Funnel marketing is a technique that many brands use all over the world. Through a marketing funnel, you can achieve many things. Yes, the main goal is to get the customer to buy a product for you. But when you’re running a business, you should know that making sales isn’t all that you need. It’s the major part of running a successful business. But all the efforts you put in before that sale happens are also important.
These are the efforts you make to let the customer know more about you. Through these efforts, the customer can build trust with you and help you make a brand identity. Trust becomes an important element in businesses.
You wouldn’t share your deepest thoughts or even the happiest thoughts with someone you don’t trust. In the same way, how can you expect a customer to buy something from you if they don’t have that trust, to begin with?
In order to have their trust, you’ve to engage with them. You’d have to make them believe how your brand is different from other brands that are out there. Not only that, you’d have to show them with your actions and your content.
When it comes to actions, you’ve to be responsive to them and their needs. Throughout this funnel, they’d have many concerns and questions. You’ve to be prepared to answer all these questions with full honesty. You’ve to provide them with helpful solutions so that they can come up with a decision. And obviously, this decision would help you both.
Read more in the article to know about the best practices you need to have while making a marketing funnel.
In pochi punti:
What Is Funnel marketing?
A marketing funnel or a purchase funnel is a blueprint laid out by an organisation. Through this roadmap, the company tries to guide their customers. It’s on this map that a customer has its first interaction with the organisation. Moving down this roadmap, they eventually become a paying customer for the company.
In simple terms, during the first interaction, the customer isn’t really known as the customer. They’re generally known as the visitors. As time passes by and they keep visiting, again and again, they become potential customers. Once they reach the bottom end of this funnel, they become a customer who gets the products and services from a brand.
On this roadmap or the purchase funnel, you put out many objects that would attract customers. Objects really don’t mean materialistic objects like diamonds or gold. These objects refer to paid ads, SEO content, social media marketing, email marketing, and other marketing channels.
Think of it this way, funnel marketing makes use of many marketing techniques to attract customers.
But, marketing to these customers isn’t as easy. This is mostly because not all your customers are the same. There would be some customers who’ve never heard of your brand’s name. Some customers would be there to look at the alternative options that you can provide them with.
Hence, when you’re creating your marketing funnel, you’ve to know all these types of customers. You’ve to know about their likes and dislikes. You’ve to know what they’d enjoy, what would make them happy. It’s after understanding these matters, you’d be able to present to them the products that would make them satisfied.
From there on, you’d have to know where these people are standing with their interests. Then, using specific marketing tactics, you can easily attract them to your brand.
What is Conversion Funnel marketing?
A conversion funnel or a sales funnel is a visual representation of a buyer’s journey. Buyer’s journey simply means their journey from the starting end of the funnel. It has to be from the starting to the end only because it’s not like they can just come to the end in a matter of a few days.
Here, you’ll use your marketing tactics to make them stay, know more about your brand, and then, in the end, make a purchase.
Levels of Conversion Funnel
The conversion or sales funnel has 4 levels. These levels are mentioned below:
- Awareness: This is the first step of your conversion funnel. This is where the buyers become aware of your brand. They become aware when you use certain strategies to let them know about your products and services. Here, you may use content marketing, social media marketing, and advertising.
- Interest: At this level, you’ve to raise that interest in the customer’s mind. They keep seeing your content and ads more often. You’re getting a lot of traffic on your social media and website. Now, you’ll use offers, visual designs, and engaging content to make them more interested.
- Desire: Here, you’ll help the customers to build trust with you. They should get that desire to learn more about you and your products. You should use email marketing at this level to let them know more. Remember that this is where the customers, who were just visitors till now, have become leads for your brand.
- Action: This is the last and final stage of the funnel. Till the previous stages, the leads were getting to know more about you. They signed up for emails, newsletters, surveys, etc. But here, they’ll make that purchase. To make that happen, you’d have to persuade them enough.
Why Is Funnel Marketing Important?
A marketing funnel is important and is needed in businesses. To have a clear understanding of the buyer’s journey, their likes and dislikes, and their problems, you’d need to have a marketing funnel for your brand.
Here are a few reasons why this funnel is important and why you should create one.
- As mentioned earlier, in a marketing funnel, you put all your marketing strategies. You don’t fit them all together and hope that they’d work. That would only create chaos and confusion. When you’d work with the funnel and observe where your buyers are, you’ll know what strategies you have to use.
- One of the things you’ve to remember for every marketing strategy is that you’ve to be consistent. This consistency in the funnel would let you drive your leads to take the next action. Plus, you won’t have to puzzle too much over what you’d need to do. This is because all the marketing strategies have those ideas that can help you get those customers.
- Funnel marketing is also important because it helps you save a lot of time and effort. Through this funnel, you can know where your customers are standing. All you’ve to do, then, is just attract them towards yourself. Since you’d know the marketing strategies that you’ve to use, it won’t take much time to attract them.
- A marketing funnel also helps in increasing your sales. Without this funnel, you won’t know what marketing strategy would work the best. However, using this funnel, you’d be able to locate your buyers. You’d make them become leads for your brand. In the end, you’d nurture them to make the final purchase.
A funnel would really set things in a direction for you and the customers. Using this, you’re assured that none of you’d feel lost.
The Best Funnel Marketing Strategy
Here’s a list of the best marketing strategies for your marketing funnel.
- Blogs: When the customers are just getting to know you, you should use blog posts. These blog posts can provide them with insights about various things. In the blog posts, you may write anything that you want. But these posts should be able to answer some of your customer’s questions.
- Videos: In funnel marketing, videos are gaining more attraction. Through videos, a customer is able to see a person in front of them. This person, who’s a representative of your company, can provide many helpful insights to your customers. Plus, videos don’t always have to be serious, they can be funny as well.
- Research: A rather wonderful and informative way to create your marketing funnel is to use research. When you do your own research, you can even find a more in-depth solution to the customer’s questions. You may do your research in any way that you can. E-books, research papers, or white papers can be a great way for you to start.
Tips and Best Practices
Just creating a funnel isn’t going to get you those sales. A funnel with a hole in it can’t work really well, can it? Don’t feel disheartened, though, because all you need are certain tips to make it work.
- All brands need to listen to their customers. In order to persuade your customers to make the final purchase, you need to pay attention to them. You can know what they want by asking them to fill out a survey form. Through Instagram’s ‘Ask Me A Question’, you can ask them what they desire from you. You may also collaborate with them to create a unique idea for your website content.
- It’s important that you use search engine optimization in your funnel. SEO would help you get more rankings on search engines. People would get more awareness about your brand’s name this way.
- You need to have CRM in your funnel as well. CRM stands for customer relationship management. CRM mainly focuses on acquiring, retaining, and nurturing customers. You’d be able to do that by providing them with many positive experiences. Throughout the whole tunnel, they should feel that there was a positive change that they got. It may be because of how you responded to them or how you let them have their word.
- In funnel marketing, you’d also need to have great content. This content can be about anything that you want. If you’re a children’s toy supplier, you may write a blog that explains how toys help children. You may make a video that just shows children playing with your brand’s toys. If not anything, that video will just spread happiness. And sometimes, happiness is what new parents would need.
In Conclusion
A marketing funnel is a set-out map that helps your customer know more about your business. Once a customer starts taking those small steps to know more about you and trust you, they can get through the end. At the end of the funnel is where they make their purchase.
The purchase, however, only happens when you make such efforts for them. You need to provide them with positive experiences and engaging content. This would help them get answers to their problems. More than that, they’d also be able to learn more about your products and certain relevant aspects.
On their walk through this funnel, you’ve to stand by them. This will ensure that they’re on the way to making the right decision.
As for the content, it has to be unique and creative. Your website visitors, leads, and customers should find your content helpful and engaging. You may have written content like blogs, articles, listicles, QnAs, and so on. Video content is also becoming popular these days. You may make videos to show the demo of a product.
Such practices would help your leads to get that push that they’d need to make a purchase from you.
How do you create your marketing funnel? What strategies do you use? Did you like the tips that we mentioned? Tell us in the comments below!