Companies are increasingly changing the way they do their marketing, seeking to understand the real needs of the consumer, offering valuable content so that they feel attracted in a natural way until they convert new customers.
With the marketing funnel you can maximize the potential customer's engagement with your company, arousing their interest through specific marketing strategies for each stage of the funnel.
Throughout this article you'll learn about the main fundamentals of a digital marketing funnel, its relationship with the buying journey and the 7 essential steps to setting up a funnel for your company.
What is the Marketing Funnel?
The marketing funnel is a representation of the stages that potential customers go through until they convert. The number of people reduces at each stage, thus forming a funnel.
Applying the funnel is fundamental to classifying potential customers according to their level of awareness of the service/product being offered.
This way, you can choose the right tools to interact with the customer using an approach that suits their level of awareness as they flow through the marketing funnel.
To better understand the digital marketing funnel, you can imagine a real funnel. The top of the funnel has a larger area and this area reduces until you reach the bottom of the funnel.
In summary, the marketing funnel can be divided into four stages:
Visitors → Top of Funnel
Leads → Middle of the Funnel
Opportunities → Middle of the Funnel
Sales → Bottom of the Funnel
The Difference Between the Marketing Funnel and the Sales Funnel
Marketing funnel and sales funnel are different concepts that describe different stages of the customer acquisition process.
The marketing funnel is the process of turning strangers into qualified leads by generating awareness of the brand and its products or services. It generally has the following stages: awareness, consideration and decision.
O sales funnelon the other hand, focuses on converting leads into actual customers by presenting and negotiating an offer. It generally has the following stages: prospecting, presentation, negotiation and closing.
In short, the marketing funnel focuses on attracting and nurturing leads, while the sales funnel focuses on converting leads into customers.
How to build a marketing funnel for your company?
To build a marketing sales funnel, you need to follow some fundamental steps so that the potential customer moves through the funnel naturally. In this way, the funnel will be maximized to get the most conversions at the bottom of the funnel.
1. Know your Persona
The first step in getting to know your persona is to draw up a complete and detailed profile to understand how you will communicate and offer your product or service.
To define the buyer persona, you need to collect and analyze demographic, behavioral and psychological data about your target audience. Some questions to consider include:
- Age group;
- Social class;
- Purchasing power;
- Habits;
- Challenges;
- Channels most accessed;
- Preferences, etc.
Based on this information, it is possible to create a complete profile of the buyer persona and use it to guide more effective marketing and sales strategies.
2. Produce Relevant Content
Now that you know who your persona is, what their motivations and challenges are, it's easier to create content that meets these needs.
To produce quality content, you need to choose keywords that are relevant to your audience. This is the first step in Content Marketing to make your content appear in search results.
Relevant content also needs to deliver valuable information, solutions and insights. To do this, it's important to always keep up to date with the latest trends, news and developments related to your niche.
In addition to production, it's important to pay attention to the frequency of publication. Publish content regularly and maintain a consistent voice to establish a strong and reliable presence.
Remember that producing relevant content is an ongoing journey that needs to be tested and your strategies adjusted according to your audience's responses.
3. Choosing Marketing Channels
The choice of digital marketing channels depends on several factors, including the target audience, the budget, the marketing objectives and the type of product or service being promoted. Here are some tips for choosing digital marketing channels:
- Understand the preferences, habits and buying behaviors of your target audience to find out where they hang out online;
- Determine your marketing objectives, such as increasing sales, generating leads or building the brand, in order to choose the most suitable marketing channels;
- Consider your digital marketing budget and choose the channels that are most affordable and effective for your budget;
- Try out various digital marketing channels to see what works best for your business;
- Consider integrating various digital marketing channels, such as email, social media marketing, search marketing and display marketing, for even more effective results;
Remember that the choice of digital marketing channels is an important decision and you may need to experiment and adjust your strategies over time.
4. Automate Email and/or Message Flows
Once the new lead has registered or provided their information through one of your company's channels, it's time to send them emails so that they feel more and more familiar with your brand. To do this, you can use a tool that allows you to send emails automatically.
In this article, we've put together tips for a winning e-mail marketing method.
There are a variety of emails that can be sent to your lead and that can be customized in the way that best suits what you want to offer.
You can send welcome emails, provide information about your company, show product features, offer special offers and many other subjects that you consider interesting for your lead.
5. Connect Your Marketing Funnel with Sales
Now, for your prospect to become a lead and then a customer, each stage of the marketing funnel needs to be well connected. Here are some tips for connecting the marketing funnel with the sales funnel:
- Align marketing and sales objectives to ensure that all actions are aimed at the same goal;
- Use the information collected in the marketing funnel to identify qualified leads and deliver them to the sales team;
- Maintain clear communication between the marketing team and the sales team to ensure that all important information is shared;
- Analyze the data collected in the marketing funnel and the sales funnel to identify points for improvement and optimize your strategies;
- Integrate your marketing and sales systems to ensure that information is shared efficiently.
Remember that the connection between the marketing funnel and the sales funnel is fundamental to the success of your marketing and sales strategy. It's important to work collaboratively and continually optimize your strategies to achieve even more effective results.
6. Test and Optimize your Marketing Funnel
Over time, you'll be able to observe the performance of your marketing funnel and find out how well it converts at each stage, so that you can then develop strategies to optimize the funnel in order to increase the number of customers for your company.
The first step to optimizing your funnel is to have your metrics and KPIs well defined, after which you can carry out A/B tests to compare different versions of your campaigns and identify the version that performs best.
Next comes analyzing the data collected at each stage of the funnel to identify weaknesses and opportunities for improvement. We suggest that you optimize the user journey in the marketing funnel to ensure that your target audience is having the best possible experience.
How to Build Marketing Funnel Strategies?
Once you've mapped out the buying journey, it's time to define specific strategies for each stage of the funnel. This way, you'll use the resources you have available to captivate and lead leads from the beginning to the end of the journey.
At each of these stages you can apply persuasion techniques to maximize the number of people who reach the bottom of the funnel. Studying how to apply these techniques to your funnel can have a positive impact on your sales.
We'll explore each of these stages in more detail below:
Top of the Funnel
At the top of the funnel, potential customers often haven't realized that they have a problem and don't know about your product or service.
Therefore, at this stage the mission is to raise the customer's awareness of a problem and encourage them to seek a solution. The use of blogs and outreach campaigns on social networks can be good strategies to help achieve this goal.
With a view to providing more insights into this stage of the funnel, which is so important for attracting new users, we have prepared this article on Why invest in the top of the funnel with paid media?
Middle of the Funnel
At this stage, we have consumers who were attracted in the first stage (the top of the funnel) and have started to have more questions about how to solve their problems. It's important to note that some of the people impacted at the top of the funnel didn't move on to the middle of the funnel.
Since at this stage customers are looking for solutions to a particular problem, you can offer more technical and specific content that will help them answer their questions and understand their difficulties better.
This way, they will be more qualified and will become leads (potential customers who are aware of your problem and are looking for ways to solve it).
Bottom of the Funnel
At the top and middle of the funnel, potential customers have become aware of the problem they have and have gone in search of possible solutions. Now it's time for your company to present itself as the best solution for themThis is when they decide to do business with your company.
At this stage, potential customers are qualified and are looking for the best offer to solve the "pain" they are feeling. Pain, in this case, is a problem to be solved and not necessarily physical pain.
Here it's worth using persuasion techniques to win over your customers. One of the techniques that can be useful is social proof. In this technique, you show testimonials from people who have already used your service and achieved excellent results. This type of technique can encourage undecided people to make the decision to buy.
Conclusion
The marketing funnel is fundamental to the success of your business strategies, as it allows you to understand the behavior of your target audience, optimize your conversions, align your teams and make informed decisions based on data.
The marketing funnel allows you to collect and analyze valuable data on the behavior of your target audience, which is key to making informed decisions and optimizing your marketing strategies.
And, as you can see, there are several ways to optimize a marketing funnel and their use can greatly contribute to increasing your company's sales.
To find out how to work on Top of Funnel strategies, be sure to check out our article on 7 Ways to Invest in the Top of the Marketing Funnel with Pareto.
