The marketing funnel is one of the first things you learn about when you start studying marketing. Without understanding the marketing funnel it means you will be trying to get people to buy before they even know who you are. Targeting the wrong level of the funnel means you don’t just lose out on customers it makes you lose your hard earned profits, and you can lose it fast if you’re not careful.
If you haven’t heard of the marketing funnel take some time to read through this blog to really unleash its potential.
The marketing funnel is designed to help you understand the different stages and mind set a customer is in before they make a purchase.
There are generally 6 stages,
Awareness
Here the user more than likely has never heard of you, they are unfamiliar with your industry and are in no means ready to buy. They might not even no they have a problem they need solved.
The chances of someone in this section of the funnel buy from you is slim. You want to keep the costs as low as possible and automate as much as possible. Organic social media, blogging, viral posts etc
If you start paid advertising here it’s going to cost you very little per user to get them to your site but it’s very unlikely they will take action, let alone buy from you.
Engagement
Engagement means they have some knowledge of the industry, they have an interest in your offering but they might have never heard of your business. Again unlikely to buy from you in their lifetime but there is a chance. Huge volume is needed here again.
Use organic as much as possible, the aim is to engage with the audience. Get them to sign up, follow you or take an action on the site. They most definitely will not become your customer while in this section of the funnel
You may do some paid advertising to help build your following but this will have little effect on your bottom line
Consideration
Things are starting to heat up now. Potential customers are weighing up the benefits of competitors. You have to get the customer to your site here. They might use keywords like buy, for sale and they will be looking at your product pages rather than your blog pages.
30 – 60 day remarketing campaigns can be effective here as the customer is actively seeking to purchase something to help them solve a problem.
Make sure you are ranking for your keywords organically to ensure you don’t miss out.
Intent
The customer has chosen you, they’ve decided to come back to your site to make a purchase. They type your brand name into google to find your website.
Make sure you’re the first choice on google. We’ve often seen competitors rank above branded sites and lose customers as a result.
Also make sure the user can easily convert while on the site and make their way through the site. You don’t want to lose out because of poor navigation
Purchase
The customers purchased – great, give them the best chance of success with support materials via email, online docs etc
Retention
Use email, remarketing and custom audiences to up sell, cross sell and improve the customers loyalty and experience.
We’ve seen people expect to make sales immediately through social media, paid adverts and not committing to blogging because it doesn’t produce an immediate return. The funnel helps you identify what you should use where, make sure you are in the same mind set of your customer and meet them at their level of the buying stage. While you might want to help them buy your service, they may not see the need or want to buy so it’s important to understand and adjust your strategy at each level.
After reading this if you
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