range of tools such as content marketing calendar templates, social networks, and email marketing software, each with its unique benefits and objectives. Ultimately, which tools to use hinges on your specific goals.
Prentiss mentioned that each business has unique requirements or deficiencies. This may entail insufficient reviews, low Google rankings, or a desperate need for website revamping. In any case, distinct tools are necessary to cater to each business’s necessities.
Arrange your objectives in order of importance and carefully examine your finances to identify the most advantageous ventures. If your sale is still far off, opt for cost-effective tools like emails and posts on social media as there will be a significant amount of loss in your conversion process. Consider experimenting with other available tools at a later date.
4. Audit your current digital marketing strategy.
Assessing your digital marketing plan involves evaluating past successes, experimenting with present tactics and identifying necessary adjustments.
- Discover the true ROI of past efforts. You’ll need to measure ROI for digital marketing campaigns you ran in the past. Reilly advised business owners to ask how much “lift” each marketing channel provided in previous seasons. “Using a combination of customer purchase data, digital tracking data and any traditional media buys you have, you can dive into the data to discover what your true ROI was in the past and opportunities to grow in the future,” Reilly said.
- Test new strategies. Before going live with your new strategy, test it to see what might work and what won’t. Spend time figuring out if there are aspects of your strategy that can be fixed or improved.
- Determine what needs tweaking. Prentiss recommended monitoring your progress to determine what might need shifting. “We set daily, weekly and sometimes even monthly reminders to check on the progress we made,” Prentiss said. “The daily and weekly check-ins on what we created are very important in the beginning so we can adjust what we are doing. This truly ensures the success of the campaign.”
The conclusion is that if the expense for each potential customer exceeds the profit generated from completing the transaction, then the return on investment is unsatisfactory and adjustments need to be made.
