If you are remotely even connected to marketing, you must have heard about the marketing funnel. In this article, we will take a closer look at what is a marketing funnel and the different types.
What is a Marketing Funnel?
A marketing funnel is a visual representation of a company’s customer journey. The funnel shows customers’ stages before they become buyers or subscribers.
Marketing funnels are valuable tools to visualize the steps involved in the sales process. They help companies identify where their most significant opportunities lie and how to improve their conversion rates.
Funnels are also helpful in understanding the buyer’s journey. It helps marketers create better strategies to reach out to potential customers.
The best part about this guide is that we will be going over different types of marketing funnels, including:
Lead Generation Funnel
Sales funnels: Customer acquisition
Digital advertising: Brand Awareness
Lead Nurturing
Let’s get started with our first type of marketing funnel – the Lead Generation Funnel.
What is a Lead Generation Funnel?
It can be defined as the path your prospects take from being aware of you until they become customers.
It consists of 4 main parts: Awareness, Interest, Decision, Action. Let’s have an example for each step in the funnel:
1. Awareness:
When someone visits your page, it means they were already aware of you.
You need to make sure you capture them at this stage because if you don’t, you might lose them before they even know who you are.
2. Interest:
Once your visitors see something interesting on your website, they will start to wonder, “why am I here?”.
Make sure you give them clear answers to these questions. For instance, if you sell health products, you can create content that answers common questions like “how does exercise benefit my body?”.
3. Decision:
Now that people are interested in learning more about your product/service, you need to show them why they should buy from you instead of your competitors.
4. Action:
After you answer their questions, you need to ask yourself, “do they want to buy now?”.
If yes, then you can offer them your product/ service. Now, let me share some good examples of lead gen funnels so you can see how they work.
Example 1:
This is one of the most famous examples of a lead gen funnel.
It is the Facebook Ad Manager.
As soon as someone clicks on any ads, they land on the next screen, the ad copy.
As soon as users click on the ad copy, they land on the landing page.
There is a call-to-action button at the end of the page.
As soon as someone clicks on that button, they get redirected to the Thankyou Page.
It is a simple example of a lead gen funnel, but the key thing to remember here is every single step is designed to convert leads into buyers.
What is a Sales Funnel?
A sales funnel is an organized way of approaching new leads and getting them to purchase.
It has many stages, just like a lead gen funnel. Here’s an overview of each stage in a typical sales funnel.
Firstly, when someone visits your site, they must be aware of your company and its services. They also need to understand the benefits of buying your product/ service over your competitors’ ones.
Secondly, once they understand the benefits of your product/ service, they must decide whether they want to buy it or not.
In other words, they must be convinced that your product/ service is better than your competitors’.
Thirdly, after making the decision, they must learn more about your company by reading your sales pages.
Only after they learn enough about your business they must be ready to purchase your product/ service.
Finally, once they make their mind to buy, they must complete their transaction. That’s why we say that a sales funnel has many stages.
Some of the best sales funnels include:
- Landing Pages
- Lead Generation Forms (opt-in forms)
- Sales Letters
- Upsells
- Downsells
- Case Studies
- Product Demo Videos
- Autoresponders
- Thank You Pages
- Affiliate Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Free Trials
- Membership Sites
- Call To Actions (CTAs)
- Customer Success Mapping
- Automation
- Email Campaigns
- Social Media Ads
- Blog Post Promotion
- Guest Posts
- Webinars
- Cross Promotions
- Referral Programs
- Online Surveys
- Infographics
What is a marketing funnel comes with a lot of queries about sales funnels because they drastically improve sales! But even you understand sales funnels you need to know how to utilize them. Luckily we already have a list of the best sales funnel builders to help you out.
What is a Digital Advertising Funnel:
Every digital marketer should be familiar with the concept of the Digital advertising funnel. The digital advertising funnel is nothing but a collection of different types of ads that appear on various platforms.
The idea behind it is to target people who are most likely to buy from you based on their demographics, location, interests, behavior, etc.
In addition to this, the ads need to be relevant to your brand so that they can generate maximum conversions.
If you’re wondering how one knows which platform works best for him, here are some questions to ask yourself before deciding which one to use.
Which Platform Has The Highest Engagement Rate?
It is the number one question every marketer should answer. For example, if you’re running Facebook ad campaigns, the engagement rate will tell you which posts get the highest response rates.
What Are Your Targeting Criteria?
Is your audience interested in buying a specific type of product? Are they looking for a particular niche? Or perhaps they want to make money online?
This information helps you figure out where to place your ads.
Where Do People Go When They Leave Your Website?
Once users leave your website, do they go straight to another website? If yes, you’ll have a much higher conversion rate since you won’t lose potential customers.
However, if they leave without doing anything else, then you’ll end up losing lots of money. So, pay attention to this aspect as well.
Should I Use PPC Or SEO Ads?
When it comes to paid search ads, Google AdWords and Bing Ads are available two popular options. Both these platforms work similarly.
However, there are pros and cons associated with each of them. We’ll discuss both of them later in the article.
What Is The Budget That Is To Be Allowed To Spent?
Your budget varies depending upon what kind of campaign you’re running.
For example, when you’re creating an e-book, you may only spend $500 or $1000 per month, while when you’re running a paid social media ad campaign, you can spend thousands per day.
So, it depends on what you’re trying to achieve.
Are There Any Limitations On Where you can place your ads?
Geographical locations usually limit advertisers. For example, if your business is about hair care products, you might not want to advertise on sites like eBay because there are too many other sellers selling the same products.
You could also limit the placement of your ads by placing them on high-traffic websites. The more clicks your ad gets, the better it is for you.
Can You Get Paid Faster With Pay Per Click Marketing?
Yes, you can. But the catch is that you have to invest heavily into it. To increase your chances of getting paid faster, you’ll have to create more accounts that target different audiences.
For example, let’s say you’re a freelance writer and manage multiple websites. Instead of targeting all of them at once, why don’t you split your efforts between them? Create separate accounts for each site and start bidding on keywords relevant to those sites.
Now, we know what is a marketing funnel and its three main types. We also learned how to increase your sales through the sales funnel and digital advertising funnel.
Let’s look at Lead Nurturing and how it can improve your sales!
Lead Nurturing: It’s Not Just About Sales Leads
The whole idea behind lead nurturing is to convert leads into sales. While most people think of lead generation as sales, lead nurturing refers to activities that help generate sales leads.
In simple terms, lead nurturing means using various tactics to convert leads into sales opportunities.
Here’s How Lead Nurturing Works
Let’s take a look at a typical sales process. At first, an advertiser has a goal: to sell his product/service to someone who visits his website.
Once he does so, he adds him to their list of prospects. And the cycle continues until he converts the opportunity into a customer.
Now, how does lead nurturing fit into the picture? What happens after the prospect becomes a customer? The person receives emails from their company; they read blogs written by experts in their field; they watch videos on YouTube or listen to podcasts. These are some of the ways through which companies nurture their leads.
What Does A Lead Nurture Campaign Look Like?
A lead nurture campaign typically includes three types of content:
1) Email campaigns
2) Blogs
3) Social Media posts
Email campaigns include emails sent to customers periodically informing them about new products, special offers, etc. Blogs are articles posted by experts in the industry to keep customers up-to-date with the latest trends. Finally, social media posts refer to status updates, tweets, Facebook messages, etc., shared by brands on popular platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.
How Do I Measure Successful Lead Nurturing?
There are several metrics that you can use to measure the success of your lead nurturing campaign. Here are some of them:
1) Increase in conversion rate
2) Decrease in bounce rates
3) Increase in average time spent per visit
4) Increase in number of pages visited
5) Increase in conversions
6) Increase in revenue
7) Increase in ROI
8) Increase in brand awareness
9) Increase in customer satisfaction
10) Increase in customer retention
11) Increase in customer loyalty
12) Increase in repeat purchases
13) Increase in referrals
Conclusion:
The marketing funnel is one of the best tools available today. If used properly, it will not only improve your business but also help you reach your goals much quicker. So, if you want to get ahead of your competitors, then you must learn about marketing funnels.
I hope you got your answer to what is a marketing funnel and are on your way to improving sales using the different funnels and lead nurturing.
