The Basics of Marketing Funnels
How they work and what you should know
Today I had the privilege of following a class with a digital marketing expert who is currently my mentor and hopefully my future employer!
Our training today was really high level and about digital marketing funnels. Her definition of funnels was when I felt this would be such a cool learning moment.
What is a funnel?
Funnels are a mystery for many but what they really represent is the reflection of the customer journey (to brand loyalty).
When creating a funnel, the objective of it all is to take the customer journey and create a path, to drive people gently to a purchase or, even better, to a repeat purchase.
Things are everchanging
Some time ago marketers and brands could afford to be more pushy with sales, however, things have changed now.
Consumer behaviors have changed and people in fact became a lot more guarded when it comes to parting with money or with pieces of personal info such as their email.
What does this mean? As marketers, we need to become a lot more crafty and strategic.
Funnel structure
Funnels are a map of the customer journey and they create the journey to turn potential clients into real clients.
All funnels have an entry point (that could be a Facebook Ad or a webpage)
and become longer the more intangible or expensive the product is.
What follows after the funnel entrance is a bottleneck wich obviously means you lose some potential customers on the way but hold onto the people who are most interested and therefore most likely to purchase your product. When designing a funnel, it’s important to keep in mind that each stage of the funnel reflects the stage the customer is in, in terms of the level of familiarity with your brand.
In theory, a funnel is made of many different layers:
- Awareness — In this stage the funnel’s objective is to generate awareness about the brand. People start this phase not knowing about the company.
- Consideration — In this stage the funnel’s objective is to bring people who have seen but haven’t considered buying, to finally consider a purchase
- Conversion — In this stage the funnel’s objective is to bring the possible customer to a purchase
Other two fases are also part of funnels even though they are often neglected by most businesses. These are:
- Loyalty — in this stage the funnel’s objective is to optimize the business and to encourage existing clients to repeat their purchase. To increase a brand’s business it is in fact vital to take care of the existing customer base and to use that relation to obtain, other than a returning customer, a customer who advocates for the brand.
- Advocacy — In this stage the funnel’s objective is to use the customer’s power to go out and promote your brand as a means of potentially generating more revenue.
