The Marketing Funnel

Jun 1

The basic premise of marketing is to get your message in front of the right people at the right time. There are different phases in which the customer (or potential customer) will be interacting with your brand, so it is essential to understand the customer, which phase of the funnel they are in, and how to move them from that phase to the next phase.

The objective of the marketing funnel is to get someone from not knowing your brand at all to eventually a purchaser of something you offer, and then turn them into a raving fan.

The 5 Phases of the Marketing Funnel:

Awareness
The largest phase of the funnel. Here, you cast your net wide to capture the interest of new customers and move them from not knowing you exist to having heard or seen your name. They are “aware” that you exist as a brand, but they may not know anything about you quite yet. This is typically the first place to begin marketing when you are just starting out as a business because you don’t have a large customer base yet.
Types of marketing that fall in the Awareness phase of the funnel: paid advertising, search engine optimization (SEO), blogs, social media.
Consideration
Once potential customers are aware that you exist as a brand, you can feed them more information to get them interested in what you have to offer. They are ready to “consider” your brand as a potential solution to their problems or challenges, but haven’t quite decided yet to purchase. They may be pitting you against your competition to see what option works best for them. This is where you can delight them with fantastic pre-sale customer service or share free content in a variety of formats to help them make the decision to purchase from you.
Types of marketing that fall in the Consideration phase of the funnel: blogs, free PDF downloads, videos, email marketing, testimonials, case studies, brochures, articles.
Purchase
Now that potential customers have weighed their options and considered your brand for any number of reasons, they are ready to purchase. If you’ve nurtured their interest and answered the right questions, they have decided to buy from you! This is the phase of the marketing funnel where you make it simple and enjoyable to purchase from you. You want to ensure the customer that they are making the right choice and deliver the best customer experience possible as they hand over their hard-earned money.
Types of marketing that fall in the Purchase phase of the funnel: online payments, digital contracts, forms, instructional videos, email confirmations, surprise thank you gifts.
Retention
You’ve nurtured the customer from awareness to consideration and through the purchase, so now it’s time to delight! This is where the customer becomes more than a single-time purchaser and decides to return to you for additional purchases. When you retain a customer, it means they are able and willing to come back and continue buying your products or services. Return customers are much easier and cheaper to manage than finding and funneling new customers because they’ve been through the customer experience with your brand and know what to expect. Many of their questions have already been answered in their original travels through the consideration phase, but with each purchase, their is a revisit to the consideration phase, so be sure to continue giving helpful information for new and returning customers there.
Types of marketing that fall in the Retention phase of the funnel: paid advertising, email marketing, social media, videos, testimonials, articles, free PDF downloads, purchase incentives for returning customers.
Loyalty
When a customer has moved through the entire funnel and makes it to the loyalty phase, it is truly something worth celebrating! Not all customers get to this stage in the funnel. This is reserved for the customers who not only return to purchase again and again from your brand, but also tell others about you. They are the raving fans of your business… the ones who love telling their friends about how amazing you are. These customers should be celebrated and thanked because they are doing organic marketing for you, making the whole marketing funnel fuller than what you could have done on your own.
Types of marketing that fall in the Loyalty phase of the funnel: email marketing, special VIP discounts and incentives, branded gifts or merchandise, special-invite events.