The Marketing Funnel. Is this just another buzzword on the digital block? Rest assured, it’s nothing of the sort. A marketing funnel is an invaluable tool that will enable you to see lead conversions or buying customers not as a stroke of good fortune, but as the result of a structured process. It helps you understand the customer journey – from being aware of needs and problems to being ready to buy a relevant product or service, and respond with appropriate measures along every step of the way. It also helps you maximize the chances of the generated leads moving forward rather than slipping away. This blog will help you understand the stages of a Marketing Funnel and ways to use it to land up to 4X leads.
The Marketing Funnel: An Overview
Think of it as a series of stages, designed to do more than just get you customers. It’s a business model that will enable your business to gain maximum value from your customers in terms of purchases, loyalty, feedback, goodwill and even recommendations. Here’s what the funnel looks like:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Conversion
- Loyalty
- Advocacy
The Marketing Funnel: Stages to sustainable success
Every step of the buying cycle plays a crucial role in your business journey towards the ultimate goal – a contented customer who keeps coming back to you. Here’s a step-wise breakdown of the stages of a marketing funnel and how you can optimize your business performance at each stage.
Stage 1: Awareness
Marketing theorists will call this the first step of the marketing funnel. Consumer psychologists on the other hand, will consider this your point of entry into the customer’s mind and life. This is the stage where customers looking for solutions – that come in the purview of your business, will need to be ‘introduced’ to your business.
Ways to create awareness:
- Create posts on social media that highlight your unique expertise with respect to the needs of the customers you’re looking to target
- Invest in paid ads that allow you to inform/enlighten your targeted customers about how you can help them with your products or services.
- Create a landing page that provides relevant information to visiting customers
Stage 2: Consideration
The customer is now aware of your business. But there’s still a long way to go before awareness turns into action. Customers will seek out and compare multiple businesses before they zero down on the best option for their unique needs or problems. Your task now is to further build on your customers’ interest and give them reasons to choose you over competing businesses.
Ways to get a customer to consider you:
- Use higher-intent keywords that resonate with customers who show an intent to buy
- Post detailed information on how your expertise helps customers solves their unique needs, via blogs or articles
- Develop an email marketing campaign to capture and nurture leads
- Give customers a more in-depth understanding of your business by sharing comparisons between your business and the competition
- Run surveys to know more about how your customers think and also let them know that their preferences and opinions matter. Ask questions relating to what they’re looking for, how they got to know about you, what they’re hoping to see on your website, what concerns they have and so on.
Stage 3: Conversion
You got your customers to notice you. Next, you got them interested in knowing more about your business; you even went ahead to establish trust with your intent to know more about them and serve them better. Here on, you need to get your customers to stop reading, looking around and considering and instead, start clicking, ordering and buying. This is where you convert them from visiting customers to buying customers.
Ways to convert your prospects:
- Create campaigns targeting sign-ups and account creations
- Provide trials or demos for customers to experience your product or service
- Share positive customer reviews and testimonials to clear away any trace of uncertainty in the customer’s mind
- If you find customers reaching the stage where you expect them to convert and they don’t, send emails to gently prod them about the reason or reasons for them to delay a buy
- Simplify navigation across your landing page and reduce loading times
- Include a Call To Action at strategic places on the website
- Use exit pop-ups to retain customers
Stage 4: Loyalty
For a successful, forward-thinking business, matters don’t end with a customer coming your way in the conversion stage. In fact, this is an opportunity for your business to create a sustaining relationship with the customer that prevents them from ‘converting’ at other businesses in the long run. In other words, this is the stage where you endeavor to shape the loyal customer, a customer who will continue to make their purchases from you.
Ways to build and maintain customer loyalty:
- Build an efficient CRM platform to track and respond to customers’ queries, issues and suggestions
- Make your customers feel valued with regular incentives, discounts and rewards
- Create upselling / cross-selling campaigns that upgrade your customers to higher value or performance across your range of products or services
Stage 5: Advocacy
If there’s anything more delightful than a customer who repeatedly buys from you, it’s a customer who speaks well about you to their friends, family and colleagues and nudges them to buy or order from your business. This is the stage where you evolve loyal customers into willing advocates of your business. This is the ultimate reward or pay-off of all the effort, expense and patience that you’ve put into the marketing funnel.
Ways to create happy business advocates:
- Upload and update positive customer reviews on your website and review platforms to instill confidence in your existing customers
- Invite your customers to share their positive experiences with your business
- Give incentives to existing customers to make referrals or recommendations
Rely on SocioSquares to create a winning Marketing Funnel for your business
The marketing funnel is not a magic spell that will help your business gain lead conversions overnight. It is a strategic and accountable tool that will guide your business to its ultimate goal – acquiring and retaining customers in a cycle that’s scalable and sustainable. Done right, a marketing funnel will enable your business to capture leads at every stage of the funnel and take them forward towards purchase. We trust this detailed article will help you create and reap the benefits of your own marketing funnel. If you’d like to know more or would like an expert in this domain to create one for you, reach out to SocioSquares.
We’re a digital marketing agency with over 11 years of experience in helping small businesses and start-ups generate higher leads with the right digital marketing strategies. If you’re a business in the domain of dentistry, home improvement, oil and propane delivery, speech and occupational therapy, coffee e-commerce, pet healthcare or any other, call us and we’ll help you develop a marketing funnel that will enable you to land up to 4X leads in a shorter timeframe and at a lower cost to your business.
