Understanding Marketing Funnels

Category: Internet

Marketing funnels are systems which allow a business to follow the stages that a consumer or purchaser goes through as they arrive at the decision to buy a product. Through this system the company can figure out what it needs to do to influence consumers at different stages. This could be in the form of phone calls, or sharing good reviews of the products online. The marketing department maneuvers the traffic through these funnels using tried and tested strategies which are known to produce results at each stage. The reason this is important is that not every first-time visitor to a website is ready to make a purchase. Thus a lot of the traffic to a website does not always lead to conversion. A marketing funnel aims to give you insight into what stage(s) has large losses of visitors so that you can come up with strategies that retain consumers. What Are The Funnel Stages? Imagine an actual funnel, with the top of the funnel representing the visitors who have been attracted to your websites, this is the awareness stage. The consumer then begins to analyze the product which is the consideration stage; they then find themselves drawn to a particular brand which is the preference stage; they then make a purchase which is the action stage. After making the purchase consumers tend to become loyal to brands that were satisfactory, and this is the loyalty stage; once they are loyal they will refer the brand to others, and this is the final stage and narrowest part of the funnel and is called the advocacy stage. How Does the Sales Department Factor In? The sales department has a funnel too named the sales funnel. Which is similar to the marketing funnel as it follows the consumer from the point where there is the first contact till they get to the final sale. The first stage is the lead stage where you find someone that could be a potential consumer; the next stage is the prospect stage where you find individuals with actual interest; then you proceed to the qualified prospect stage which is the most complex stage; the committed stage follows whereby the consumer is willing to go forward with a purchase; finally you go into the transacted stage where the purchase is done. At each stage the sales personnel must keep interacting with the customer, and attempt to influence them to go into the next stage until they finally get to the transacted stage. Getting The Funnel To Work For You Think of the funnel as having holes through which a company can input factors to influence a consumers buying decisions. This is called funnel hacking. At each stage you have to keep offering the consumer incentives with the aim of retaining them and guiding them into the next stage. This includes creating alluring landing pages, providing valuable free content, following up leads and nurturing them, and even eventually offering free trials and demos. The idea is that you monitor each part of the funnel to see where prospective consumers are lost, so that you can place more effort in these sections. A great piece of software to use is clickfunnels which helps you through every step of the consumer purchase and offers you multiple funnels that will help you capture your consumers. With this understanding of the marketing system, analyze your online marketing system and begin to track consumer progress. Amel Mehenaoui is the author of this article on smart marketing funnels. Find more information, about marketing sales funnels here