What is a Marketing Funnel?
In the world of digital marketing, understanding what is a marketing funnel is crucial for businesses looking to drive conversions and maximize their marketing efforts. Basically, a marketing funnel is a visual representation of the customer journey, illustrating the various stages a potential customer goes through before making a purchase.
By comprehending this funnel and strategically optimizing each stage, businesses can effectively nurture leads, build relationships, and ultimately increase their conversion rates.
At the end of this article, we’ve included a Case Study of how we utilize the marketing funnel within advertising strategy.
A marketing funnel is a step-by-step process that guides potential customers from initial awareness of a product or service to the final conversion and beyond. It is often visualized as a funnel-shaped diagram, with each stage representing a specific phase in the customer journey.
Generally, the stages typically include awareness, consideration, decision, and retention/advocacy. The funnel helps marketers understand and address the needs of their target audience at each stage, leading to more effective marketing strategies.
Short Marketing Funnel vs Long/Extensive Marketing Funnel
If you search on Google for the term “marketing funnel”, there will be numerous amount of results. The truth is that the marketing funnel for your business can be short, simple, and straightforward, or more complex with many extra stages. In fact, there is no wrong or right funnel, but if you have a B2B business the chances are you’ll be using the extended version. Thus, let’s dive deeper into the differences:
Short Version Funnel
A short marketing funnel typically consists of fewer stages, focusing on the essential steps of awareness, consideration, and conversion. This simplified approach is often used for straightforward products or services with a shorter decision-making process.
In other words, your short Marketing Funnel can look like this:
- Awareness: Generating initial awareness of the product or service.
- Consideration: Nurturing leads and providing information to encourage consideration.
- Conversion: Converting leads into customers through a purchase or desired action.
Extensive Funnel with more stages
On the other hand, a long or extensive funnel includes additional stages that cater to complex products or services, high-ticket items, or industries with longer buying cycles. This comprehensive funnel may include stages such as lead generation, lead nurturing, evaluation, proposal, negotiation, and post-purchase follow-up. Nevertheless, it addresses the need for more detailed information and relationship-building throughout the customer journey.
In contrast to the simple version, your Extensive Funnel will possibly look like this:
- Awareness: Creating initial awareness of the product or service.
- Interest: Generating interest and capturing leads.
- Evaluation: Providing detailed information and addressing potential customer questions or concerns.
- Proposal: Presenting a proposal or offer tailored to the customer’s needs.
- Negotiation: Discussing terms, pricing, or customization options.
- Purchase: Completing the sale or desired action.
- Post-purchase follow-up/after-sale support: Providing support, nurturing the customer relationship, and encouraging loyalty or repeat business.
Undoubtedly, whether you select a short or long marketing funnel depends on factors such as the complexity of the offering, your target audience, industry standards, and the desired level of engagement with potential customers.
In sum, the above funnel is very similar to the one we use in our performance marketing agency, OKisdigital.
The key is to ask yourself: how can I close the deal/convert the customer?
How is it different from a Digital Marketing Funnel?
Of course, in today’s digital age, the sales/marketing funnel has adapted to the online landscape. The digital marketing funnel takes advantage of digital channels and platforms to reach and engage potential customers.
The funnel in the digital world is a mix of:
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Content marketing
- Social media advertising
- Email marketing, and
- Remarketing.
The digital version allows businesses to target specific audiences, track user behavior, and measure the effectiveness of campaigns more accurately. It enables personalized communication, data-driven decision-making, and the ability to optimize strategies in real-time for maximum impact.
Thus, when we explain our performance marketing services to a client, we use the following image:
Example of the digital marketing funnel for an e-commerce business
Let’s consider an example of a marketing funnel for an e-commerce business selling fashion apparel:
- Awareness Stage: Attracting potential customers through social media ads, influencer collaborations, and content marketing to increase brand visibility and generate interest.
- Consideration Stage: Providing informative blog posts, product videos, and user-generated content to engage potential customers and showcase the unique features and benefits of the apparel.
- Decision Stage: Offering personalized discounts or incentives, highlighting customer reviews and testimonials, and simplifying the checkout process to encourage conversions.
- Retention/Advocacy Stage: Sending post-purchase emails, offering loyalty rewards, and providing excellent customer service to foster loyalty and encourage repeat purchases and word-of-mouth recommendations.
Here’s an example of ads depending on the objective/stage from Meta’s Media Planning training:
Case Study: VRutopia.gr
VRutopia.gr is a local VR experience provider in Athens. We have effectively advertised VR Utopia for 3 years now, using a marketing funnel approach.
Advertising budget: 1000€ – 1200€, which is quite limiting and challenging to get results.
Funnel/Strategy:
So what do you do with 1K euros/month? Our strategy focuses on Google Ads for targeted searches, allocating 70-80% of the budget. We capture potential customers actively looking for VR experiences in Athens and kids’ parties.
For the consideration stage, we employ remarketing ads on Facebook and Instagram to re-engage with interested website visitors.
In addition, we leverage TikTok ads and IG Reels for cost-effective awareness, targeting a younger audience. This approach optimizes brand visibility, engagement, and conversions.
Conclusion
To conclude, understanding what marketing funnel is and why we need it is essential for businesses aiming to boost conversions/sales. By tailoring strategies and content to each stage of the funnel, you can guide potential customers seamlessly through the journey, from initial awareness to becoming loyal brand advocates.
Remember to continuously analyze and refine your marketing tactics based on data and customer feedback to ensure your funnel remains effective and aligned with your business goals.
Finally, embrace the power of the marketing funnel, and unlock the full potential of your marketing campaigns in the digital age.
