Marketing funnels exist everywhere consumers go these days. From the initial stages when someone learns about a business to the purchasing stage, marketing funnels exist to convert prospects into customers and beyond. These funnels exist in the everyday places that we as consumers go to whether it’s our Instagram feeds, the local mall, public transportation we take, YouTube videos we watch, billboards we drive by, and so much more.
Here’s a little experiment you can try for yourself: whenever you discover a new product that interests you, whether it’s from a YouTube video ad or a poster on a wall, complete the action that the advertisement is asking of you (e.g. visit the website, browse a product, watch a video, etc.). After you’ve done that, pay close attention to what happens next. Did you notice a different ad from the same brand on your Facebook news feed the next day? Was there a limited-time discount when you opened Instagram stories the week after? How about your email inbox? If you answered yes, then you can be sure that you’ve been entered into a marketing funnel!
So how do you build a successful marketing funnel for your own brand? In a quick ten-minute read, you’ll receive all of the info needed to help you get started. Whether it’s for a clothing brand you’ve launched or a revolutionary smartphone you’ve built, we’ll cover the principles of a successful marketing funnel and provide you with real examples. By the end of it, you’ll come out as a digital marketing pro and drive more customers to your business!
What’s A Marketing Funnel?
Before we get to the how, we must first understand a few basic principles about a marketing funnel. It’s a tool that helps you visualize the buyer journey, or the path a prospect takes as they become familiar with your company, from introduction to conversion (and hopefully beyond). For the most part, all buyer journeys contain the following six stages: Awareness, Interest. Consideration. Intent, Evaluation, and Purchase (Pre-Purchase Marketing Funnel).
There are big differences between each stage of the buyer journey so let’s take a closer look at each one.
Awareness
In the awareness stage, your prospect is learning about your brand for the first time ever. During this stage you as the marketer should focus on highlighting your product/brand and tracking how engaged users are with your ad. Key metrics you should focus on are:
Reach
Engagement
Completion rate of what you are asking for (e.g. if you are directing people to visit your website, track how many people actually visited your website from the ad)
Primary goal: To show the value of your product or service, provide educational content and build awareness with your prospect.
Do: Educate and get in front of your target customer.
Example of a great Awareness ad: Is a YouTube or an AdsonAds Video
With video ads specifically, you can track not only how many people clicked through to the website (at which point they have entered the next stage of your marketing funnel), but also those who viewed the video at 50%, 75%, 90%, and 100%. Those who viewed less than 50% of the video (15 seconds) are not interested in your product/brand and your message. So why continue wasting ad budget on those people? Instead, you should focus your ad budget on remarketing to those who have engaged with the video at more than 50% since these people were interested enough to watch a good chunk of your ad.
Interest
Once your target customers have become aware of your brand, the next step in the funnel is to generate interest. Interest can be measured by how long a new website visitor stays on your website. Someone who is disinterested in what you have to offer will most likely leave your website within their first 5 or 10 seconds on site. On the other hand, those who are most interested in what you are offering are going to spend a significantly longer period of time reading and engaging with your website content. Key metrics to track are:
Average session duration
Bounce rate
How many pages a person views on average
If the user doesn’t visit your website, interest can still be measured based on the engagement they had with your ad, such as commenting, liking, and viewing the full duration of the ad and not skipping (video).
Primary goal: To build a deeper relationship with your website visitor, introduce them to your product/service and nurture them with contextual or targeted content.
Do: Provide educational content tailored to your visitor, deliver content that is product specific, be helpful. Continue to drive interest.
Consideration
After absorbing the content on your website and ads, your ideal customers are ready to give you their consideration. During this part of the funnel, your target market will complete some actions (e.g. request a quote, look at reviews, add to cart, etc.), signalling that they’re considering purchasing your product/service. Key metrics to track here are goal completions on your website such as:
Clicking on calls-to-action
Completing contact forms
Adding to their shopping cart
Instead of attempting to get the customer to complete the final conversion action you desire, such as purchasing your product, your goal should be to get the customer to complete mini conversions or preliminary conversions leading to their purchase.
Primary goal: To convince your website visitor to complete some small actions on your site.
Do: Talk about the benefits of your product/service, show off your product/service, offer incentives to convince visitors to engage further with your website and band. Create engaging content.
Intent
While consumers become aware of your brand and show interest and consideration, they may have other factors in their life that are more important and urgent. When a potential customer gives you their consideration, they are also giving consideration to other products and brands that are interacting with them. During the intent stage of the buyer journey, you as the marketer need to highlight the impact of your product.
Primary goal: To convince your target customer why they must act fast.
Do: Highlight your target customer’s problem that can be solved by your product. Take the values of your product/service and convert them to benefits. Create a sense of urgency to compel visitors to purchase soon.
Evaluation
At the evaluation stage the ideal customer has already identified a need that they want to address and have considered your solution as an option. They have shown intent that this is something they want to resolve sooner than later. But is your solution the best fit for their needs? During this stage consumers are evaluating and comparing your product to your competitors’ products. They’re conducting more research than before. The main factors that consumers use to choose one brand over another include:
Is your product a more affordable alternative? Does your product offer more value that competitors aren’t offering? Does your business provide better support before and after the sale?
According to a study conducted by emarketer.com, most consumers look at the reviews before making a purchase. Does your product have good reviews already? If you don’t have any reviews, consider incentivizing your customers to leave one!
Primary goal: To convince your target customer that you are the best solution for their needs.
Do: Talk about the benefits of your product/service, show off your product/service, provide customer testimonials, use case studies to exemplify your product in real use-cases, and provide reasons to choose you.
Purchase
After careful research your ideal customer is ready to make their purchase. Website visitors who value your product and like everything about your brand, but just can’t afford to pay at your normal price, will respond better to a sales promotion than those who evaluated you poorly.
Consider up-selling and cross-selling related products to your most ideal customers who love everything about you. Amazon.ca does a great job of utilizing this tactic.
Primary goal: To convince your target customer to purchase.
Do: Show off your product/service, offer discounts and promotions to convince purchases, and create a sense of urgency.
Examine what time of day and what day of the week that conversions happen regularly on your website. Target ads to run at those times on the devices and platforms your target market uses most frequently.
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