What is a Marketing Funnel and How Does it Work?
For any business, creating awareness around your brand and bringing customers through to the point of purchase is often the single biggest challenge in getting your business going. As business owners, we know how to close the deal face to face, but the struggle is always how do we create MORE awareness of our company and increase the opportunities for sales.
This problem is often solved through the use of a marketing funnel. If you’re not familiar with this term, it describes how you get potential customers from not knowing about your company or service all the way to purchasing from you.
A good marketing funnel will take your potential customers through four different phases in their journey to purchasing. In this article, we will go through each of the four phases and what it takes to get your customers into each phase, and ultimately, to a purchase.
The 4 phases of a Marketing Funnel
Top of Funnel
Middle of Funnel
Bottom of Funnel
Purchase Decision
Top of Funnel: Creating Brand Awareness
Getting people into the top of the funnel is often the hardest part of the funnel process. It requires a clear understanding of the problem you can solve for your customers and then getting that message out in as many places as possible. This is also the stage where you need to tell your potential customers who you are what you do.
How do you create awareness for your brand or product? Start by getting your company brand and solution in front of those potential customers. It’s not an easy process, and often takes a lot of trial and error. This stage can be the most frustrating of the funnel because not everyone will drop down to the next phase, and if they’re not aware of who you are, they need time and exposure to who you are and what you do.
Top of funnel activities can come in many different forms like videos, social media posts, infographics, podcasts, and more. The goal is to create awareness and interest in your business. The awareness process will take longer than you think, so give it time and be consistent. If you’d like to read more about how a potential customer’s awareness process goes, you can read more here.
Middle of Funnel: Moving from Awareness to Interest
This is the section of the funnel where your customers have seen your brand enough times that they are now curious about how you can solve their problems. It’s at this stage that they start taking a deeper look into who you are and what you do. Don’t stop educating your customers at this stage.
The content your audience sees during this stage should help move them to the decision stage. It’s important to give them enough information about your product or solution to keep moving them towards buying from you. In this stage, potential customers need to see things like case studies, more in-depth blogs, webinars, and email newsletters to help them move through this stage.
Bottom of Funnel: Getting from Interest to Buying Decisions
The bottom of the funnel is about getting those interested customers to make a buying decision. They’ve gone through each of the earlier stages of the funnel and are still looking at your content. They’re definitely interested. It’s time to get them to pull the trigger.
During this stage of the funnel, special offers and deals are what helps them get over the finish line. If you’ve done a good job of getting your potential customers here, these deals can help them make that final buying decision and get you a new customer.
Other things you can use in this stage to help your prospects at the bottom of the funnel are detailed product comparisons, use cases, and testimonials. Buyer hesitation and remorse are real things. Think about anytime you’ve made a large purchase or invested in something for your business you weren’t completely 100% on. Sometimes, when a prospect is on the fence, they need an extra little push. So give it to them and make the offer with a call to action that gets them to reach out and close the deal.
Purchase Decision
This is the end goal for all your marketing funnel work. Getting the prospect/potential customer to say YES and buy from you. This is not the time to doubt yourself or your skills. Stay focused on how you can solve their problem and go win the deal.
This funnel process is not linear. These steps are happening simultaneously with different people at different levels inside the funnel. Just like a marble bouncing around in a toy funnel, your customers will do the same thing. Prospects may bounce from top to middle, back to top, down to the bottom, and then back to the middle again before making a buying decision.
In the same way, you need to slow your customers down and get them to spend the time looking at the content you are sending them. Getting them to slow down and spend the time on your content is what helps them trust you. Give them something to slow down for.
Your efforts of being consistent and marketing to all levels of the funnel must stay the same. All your effort should be focused on bringing people through the funnel, and making sure you cover each stage of the process. You can’t get anyone to the middle or the bottom of the funnel unless you get them in at the top. Every level is important and needs to be part of your marketing efforts.
If you need help designing a new marketing funnel to get customers to your website or brand, reach out to us at hello@goldbear.media.