Ever been curious about the secret path a customer takes before they buy a product or service in the digital world? It’s all about the fascinating concept of a funnel.
In this blog, we will guide you through the digital marketing funnel, a powerful tool to help you connect with your audience at every stage of their journey. By understanding and optimizing this funnel, you can build trust with potential and existing buyers and enhance the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.
What is Funnel in Digital Marketing?
A purchase funnel (sales or marketing funnel) visually represents a customer’s journey toward purchasing a product/service.
The funnel typically has 4 stages:
- Awareness: The buyer is aware of your product or service.
- Interest: The buyer expresses interest in a specific type of product.
- Consideration: The buyer researches the products on offer.
- Action: The buyer makes a purchase.
The funnel in digital marketing applies these principles to digital marketing, charting a buyer’s journey through a brand’s digital marketing channels to make a purchase.
Here’s how a buyer progresses through the same 4 stages in the digital marketing funnel:
1. Awareness
Also known as TOFU (top of the funnel). The buyer becomes aware of your business via organic search, email, social media, or links from another site.
2. Interest
Also known as MOFU (middle of the funnel), this is when the buyer learns about your brand’s offers through your social media content or site.
3. Consideration
Also known as BOFU (bottom of the funnel). The buyer spends more time researching your brand by watching your YouTube videos, reading online reviews, and signing up for your email newsletter.
4. Action
The buyer makes a purchase.
However, the digital marketing funnel continues after a purchase. Savvy digital marketers understand the value of customer relationship-building and retention. You can turn customers into long-term patrons by ensuring positive post-sale experiences, from top-notch customer service to ongoing brand communication. This is a pivotal strategy to keep them coming back for more. Enroll in an online digital marketing course and get hired by top MNCs.
Let’s use Nike as an example:
At the Top of the funnel (TOFU), Nike grabs attention, sparking interest in getting active and subtly suggesting they are the gear of choice. They have not pushed sales yet, just planting the seed of possibility.
At the Mid-funnel (MOFU), Nike uses its Nike Run Club app to engage the audience with running difficulties and personalized coaching.
Later, in the Bottom funnel (BOFU), they offer exclusive shoes and discounts to app members.
By learning the digital marketing funnel, you can smoothly guide your consumers from just looking around to can’t-wait-to-buy and finally to let’s buy again.
Types of Funnel in Digital Marketing
Here are the standard types of digital marketing funnel:
1. Linear Funnel
Linear marketing funnels, strategically designed to conform to the typical top, middle, and bottom funnel path, are like an inverted pyramid. The stages in a linear digital marketing funnel look like:
a) Exposure
In the beginning, introduce your brand to your prospects either by using social media, SEO, or advertising in order to make that vital first impression and draw their attention.
b) Discovery
Later, engage the spectators’ curiosity with compelling content demonstrating your brand’s value and advantages.
c) Consideration
Provide clear and persuasive details and comparison highlights about your product/ services. This will make your brand’s name linger in the minds of your potential customers.
d) Conversion
Using call-to-action, you simplify customers’ decision-making process and offer them an easy purchasing experience.
e) Customer Relationship
After the conversion, keep the relationship with the customers. Use surveys about their experience or offer personalized deals to keep them engaged.
f) Retention
By encouraging customers to repeat their engagement, you earn their loyalty. Include exclusive content, VIP deals, etc., that keep the customer’s interest in your buyer’s retention strategy. It also shows that you care for your customers and their experiences, which all customers love.
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2. Hourglass Funnel
Hourglass funnels, with a strong focus on customer engagement, take it a step further. Once the buyer decides to purchase the product, their interaction must expand. This digital marketing process includes adopting the product into their lives, using it consistently, cultivating brand loyalty, and referring it to others. The stages in an hourglass digital marketing funnel look like:
a) Engagement
Try to grab customer’s attention through compelling content, ads, or interactions.
b) Education
Offer valuable information so customers can learn about the solutions to their problems.
c) Research
This is the stage where buyers research your products/services in depth to learn how they can be beneficial.
d) Evaluation
Consumers compare your brand with competitors, trying to find and select the best.
e) Justification
Customers concentrate on advantages and disadvantages at this step and question whether to buy.
f) Purchase
This is the point where the transaction happens, and the buyer officially chooses your product/service, willing to buy.
g) Adoption
Here, the customer acquires your product/service and is about to experience its actual value, an ultimate quality test your brand offers.
h) Retention
If the buyer is satisfied with your product/service, you can have them return and offer them more, which helps build a good relationship.
i) Expansion
Here, you offer your brand’s other products/services to happy customers; they are likely willing to try more, thereby boosting customer loyalty.
j) Advocacy
With loyal customers eager about your brand and willing to suggest it to their family or friends. After this stage, you must focus on not losing these customers.
3. Micro-moments Funnel
This configuration is less of a funnel and more of a series of customer-driven feelings that occur in no set order. These non-linear moments usually break down into:
a) I want to know
This is when a buyer searches for a particular information and wishes to get answers to their queries.
b) I want to do
These are the moments when customers seek a solution for a specific issue.
c) I want to go
Customers here look for a piece of certain information about somewhere they wish to go; it could be a local firm they are interested in.
d) I want to buy
This is where the buyer is interested in purchasing.
4. The Loyalty Loop Funnel
Again, this is less of a funnel-shaped configuration. The customer gets news that a brand is a possible option. The feeling and the trigger incentivize the consumer to decide on the available options and start evaluating them. The consumer focuses on collecting information and comparing the options.
Once the customer has the knowledge and has compared the options to their satisfaction, they buy the product. But here’s where the loop comes in: the consumers’ post-purchase experiences determine whether they will return and purchase more or look for alternatives.
The stages in a loyalty loop digital marketing funnel look like:
a) Consider
Customers’ journey begins by considering brands for the products/services they wish to purchase.
b) Evaluate
On finding a couple of brands they are thinking of purchasing from them, they research them or rely on recommendations from family, friends, or reviews.
c) Buy
Once they evaluate the brand, customers will make a purchase decision.
d) Enjoy
If the customer enjoys a positive experience with the brand, they are more likely to experience it again.
e) Advocate
As a result of an enjoyable experience, the buyer is more likely to advocate for the brand to their friends and families, give positive reviews, or even make a repeat purchase.
f) Bond
If all continues to be positive, the customer will likely bond and trust the brand.
New vs. Old Digital Marketing Funnel
Let’s see a quick comparison of the new vs. old digital marketing funnel:
| New Funnel in Digital Marketing | Old Funnel in Digital Marketing |
| Concentrates on a non-linear experience | Concentrates on a linear experience |
| Focuses more on consumer behavior at each stage in-depth. | Focuses on overall funnel layers. |
| Thinks about the behaviors driving a user | Thinks about universal user behaviors |
Overall, the new funnel of digital marketing aims more at every user compared to the old one. While moving towards a non-linear journey poses more of a challenge to a business, it lets your firm offer a better experience to your target audience.
Sales Funnel vs. Marketing Funnel
There is a common misconception that the terms marketing funnel and sales funnel are interchangeable or can be combined into a single term: the marketing sales funnel. However, they are two distinct parts of a whole, each with its unique role and purpose.
A firm or an organization’s marketing and sales functions have digital marketing objectives, and their respective funnels support those goals. The marketing function creates and manages a brand, generates awareness, and drives sales-qualified leads. In contrast, the sales function aims to boost products/services sold, initially and repeatedly.
Using one to inform another helps teams stay in sync with each other and create an optimal consumer experience. Join the expert-led digital marketing course and skyrocket your career today!
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Importance of Digital Marketing Funnel
The digital marketing funnel is advantageous to businesses in the following ways:
1. Better Segmentation
Funnel in digital marketing leads to better segmentation of your marketing activities that lets you provide appropriate content to your customers at multiple stages of the purchaser’s journey.
2. Better lead Generation
Precise marketing undertaking results in more qualified leads at the funnel’s bottom, making conversion much more accessible. A good funnel delivers value, not the hard shell.
3. Better Use of Company Resources
The digital marketing funnel can guide your digital marketing team, enabling them to create accurate content for your buyers and preventing you from wasting valuable time and effort on ineffective marketing efforts.
4. Better ROI
You can allocate resources by concentrating on buyers’ needs at various stages. This reduces marketing spend and improves digital marketing ROI.
5. Improves Customer Retention and Satisfaction
The customer experience doesn’t stop at the purchase. A funnel cultivates long-term consumer relationships by offering valuable content after the sale. Therefore, you earn repeat purchases and build customer loyalty.
6. Nail Upselling and Cross-Selling
Analyze purchaser preferences, past purchases, and engagement patterns. Later, tailor your offers to gain more sales.
7. Targeted and Personalized Marketing
Develop content that resonates with your target group through their journey. Armed with insights, you can modify messages to boost engagement and drive conversions.
How to Create a Digital Marketing Funnel?
Follow the below steps, and you will soon be on your way to unlocking the potential of digital marketing funnels, paving the path to your business’s success:
1. Create a Goal
What do you wish to accomplish? What’s the purpose? Are you trying to sell more of a specific product or measurably expand your consumer base? It’s crucial to create your goal, and spell it out, as it will guide your entire funnel strategy.
2. Structure the Funnel
It’s time to create the funnel’s structure and determine the steps of the sales cycle. This step is also where you decide what type of funnel is best.
3. Define Every Step
With the funnel type and digital marketing funnel stages set up, now spell out what you should do to generate the required traffic for every step.
Best Digital Marketing Funnel Strategies
Stepping up your digital marketing game includes more than a single strategy. It’s about harnessing a blend of proven methods tailored to your audience’s journey, giving you the power to shape your business’s success.
Let’s explore the top digital marketing strategies to shape your digital marketing funnel for optimal conversion and reach.
1. SEO
Search engine optimization improves your digital visibility by optimizing your site’s content and design for search engines and users.
2. B2B Marketing Funnel
Aim at long-term relationships and complex decision-making processes common in B2B interactions.
3. B2C Marketing Funnel
Drive individual users by emphasizing convenience, personal benefits, and emotional connections.
4. Content Marketing Funnel
Engage and guide your audience. Provide helpful, valuable, and relevant content at every stage of their purchasing journey.
5. Video Marketing Funnel
Use video content to explain the benefits of your products/ services and engage your audience.
6. Email Marketing Funnel
Develop personalized email campaigns to guide your onlookers from awareness to conversion.
7. Inbound Marketing Funnel
Drive clients with valuable content and experiences tailored to them rather than conventional outward promotions.
8. Click Funnel Marketing
Use a series of web pages. Guide visitors to a particular action, like purchasing a product/service.
9. Advertising Funnel Marketing
Deploy targeted advertisements to drive awareness, interest, and conversion.
10. Social Media Marketing Funnel
Leverage social media platforms. Engage your spectators and foster relationships that lead to sales.
FAQs on Funnel in Digital Marketing
Marketing funnels change based on your customer base.
– B2C consumers navigate the funnel alone or with trusted advisors like friends and families. The clients may never interact directly with a firm’s representative.
– B2B consumers have more significant, more focused buying groups. The consumers interact directly with sales representatives in the lower stages of the marketing funnel.
A digital marketing funnel is vital to understanding your customer’s behavior and boosting conversions. Marketing funnels save your business money, too. By targeting resources toward qualified leads, you minimize wasted marketing spend. Moreover, it enhances sales efficiency. By guiding audiences through tailored stages, you optimize the process of converting leads into customers.
Drive and capture leads with targeted content and offers. Later, gather their details via landing pages or forms.
There are 4 main stages in the marketing funnel: awareness, consideration, interests, and action. Key awareness stage digital marketing KPIs are ad clicks, blog post views, and SEO rankings.
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Conclusion
A digital marketing funnel visually represents a customer’s steps in the journey. The most essential step in the buyer journey is knowing your audience’s pain points and figuring out how to help them and communicate their value. Once you know your customers, you can easily create personalized content and advertisement copies to share with them in the best of manners.
