The world of digital marketing is a very broad world with so many available tactics and strategies. While it can be a good thing, sometimes we can be overwhelmed by so many different options. Not to mention, tracking all the different campaigns and all the important metrics can cause a major headache.
Besides, the harsh truth is, even after we put a lot of effort into our marketing campaigns, be active on all social media platforms, and spending a lot of money on paid advertising, there is no guarantee to get the results we desired.
With those points being said, thankfully there is an answer to all the confusion, a tool to do more marketing with fewer efforts, and that is the marketing funnel.
But what exactly is the marketing funnel? How can we use it effectively to get more results? In this guide, we will discuss all the ins and outs you’ll need to know about marketing funnel.
Without further ado, let us begin by discussing the basic concept of a marketing funnel itself.
What Is Marketing Funnel?
A marketing funnel as a theory is the customer journey from being aware of a product or service until they finally make the purchase. It is called a ‘funnel’, because with more steps, usually more and more people will back off, and the probability of sales will drop.
In an ideal world, all people who are aware of our products (which we often call ‘leads’) will buy our product. However, as we know that is not the case, and you need to work with conversion rate optimization agency to make sure that most of that leads will convert into buyers.
The Major Steps of Marketing Funnel
So, the customer’s journey in a marketing funnel starts with awareness and ends at purchase. There are many other steps within the journey with many different names, depending on who you asked. However, the steps within the marketing funnel can generally be divided into just three major parts:
Lead Generation
Here, the customers are made aware of your product or service. It can be through a Google search, advertising, email campaign, and many more. So, within this stage, the customers are ‘aware’.
Lead Nurturing
Once the prospect is turned into an aware customer through the previous stage, the job of the marketer is to nurture the lead. Here, our focus should be increasing their interest in the product/service and make them consider it over your competitors.
Actual Sale
This is the result of your hard work, the end of the funnel and the narrowest bit.
To learn more, this guide by Pardot might help you.
Building Your Marketing Funnel
So, when we are talking about building a ‘marketing funnel’, we are building a set of marketing rules to keep the prospects during each stage of the funnel. Also, the marketing funnel should be able to gauge why customers drop at each step. How can we do it? In the rest of this guide, we will discuss the steps you will need to take to build a high-conversion marketing funnel.
Step 1: Attracting Awareness
The first step and the top of the funnel is to attract as much awareness as possible from prospective customers. To do it right, you will need to understand your demographics and the keywords they will specifically search for on search engines.
You can do it in several ways. Improving your organic rankings on Google by working with SEO expert on developing and executing SEO strategy, as well as having a working paid advertising campaign.
This step will be largely dependent on your niche and/or industry. Some industries work best with SEO, some others, especially highly competitive ones, will work better with PPC campaigns. Some niches can get more awareness through informative, high-quality blogs.
Do your research, learn from your competitors and find the best lead generation campaigns in your industry.
Step 2: Capturing Email Addresses
Capturing your leads are usually the major focus for most marketers, but it is actually just the start of your marketer’s journey. The next step is to start a relationship with your prospect, which is typically done by acquiring their email address.
This guide by Optinmonster can help you with acquiring more email addresses in simple ways.
However, the best way to get email addresses is arguably offering them valuables. It can be special offers or discounts, special content, invitations to your event/webinars, or other forms depending on your products or services.
The better you understand your prospects’ psychology, the more emails you can capture. So, make offers that are relevant to your audiences.
Step 3: Nurturing Relationships
Once you’ve got your prospects’ email addresses, the next step is to build and nurture relationships through email marketing campaigns.
Remember that they are already interested in your products or services at this stage, and they will benefit from more information. Here is where you can show them positive reviews of your products, giving them access to white papers, case studies, or any beneficial information depending on your products or services.
There are several different types of marketing campaigns available, and depending on your goals, you might want to choose one over the other.
In this stage, there are several principles you can follow:
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Build your credibility through proofs and credibility. You can do this through reviews, testimonials, case studies, white papers, etc.
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Build trust. Your brand is a story, so write a good one
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Keep your email autoresponder well-structured, interesting, and helpful for your customers
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Plan a consistent email marketing campaign to nurture your relationships
Conclusion
The most important thing to remember in your marketing funnel project is that it is a long-term project. Your work does not end when the prospect finally become an actual customer, that’s actually the beginning of another journey.
Return customers are definitely more valuable, so you should put more effort into nurturing relationships with your existing customers. Besides, they can be valuable advocates for your business, generating more leads through referrals.
The purpose of a working marketing funnel is to guide your prospects until they convert. So, make the whole process as interesting, engaging, and easy to use as possible.
