eMarketing
The marketing funnel is a model used to visualize how potential customers move through the purchasing process. Beginning at its broadest levels with ToFu efforts (Top of Funnel), its depth decreases gradually in Middle of Funnel (MoFu), eventually reaching conversion and lasting customer relationships through conversion and loyalty programs.
Awareness
At this stage of your marketing funnel, potential customers become aware of their need. This could come about through personal research or referral from another, an article or social media post or similar sources.
At this stage, your aim should be to quickly grab their attention with content that clearly communicates their need or pain point. Such content might include infographics, blog posts, webinars, podcasts and video. Social media campaigns, advertising, trade shows or events can also help draw them in at this phase.
Step two of creating awareness of your product or service involves sparking interest through targeted content that shows how it will solve customers’ issues. Examples of such content can be case studies, testimonials and other high-value assets that your target customer might engage with. It’s crucial that both quality and quantity of engagement with this content occur at this stage – the more prospects engage with your content the higher their chance is of moving onto subsequent stages of the funnel.
Once your solution has attracted prospects’ interest, they will compare it against its competition. This evaluation process can take place via reviews, social media posts, comparison shopping or talking to friends and family about it.
At this stage, your goal should be to convert prospects into paying customers by connecting them with the appropriate people and offering an engaging call-to-action. This may involve paid ads, sales reps contacting prospects directly, webinars or live event sponsorship. In ideal cases, repeat buyers who promote your product can become advocates that spread its worthiness further down the road.
Interest
As potential customers reach the interest or consideration stage of the marketing funnel, they’re already aware of your brand and products; perhaps they have even done research about them. Now is the time for you to offer educational content such as blog posts, videos, infographics, case studies and ebooks which further their understanding.
At this point, remarketing on social media is another effective way to keep your brand at the forefront of people’s minds who have not made their move yet. Doing this may help increase conversion rates if ads highlight key features and benefits.
Once a potential customer reaches the consideration stage, they’ve likely done extensive research on your product or service and decided it meets their needs. At this point, it is time to showcase why yours stands out against competitors by providing testimonials, reviews or case studies; additionally you could try incentivizing purchases through promotions like offering a free trial period or discounted first order price.
Once a lead has converted, they should be treated as loyal advocates for your business. You can do this through programs such as a referral or rewards system where customers get rewarded when referring new customers to you. In addition, provide them with valuable content and support so they’re satisfied with the product/service and continue recommending it to friends/family. You can do this via email campaigns, social media posts/updates/blog articles/product updates etc.
Desire
Marketers frequently split the marketing funnel down into stages – such as awareness, interest, consideration, evaluation, conversion and loyalty/advocacy – before final conversion occurs. One common model includes awareness, interest, consideration evaluation conversion loyalty/advocacy
At this stage, potential customers identify a problem or need. For instance, after reading an article about gum disease they might realize they need their teeth professionally cleaned.
Once a potential customer recognizes they have a need, they begin investigating potential solutions. They might conduct an online search or visit a showroom to gather more information about products and services that may meet them. At this stage of the funnel – known as “MoFu” (middle of funnel), customers begin exploring various options by comparing pricing, features, reviews etc.
At this early stage, when brands capture the interest of potential customers, they can capitalize on it by providing content that explains why their products and services stand out. This could take the form of blog posts, social media updates or any other relevant form.
At this stage, potential customers are evaluating their options and selecting which product or service to buy. This process is assisted by sales team representatives, who may interact with potential customers over the phone or via email.
Once potential customers decide to purchase, they enter the final stage of a marketing funnel: turning leads into customers. This step may be accomplished through paid ads, social media posts and SEO content marketing; businesses may also offer incentives such as discounts or free shipping and returns for repeat purchases as incentives to turn these customers into advocates for their product/service and promote it to others.
Evaluation
Evaluation stage of marketing funnel represents the final stage, when people make their final decision about purchasing or not purchasing a product or service. At this point, people evaluate various solutions to their pain points and may ask about pricing or guarantees; marketers should focus on showing why their product/service stands out against competitors while meeting customer’s unique requirements; for instance a mattress size guide might convince someone researching sleep apnea mattresses to choose Casper over competitors like Serta or Purple.
Consideration StagePeople typically identify their pain point and research solutions online in order to address it, often looking at reviews or testimonials to make their decision on purchasing a product easier, size, price and its price being of particular consideration. According to Amanda, this stage provides an ideal opportunity for content that educates customers through their purchasing journey such as blog posts on sleep apnea or how to select an optimal mattress suited for them sleeping style.
Many marketers view the middle stage of their marketing funnel as the bridge between TOFU and MOFU phases. Here, they work closely with their sales team to nurture leads through the buying process and convince them that their product or service is right for their customer base.
Some marketers even break down their funnel more extensively, segmenting into interest and evaluation instead of the more traditional TOFU and MOFU categories. No matter how you segment it, it’s crucial to keep track of opportunity arrival rate and close rate so you can gauge how your marketing funnel is doing and adjust strategies as necessary to improve it.
Conversion
At this stage, potential customers have identified their problems or needs and are actively looking for solutions. They might search online, read reviews or visit showrooms seeking advice from salespeople; once at this stage they are often ready to purchase.
Brands must consider this step a critical one of their marketing funnel, because this is when they can begin building relationships and creating loyalty among their customers. A common strategy is providing free trials, discounts or rewards with repeat purchases; another way of cultivating loyalty among consumers is encouraging them to refer their products or services to friends and family members.
To maximize the effectiveness of your marketing funnel, it is imperative that all conversion events are tracked. This enables you to compare various forms of conversions, and identify areas for improvement – for instance comparing installs versus in-app purchases can help identify opportunities to optimize marketing strategies.
Conversions refer to events which transform an interested website user into someone who takes desired actions such as making purchases or subscribing to newsletters, usually measured as a percentage. Conversion rates can be measured through Key Performance Indicators for commercial websites – typically measured as percentages – though its exact definition will depend on your goals and industry – for instance a webshop selling high-priced luxury items might use different metrics than supermarkets when measuring conversion rates. Conversion can also refer to customer journeys from initial awareness through repeat purchases or brand advocacy – often considered goals of many marketing campaigns.
