The Marketing Funnel Process

A marketing funnel is a strategic visualisation of the customer journey from lead to committed buyer. It shows the various steps that a prospective customer takes to move from one stage of the buying process to the next.

A marketing funnel is derived from the AIDA 4 stages of a typical buyer journey:

1. Attention
2. Interest
3. Desire
4. Action

The marketing funnel could look like this:

To illustrate this journey, let us assume a customer wants to buy a shirt.

1. He has identified a need: A shirt.
2. He goes on social media sites to search for inspiration.
3. He enters his search term in the search bar of the browser.
4. He browses through different styles, designs and price points before finding something he likes.
5. He visits the vendor’s website.
6. He adds the product to the shopping cart.
7. He checks out.

Why is a marketing funnel important?

A marketing funnel helps present the company or the brand at all the stages mentioned above.

For companies, the marketing funnel is a valuable tool for the marketing team to design plans to attract, engage and convert potential customers through relevant marketing material. It is valuable because it is a measurable activity and can help prevent customer leakages, i.e., customers dropping out at different stages before buying.

Marketing funnels and the customer journey

A marketing funnel reflects the state of mind of the consumer during the entire purchase cycle. This state of mind is not static or predictable and can take several forms and shapes before the customer even begins to consider the company’s product or brand.

Marketing funnels these days are becoming more ‘circular’ than ‘funnel-shaped’ due to the high number of touchpoints and influencers at every stage of the purchase cycle. Customers may go directly to the purchase stage upon becoming aware of the product or company, or they may spend more time at the consideration stage, evaluating several options before deciding.

Digitalisation and the imperative need for an online presence for most companies have also changed the way we look at a marketing funnel. Customers today are more informed, more connected and more empowered. The growth of digital marketing and growing consumption of content on digital devices has led to modifications in the traditional AIDA model of a marketing funnel.

Marketing funnel templates

A marketing funnel template is an adaptable format that functions as a tool for marketers looking to develop a marketing strategy for their customers—from the first stage of brand awareness to the final stage of purchase.

A marketing funnel is not a static shape, as we discussed earlier. It has to be designed as per the purchase behaviour and journey of the company’s customers. Hence, a marketing funnel can be a standard template or can take on a customised shape.

Let us examine the major templates that most companies can use in the current digital, marketing+sales environment:

The basic digital marketing funnel template

• The digital marketing funnel has five key stages, covering customer acquisition and retention.
• These stages are: 
  • Awareness or Lead Prospection (Top Of The Funnel)
  • Consideration or Lead Generation (Middle Of The Funnel) 
  • Conversion or Deal Closure (Bottom Of The Funnel)
  • Loyalty or Repeat business (Customer retention)
  • Advocacy or Referrals
• This concept can also be represented by mapping each stage of the customer journey at different parts of the funnel: 
  • Top Of The Funnel (TOFU)—Middle Of The Funnel (MOFU)—Bottom Of The Funnel (BOFU)
• This template can be represented visually as follows:

Lead magnet funnel template

• This is a preferred template for inbound marketing strategies for generating leads.
• It is important to offer something “free” to the lead at this stage.
• This will hook them into submitting their contact details, which can be used for taking them further down the funnel.
• Visually:

Product promotion funnel template

• This is useful to encourage leads to explore your products.
• It can also motivate existing customers to buy more.
• After the initial purchase, the company can upsell its products.
• This template is represented visually as:

:

Image source: https://snov.io/blog/sales-funnel-templates/

Webinar template

• This is an important template for pushing leads to the next stage of the funnel—the MOFU stage.
• Video content, an integral part of webinars, is a hugely popular way of channelling customer interest.
• This is represented visually as:

Product launch funnel template

• Use a customer opt-in format to ensure that leads receive high-quality content on the product being launched.
• This format encourages the use of product videos as an educational tool for potential customers.
• This template helps the company determine the quality and frequency of content to be sent to the prospect to educate them and showcase the features of the new product.
• This will build a deep connection to the customer and will reduce friction to move to the next stage of the funnel.
• We can represent this template as below:

Education funnel template

• This template allows the company to send out high quality and reliable information on its products.
• This template can also be used to promote and sell online education courses.
• It is important that the company website be highly optimised so that it has high visibility at the TOFU stage of the customer journey.
• This is how a typical education funnel template can be built:

Customised pricing plan funnel template

• This is mainly used by companies to sell to small businesses that cannot afford or do not need a large-scale solution.
• Customers can choose to start using the product or get directed to a pricing page.
• As this option allows customers to choose and pay for what they want, it has a greater chance of converting leads into full customers.
• The funnel looks like this:

High-ticket sales funnel template

• This is relevant for companies selling expensive products such as consulting solutions or premium software products.
• Such products are not easy to market and sell.
• The purchase decision takes time; it cannot be an impulse decision.
• It has been observed that a price point of $500 and above is a “psychological barrier”, which can be overcome by more information, more reinforcement through word-of-mouth advocacy and transaction options such as payment in instalments.
• Here is the visualisation:

Image source: https://www.appointlet.com/blog/sales-funnel-scheduling

Minimum elements of any funnel template

Most funnel templates have similar or common elements that can be modified to suit a particular customisation. The most common elements include:

1. Lead magnets to drive customers to the company landing page.
2. Paid ads on social media and other channels to drive leads.
3. Sales lead page that captures all the relevant information from the lead and pushes them further into the funnel.
4. “Thank You” or “Congratulations” page to validate the customer’s decision to act on the lead magnet and progress further along the purchase cycle.
5. Checkout page to complete and pay for the purchase.
6. Email follow up to continue engaging the customer even after purchase and drive to a repeat purchase or refer the company/product to other potential customers.

Benefits of choosing the right marketing funnel template

As we have noted earlier, there is no one-size-fits-all template or format of a marketing funnel. By choosing or building the right funnel template, a company gains many benefits:

• Higher productivity to reduce time on unqualified leads and improve overall productivity.
• Better forecasting to reduce funnel leakage and predict the success of a marketing or sales action.
• Stronger customer relations that will help the company understand the motivations of the customer, their needs and what prevents them from moving to the next stage of the customer journey.
• Insights for product development that will help the company improve the product or service offered.
• Higher ROI because the right funnel template can help a company run many processes automatically and can also help increased product or service sales.

Conclusion

Experts claim that only 10-15% of all leads collected convert into actual customers. It is therefore important to have an effective and dynamic marketing funnel that can help a company boost this conversion ratio.

A company should implement the following actionable points to ensure that the templates described above are useful and can help it achieve the objectives for which the funnel was designed and built:

• Know the customer.
• Optimise the company website.
• Make the customer journey as customised as possible.
• Engage the customer constantly with relevant and reliable content.
• Use the marketing automation tools to the maximum help the marketing teams spend more time and effort to design and deliver actionable content to convert leads into customers.

Most of the templates that we have discussed above are available online either as a free download or at very competitive price points. However, the company needs to ensure that it has identified its requirements down to the last detail and has also determined that it needs to buy a template rather than build one of its own.