The internet contains millions of curious audiences searching for information and solutions to their problems. Many companies that realize the internet’s extensive influence use it to attract a loyal audience through a digital marketing funnel, turning them from potential to loyal customers.
Following the digital marketing/sales funnel strategies will help you generate a more efficient approach to a successful business. Additionally, it simplifies the process of finding new customers and can be simple or complicated depending on how you choose to adapt it.
Further, it comes in different stages and content; if you’re new to this, don’t worry. By the end of this article, you’ll learn what these funnels are, their importance, and how to add them to your marketing strategy for a successful marketing campaign.
Key Takeaways
Building a digital marketing funnel from scratch is possible and following the steps in this article will guide you. You’ll understand how to approach customers with content according to each funnel stage. This helps research how to improve so you can turn them into loyal customers and not just a one-time thing. A quick recap of the entire article is as follows:
- Build brand awareness
- Identify your audience in each marketing funnel
- Don’t skip or go overboard in each funnel stage
- Use these stages accordingly to avoid wasted efforts
- Create an achievable goal
- Analyze your progress and continuously work to improve.
What Is Digital Marketing Funnel and Its Stages?
Source: Pexels
Digital marketing funnel means the strategic structure describing your marketing journey from when you meet customers to when they purchase from you. This funnel helps marketing experts to understand what to provide each customer with throughout the funnel stages.
Moreover, there’s fierce competition in the marketing field. Hence, digital marketers striving to up their game require more effort, and using funnel stages that help them prepare is an excellent way to start.
The table below explains these funnel stages, helping you understand what they involve.
Digital Marketing Funnel Stages |
Funnel Type and What It Is |
How It Works/What It Involves |
| Awareness | Drive Traffic{Top of funnel} | TOFU means customers know their problem but not the solution, so help. |
| Discovery | Engage with your audience {Middle of funnel} | MOFU involves educating customers on solutions and which to choose. |
| Consideration | Initiate inquiries{Middle of funnel} | Follow the same method in MOFU(Middle of the funnel) |
| Conversion | Convince customers to purchase {Bottom of funnel} | BOFU involves showing customers why your goods/services are their best bet. |
Building a digital marketing funnel is less challenging when you have tips. And we’ll explain the top four stages in this funnel to get you started.
1. Stage One -Awareness
Awareness means when customers come to know about you and your services/products. And you can help them become aware of it by using search engine optimization/SEO in your content, paid advertising, emails, and press release, talking about it orally, or getting influencers to advertise them.
2. Stage Two-Discovery
The discovery phase means the customer gains interest in what you’re offering. They also try to learn more about it by reading articles on your website or watching uploaded videos.
3. Stage Three-Consideration
After discovering more about you from the consumed content, the customer might start considering you. Then, they start spending more time on your page, and even joining your email list to get more updates about your business.
4. Stage Four-Conversion
This phase is the final and is what all business owners desire, turning potential customers into loyal customers. However, it could take some time depending on what you sell, how expensive/affordable it is and if it’s crucial to solving the customer’s problem urgently.
Why Digital Marketers Should Use Marketing Funnels
Digital marketing funnels offer numerous advantages and are a must-follow for marketing professionals. They’re similar to the sales funnel and just as crucial; below are some of their importance.
1. It Helps You to Reach Targeted Leads
Using the appropriate funnel brings you closer to the right customer, helping you divide your marketing actions suitably. And this involves using befitting advertisements, content, and messages. Consequently, lead generation becomes an efficient strategy making conversion less challenging for your team.
Additionally, it helps you filter the target audience from the crowd; hence you must prioritize relevant content and timing. Lastly, try to boost rank on search engines using Search engine optimization/SEO in the form of keywords and high-quality content.
2. It Helps You to Create More Effective Content
Knowing what funnel stage you’re at with each potential customer helps you make suitable content. For instance, it won’t be appealing to present a download page to someone who knows very little about your business. Another instance is talking about introduction content to someone already on your email list. They’ve passed that level or are yet to reach it, so use articles accordingly.
3. Meet Your Marketing and Sales Process Goals
Personalization, helpful content, improved metrics, and more leads all work together to increase your ROI for your digital marketing. This way, you achieve your sales goals using the appropriate methods without wasting content, time, and valuable resources on ineffective stages.
Types of Digital Marketing Funnels
Using digital marketing funnels helps you visualize better how to convert visitors to customers. You can do that with linear funnels, hourglasses, and micro-moments.
1. Linear Funnel
Linear means following the marketing funnel from beginning to end, from customers discovering you to making a purchase. And four stages that influence this are similar to the funnel stages we discussed earlier: Exposure/Awareness, Discovery, Consideration, and Conversion.
The table below will help you to understand better.
Linear Funnel |
How It Works |
| The trigger which causes an initial consideration | Consumers to consider brands based on perception and exposure to current topics. |
| Active evaluation involving gathering and shopping | Consumers add or remove brands as they assess what it is they want |
| Moment of purchase | The customer ultimately chooses a brand that fits their problem. |
To turn this into a customer loop, ensure to continuously provide the consumer with products/services related to the first purchase. Or you could assess them with Q&As to know if their needs have changed.
The last two strategies are the hourglass and micro-moment digital marketing funnel. They all work together to help you become successful at reaching your target audience.
How to Create a Digital Marketing Funnel for Your Brand
Source: Unsplash
After learning how the digital marketing funnel works, the next step should be to create yours. And below, we’ve outlined a few steps to get you on the right path.
- The first step is to know your audience so you can source the right content for them.
- Research your competition to know what they’re doing and how to improve your strategy to enable you to convert more customers than them.
- Set a marketing goal: create a consumer loop and work on it.
- Create an effective content strategy to solve customer problems/questions.
- Implement your plans across several marketing platforms and create awareness. Also, go further to advertise your content to reach more people.
- Do an A/B test to confirm which method or page gives the best results.
- Lastly, measure your campaign results. An effective way to measure this is using digital marketing funnel analytics. It shows you your progress, helping you know your strength and what to improve on.
Conclusion
Building a digital marketing funnel is imperative regardless of your business type. It’ll guide you in turning visitors into customers, which is the goal of every business. Also, working with a plan will help you understand your audience more. As a result, you can offer them the best value tailored to their specific problem.
Digital marketing funnels are strategies everyone in this marketing field should know. We’d love to know helpful you found this article and will be anticipating your feedback in the comment section.
Do you need further insight on Marketing Funnel? Check out this comprehensive article on What is Marketing Funnel.