We all know that running a small business requires you to wear many different hats all at once. With so many tasks, from creating your own products to monitoring cash flow and finances, marketing can often take a backseat.
But setting up a quality marketing funnel is the key to creating an immersive experience across channels that generates brand advocacy and brings in more customers directly to you.
We will examine the concepts of marketing funnel and customer journey. What are marketing funnel objectives? How do consumers behave during their journey? What does it take to motivate people to take action?
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What is The Marketing Funnel?
A marketing funnel is a framework that businesses use to turn strangers who have never heard of your business, your brand, your team, and anything about you into someone who knows, likes, and trusts you enough to buy from you through certain relationship-building steps.
The marketing funnel provides a graphical representation of what can often be a challenging subject to visualise. Its funnel-like design makes it simple to visualise the process your customers go through on their journey when they interact with your brand and business.
Creating your marketing funnel can be as simple as looking at your business and how you acquire customers.
What Is The Customer Journey?
The customer journey is a term that describes the various stages your customers go through when interacting with your business. A customer journey map, for example, can show how your customers interacted with you during the awareness, purchase, and engagement or post-purchase stages.
All the steps that customers need to take to go on that journey and get to their end destination complete the customer journey.
It’s easier to plan a journey when you know what steps you need to take. If a business knows the steps it needs to handle well, it can make it simpler for customers and help them along that journey–that is exactly what customer journey mapping is all about.
Stages of Marketing Funnel
The stages inside a marketing funnel that the prospective customer takes and the journey they go through that moves them from having no idea that your business exists to becoming a loyal customer are:
1. Awareness:
The first stage occurs when customers learn that they can purchase a product from your website. Customers will learn about you, including who you are, what you specialise in, and why they should consider you to suit their needs. Right now, your main goal is to keep them very interested in you by either providing appropriate content or writing a step to step guide.
2. Engagement:
Once you’ve gotten your customer’s attention, you need to leave a breadcrumb trail in order to convert that interest into traffic. This traffic will come to your website because you can build the experience you want them to have, and, at the end of it, you’ll have a call to action that will direct them to the next step.
3. Conversion:
After they’ve arrived on your website, you want them to take some sort of action. A lead magnet in the form of an ebook or other downloadable and easily digestible material, or a webinar where they can learn more advanced information from you. However, here you want to change the connection with that exchange of value, such as an email address, so that you may follow up with them later.
4. Nurturing
This is a crucial stage in the relationship-building process, and you should treat your lead with care. Now that you’ve received their email, you have the chance to provide value to their lives. You’re in a much better position now since the messages you send them aren’t interrupting them, and you’re in their inbox, where you can follow up with them directly more professionally and they’re ready to listen.
5. Conversion:
This is where both ends meet, and this is where you make your transaction request to customers. This may be split into two parts: a micro commitment initially, followed by a full commitment. A micro commitment would be like a tripwire offer, such as a $1 trial, and then you upsell other products. That isn’t what your main offer is about. This phase isn’t where you make money, but it’s meant to lead to them taking you up on your main offer.
The mapping of your customer journey is identifying the individual steps that your customer will take on route to their end destination and, more specifically, designing an experience that will make it easier on them that will help them along the way and make their journey as seamless as possible.
The easiest way to do that is to step into their shoes, become your customer and look at the problems from their perspective,
What is their objective?
How To Map The Customer Journey For The Marketing Funnel?
What are their goals and ambitions?
Where do they want to get to?
What’s standing in their way?
What are their challenges and pain points?
Understanding the circumstances of their journey and then breaking that journey down into individual steps allows you to design the experience of the seamless journey you want for your customers.
The experience you design will help customers progress through your brand and learn about whatever you have to offer.
If you understand their journey, break it down into individual stages, map it out, and then design an experience that will help them along the way to achieve their goals, it is the best way to bring them along with an experience and shape their perceptions of what your brand should mean to them.
At the end of the day, branding is all about shaping perceptions as your brand lives in your audience’s mind.
What Does a Marketing Funnel Look Like?
Someone who goes through the following steps in the buying process is an example of a marketing funnel or purchase funnel:
Blog Post > Email List > Conversion
Podcast Ad > Blog Post > Conversion
Facebook Ad > Landing Page > Conversion
Influencer Social Post > Landing Page > Conversion
Marketing Funnel Examples
Netflix
The popular entertainment medium Netflix has revolutionised what people see and where they see it by implementing a seamless marketing funnel that guides individuals through the sales process without them ever knowing it.
Netflix makes extensive use of social media to raise awareness about new episodes. Short excerpts and crisp explanations tempt viewers to watch the show just once when it premieres.
Netflix has taken ten steps ahead for people considering their service and those already familiar with it. It understands that the recurrent fee it demands may make some people unwilling to invest. As a result, it takes steps to alleviate those anxieties and doubts by clearly spelling out its process for first-time visitors who are still considering Netflix.
This provides clarity from the beginning, which leads to trust. The rest of the page describes the features and perks that Netflix subscribers enjoy.
A FAQ section at the bottom of the page further explains issues for first-time users.
Netflix is ready to lead and capture the consumer when they decide to go from the consideration to the conversion stage after seamlessly leading them through the first two stages of the funnel.
Netflix makes the process feel smooth, easy, and secure once the user agrees to proceed to the third level. The minimalistic and clean background aids in keeping the customer focused on the following step–choosing to look at the plans.
Netflix has pre-selected the Premium plan and guarantees that users can upgrade or downgrade at any time. In the next phase, the user is requested to register.
The final billing page also adheres to the three Cs–the company, the customer, and the competition–emphasising that there are no commitments and one can cancel at any time. They also offer to remind you three days before your free month expires, allowing you to make another call.
From the first step, the entire procedure is seamless and builds trust.
Netflix wins the loyalty stage by producing epic material on its platform that captivates viewers’ attention from the first viewing. When it features people who are passionate about its shows and content, it posts about them on social media, resulting in increased loyalty and advocacy.
As the entire sales process executed through the funnel feels so instinctive and natural, people become raving fans in no time.
Conclusion
Marketing funnel and customer journey maps are heavily-used phrases in the business and marketing industry. Even though they are not identical, your marketing funnel and customer journey maps should communicate the same story.
That’s the power of the funnel–to quickly and visually illustrate your customer’s journey to eliminate any choke points or areas of friction. You can set up a system that allows you to produce leads, convert them into customers, and then transform those customers into brand evangelists who will stick with you for the rest of your life.