Expert Marketing Funnel Builds – Get More Conversions and Leads
What can a funnel do for your business?
To create a marketing funnel, you must focus on three main stages: awareness, interest, and buying intention. The funnel is a way to channel your efforts toward achieving your business goals with potential customers. Do you want to generate leads, make a sale, or establish a long-term relationship?
The marketing funnel is a visualization for understanding the process of turning leads into customers. Marketers cast a broad net to capture as many leads as possible, and then slowly nurture prospective customers through the purchasing decision, narrowing down these candidates in each stage of the funnel. The six stages of the intent marketing funnel are awareness, interest, consideration, intent, evaluation, and purchase. These stages can also be grouped into three broader categories: lead generation, lead nurturing, and sales.
What are customers drawn to?
Potential customers are drawn into the awareness stage through marketing campaigns and consumer research and discovery. Trust and thought leadership is established with events, advertising, trade shows, content, webinars, direct mail, viral campaigns, social media, search, media mentions, and more.
The interest stage is when potential customers are aware of your brand and are starting to learn more about it. They may have read one of your blog posts, watched a video about your product, or visited your website.
The intent stage is when potential customers are interested in your product or service and considering making a purchase. They might add your product to their cart or request more information in the form of a demo.
The bottom of the funnel should also include loyalty and advocacy stages. A continued relationship with your customers makes them more likely to buy again and recommend your brand. Different types of marketing funnels focus on specific strategies for each stage of the funnel. By evaluating your funnels, you can potentially drive greater sales, more loyalty, and stronger brand awareness
The most effective way to reach your target audience
To effectively reach your target audience, it’s important to have multiple marketing funnels that cater to people from different places. As digital transformation continues to change the marketing funnel, it’s crucial to create a voice marketing funnel that channels your audience directly where you want them to go. Think of it like catching a train from Michigan to Florida and getting on in Virginia – everyone’s journey will be different, with many stops along the way.
At each stage of the sales funnel, you need to offer specific information, content, or answers that help your prospects move closer and closer to making a purchase. This requires a complete top-to-bottom integration of the function, and the structure of a digital marketing funnel consists of four stages: Awareness, Consideration, Conversion, and Retention.
To optimize each step of the funnel, you can use various content channels such as email campaigns, blog posts, lead magnets, chatbots, social media accounts, free trials, and retargeting campaigns. By continuously testing and tweaking your funnel until you find what works best for your business, you can create a successful, high-value marketing campaign that nudges buyers toward making the right decision.
To increase brand awareness and visibility, there are several strategies that can be used. Here are some ways to increase brand visibility and awareness in a shorter format:
Be active on social media and share useful content frequently.
Use content marketing to build brand awareness.
Reward customers for spreading knowledge about your product to build brand evangelists.
Establish and build brand awareness among your audience by guest blogging, co-marketing, advertising, hiring a face or creating a mascot for the company, choosing an image or symbol that represents you, creating a short, catchy slogan, creating free content, sponsoring events, giving your brand a personality, and producing a podcast.
Choose your channels and define how you will measure your efforts
Grabbing their interests
To grab the interest of potential customers at the top of the marketing funnel, you should focus on educating them, providing value, and sparking their interest in your brand. Here are some tips to help you achieve this:
Use social media and email marketing as touchpoints for gathering customers at the top of your funnel if they happen to be followers or subscribers.
Give them something for free first to keep drawing them in. If it’s free and useful, then it’s a win for the customer. If the resource is really good, then they might go on a search for even more useful resources (or products) from you.
Create the right content for your funnel and maintain customer interest. It’s just about finding the method that works best for you and your customers.
Take your eyes off the sale and try to help potential customers solve their issues or pain points.
Use checklists to grab their attention.
Show your prospects that your brand has the solution they need. This is where you grab their attention and get that initial small opt-in.
Use surveys to learn more about your customers and improve your marketing funnel stages.
Cast a broad net in the first stage of the marketing funnel, and refine your picture of the ideal target audience as you see which consumers choose to make a purchase.
Remember that the goal at this stage is to reach as many potential customers as possible and get them interested in what you have to offer.
Considering the product/service
After a customer becomes interested they start considering all their options. They probably have many companies they are considering when deciding to buy this product/service. You want them to choose you! Great tips to get them to choose you:
Highlight your unique selling proposition: Make sure to emphasize what sets your product or service apart from competitors.
Optimize for target keywords: Use relevant keywords to make it easier for potential customers to find your product or service.
Reduce barriers to purchase: Make the purchasing process as easy and straightforward as possible to encourage customers to follow through.
Provide valuable content: Offer informative and engaging content that helps potential customers learn more about your product or service.
Include CTAs: Use clear and compelling calls to action to encourage potential customers to take the next step.
Continue providing value after purchase: Keep customers engaged and satisfied by providing ongoing support and valuable content even after they have made a purchase.
Train employees on customer service: Ensure that your employees are equipped to handle customer inquiries and complaints in a timely and effective manner.
Collect feedback: Gather feedback from customers to improve your product or service and better meet their needs.
Offer loyalty and referral programs: Encourage repeat business and word-of-mouth marketing by offering incentives for customers to make repeat purchases and recommend your brand to others.
Track metrics: Set goals and track key performance indicators to measure the effectiveness of your marketing funnel and make data-driven improvements
Intentions to buy
The consumer is definitely going to use the product/service, but they have to decide who they are going to purchase from. If your marketing funnel has been set up correctly they should be leaning toward your product/service. Now, you just have to give them that final push!
If you want to shift potential customers’ intentions to buy in your direction, here are some tips to consider:
Provide valuable content: Offer informative and engaging content that helps potential customers learn more about your product or service. This can help build trust and establish your brand as an authority in your industry.
Highlight extra value: To keep potential customers in the funnel, highlight the extra value your service provides. Convince them that your product is the best on the market.
Avoid pushing a sale too quickly: Prospective customers at the top of your marketing funnel aren’t ready to make a purchase decision immediately. They would rather educate themselves and learn more about your brand, products, and services. Coming across too aggressively or pushing for a sale in your top-of-funnel marketing content will drive away prospective clients and customers rather than draw them in.
Include CTAs: Use clear and compelling calls to action to encourage potential customers to take the next step. This can help guide them through the funnel and closer to making a purchase.
Collect feedback: Gather feedback from customers to improve your product or service and better meet their needs. This can help you make data-driven improvements to your marketing funnel and increase conversions.
Offer incentives: Consider offering incentives such as discounts or free trials to encourage potential customers to make a purchase. This can help nudge them towards taking action.
Create urgency: Use tactics such as limited-time offers or scarcity to create a sense of urgency and encourage potential customers to act quickly.
Retargeting: Use retargeting ads to reach potential customers who have already shown interest in your product or service. This can help keep your brand top-of-mind and encourage them to return to your website and make a purchase
Making their choice
Once they have made their choice and they have chosen you, make sure they are happy with their choice. Overcome the buyer’s remorse and keep them engaged. With proper engagement, you create customer loyalty (and possibly great referrals!).
Here are some tips for overcoming buyer’s remorse and following up after the sale:
Set expectations: Immediately after the sale, set clear expectations with the customer about what they can expect from your product or service. This can help prevent misunderstandings and reduce the likelihood of buyer’s remorse.
Provide excellent customer service: Offer top-notch customer service to help customers with any questions or concerns they may have after the sale. This can help build trust and loyalty with your brand.
Follow up with customers: Check in with customers after the sale to see how they are enjoying your product or service and if they have any feedback. This can help you identify areas for improvement and show customers that you value their business.
Offer a satisfaction guarantee: Consider offering a satisfaction guarantee or return policy to give customers peace of mind and reduce the risk of buyer’s remorse.
Provide helpful resources: Offer helpful resources such as user guides, tutorials, or FAQs to help customers get the most out of your product or service. This can help reduce frustration and increase satisfaction.
Evaluate your sales process: Review your sales process to identify any areas where you can improve. This can help you reduce the likelihood of buyer’s remorse and increase customer satisfaction.
Trim unnecessary expenses: Evaluate any items in your monthly budget that aren’t necessary. Trimming the fat from your budget can free up more funds and help ease the financial burden of a major purchase.
Understand buyer’s remorse: Understanding buyer’s remorse and the factors that contribute to it can help you tailor your marketing and sales efforts to reduce its likelihood.
Be empathetic: If a customer does experience buyer’s remorse, be empathetic and understanding. Offer solutions such as returns or exchanges to help them feel more comfortable with their purchase
Having a structured marketing funnel can increase annual revenue
Having a structured marketing funnel can increase annual revenue in several ways. Here are some benefits of using a marketing funnel:
Increased sales: A well-designed sales funnel can drive conversions and increase sales because it easily guides customers through purchasing1. By applying funnel marketing strategies to your business, you improve the success rate of your marketing and sales efforts.
A more accurate picture of marketing effectiveness: By adopting full-funnel marketing, companies can develop a fuller and more accurate picture of marketing’s overall effectiveness. This allows the CMO to provide the C-suite with a much richer and more complete picture of how exactly marketing is working.
Increased efficiency: A marketing funnel can help you reach your goals more efficiently. It enables you to create highly tailored campaigns that are more likely to convert.
Improved customer loyalty: The last part of the funnel is retaining customers and earning their continued loyalty. You can do this through tactics such as creating loyalty programs, which can help you increase sales to existing customers by rewarding them for their loyalty.
A better understanding of customer behavior: A sales funnel can help you identify problem areas in a sales process and allow for more targeted troubleshooting. By understanding your customers’ paths through the buying process, you can tailor your marketing and sales strategies to each stage, increasing the ability to drive customers from one stage to the next.
Overall, a structured marketing funnel can help businesses increase their revenue by improving their marketing and sales efforts, providing a more accurate picture of marketing effectiveness, increasing efficiency, improving customer loyalty, and better understanding customer behavior.
Funnels are what the customer experiences, what happens on the customer side of things.
Funnels intertwine with Pipelines, as Pipelines are what your sales/marketing team does in response to the customer.
Pipelines and Funnels are workflows, however, when we talk about workflows we are talking about all the other processes that happen after the close of the sale. Depending on your industry, your business, and your processes, you could have very few or many workflows within your company.
Automation is a great way to make sure your business runs even when you aren’t available to run it. Automation can be incorporated into any workflow and it can be as simple as sending out an email at the appropriate time that addresses exactly what the consumer needs at the exact point in the process that they are in or based on an action that they took.
Without the foundation you can’t create the funnels, pipelines or workflows. If you haven’t started on the foundation we can help you with that. Build your dreams the right way and make those dreams a reality. Don’t put all your time into this, but instead create something that can work while you have fun!
