Marketing Funnel 101: Tips & Tricks for Newbie Marketers

The term marketing funnel gets thrown around a lot. But do you understand what it is, and why it’s so important for the success of your marketing campaigns? We’re here to answer all the questions you’ve been too shy to ask!

TL;DR

A marketing funnel is a model that defines the stages a potential customer goes through—from first discovering a brand to making a purchase and becoming a loyal customer. This framework helps businesses understand and influence customer behavior at each step, allowing for targeted messaging, better resource allocation, and improved conversion rates. 

What is a marketing funnel?

A marketing funnel is the definition of your customers’ journey. It starts with discovering the brand, and ends with them becoming customers. 

It helps businesses understand their customers' needs at each stage of the process, make their marketing efforts more effective, and identify new opportunities. 

Marketing funnel stages explained

The main marketing funnel consists of 4 key stages, which are divided into 3 sections:

• Top of the funnel - ToFu (awareness)
• Middle of the funnel - MoFu (consideration)
• Bottom of the funnel - BoFu (conversion and loyalty stage)

Let’s dive a bit deeper into each stage and explain what it entails. 

Awareness

The awareness stage is the moment a person becomes aware of your product or service. However, this doesn’t mean they’ve simply noticed your product on a shelf, or so a digital ad.

Awareness entails brand awareness - a familiarity with your brand’s visual identity, messaging, mission, and values. 

Consideration

At the consideration stage, potential customers are weighing your brand against other options. In this stage, it’s vital to address their pain points and present your product or service as the solution. 

Conversion

Conversion is the moment people actually buy your product. If you don’t have a strategic approach, it’s easy to mistake this as the final step. However, the point of a marketing funnel is to avoid

Loyalty

The loyalty stage represents the stage in which people become your returning customers, or advocates of your brand. This might be achieved through affiliate or loyalty programs. They aren’t simply a 

Marketing vs sales funnel

The sales and marketing funnel are interconnected. In fact, the sales funnel is part of the marketing funnel  that focuses strictly on converting prospects into paying customers.

Marketing funnel uses tactics like content marketing, SEO, social media, and email campaigns to educate and engage audiences, create brand awareness, build trust, and initiate consideration. 

The sales funnel takes over where marketing leaves off, focusing on converting qualified leads into paying customers. This includes personalized outreach, handling objections, negotiating, and closing the deal. Sales uses tools like CRMs, demos, and direct communication to build relationships and drive conversions. 

However, once the sales cycle has been completed, it’s time for the final stage of the marketing funnel - creating brand loyalty and advocacy, which helps in acquiring further leads that will then go through the funnel once again. 

How to create a marketing funnel (steps for each stage)

Now that you know what it is, it’s time to get down to the practical side of how to create a marketing funnel. You might note that this is similar to creating a marketing strategy. 

However, remember that a marketing funnel is focused on what the goal of each individual stage is, and therefore what kinds of steps you should take at each one.

1. Define the target audience

Before you can understand their customer journey, you need to know who your audience are. Don’t just focus on basic demographics, such as age, gender, occupation. Here are some useful details you should try to find out:

• How do they get information?
• Which social media channels do they use?
• What’s their spending power?
• How often do they check their email?

However, don’t forget that the most important thing you can know about them is what problem they’re trying to solve. Don’t forget that people might come across different problems at different stages of the funnel, so your strategy needs to be optimized accordingly. 

2. Map out the customer journey

The next step is the be-all-and-end-all of creating a marketing funnel. Instead of just listing the promotional activities you want to engage in, you need to put yourself in your customers’ shoes and plan out how they can interact with your brand.

Here are some segments you’ll need to include in your customer journey map:

• Paint points: identify the problems potential customers might want to solve with the help of your product or service
• Touchpoints: define where and how potential customers can come across your brand (e.g. ads, organic social media, trade shows, physical stores, etc.)
• Actions the customer can take at a certain touchpoint: will they buy, send a message, or do you need to keep nurturing the relationship.
• Post-purchase: define what happens with the customer once they’ve completed the purchase to identify opportunities for an extended/recurring relationship and/or brand advocacy.

3. Awareness stage

As we’ve said this is the stage where you want to help people discover your brand. It goes without saying, that the very first step here is defining your target audience.

Don’t just focus on basic demographics, such as age, gender, occupation. Make sure you know things like where they get their information, what social media channels they use, and, most importantly, what problems you can solve for them. 

Here are other actions you need to take at this stage. 

Set up your blog

Research keywords your audience is searching for (e.g., using Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, or Ubersuggest). Focus on both ToFu keywords (informative, high-volume), as well as BoFU (transactional, directly related to your product). 

Create content clusters around different sets of keywords, or the stage in your marketing funnel (ToFu, MoFu, BoFu). Make sure your blog posts are search engine optimized (SEO). For example, you should use the target keywords, appropriate meta titles and descriptions, use web-optimized images and video, etc.

Don’t forget that search engines’ algorithms are extremely sophisticated nowadays, so stuffing your content with keywords simply won’t work. Try to do extensive research and offer information that people cannot find elsewhere (e.g. original case studies and data, or a combination of several top-performing blog posts with all the information you can find there).

Create social media content

If you’ve done the research, you should be able to pick 2–3 platforms where your target audience hangs out.

Create a social media strategy and content plan that suits your brand identity. For example, you might want to focus on user-generated content and customer testimonials, if you have a physical product. On the other hand, infographics, how-tos and tutorials are a great choice for digital service.

Run paid ads (optional)

Whether you go with pay-per-click ads or social media, running a brand awareness campaign can help you boost your brand’s visibility and start drawing people into your marketing funnel. 

For this step it’s yet again vital to have a properly defined target audience, so your ads can reach the right people. 

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Create lead magnets

Lead magnets are pieces of content people can get access to in exchange for their email address and other contact details. Common examples include checklists, ebooks, webinars, templates, and more.

The best lead magnets are useful and informative, but they shouldn’t be too costly to produce.

Set up email automation

Simply getting people’s contact information isn’t enough to make them truly invested in your brand. That’s why you need to set up email automation to ensure people remember your brand and know what you have to offer.

Here’s an example of an email marketing sequence. 

1. Welcome email
   
   
2. Who you are / what you offer
   
   
3. Case study or testimonial
   
   
4. Subtle pitch or next step (e.g., book a call)
   
   

4. Consideration Stage

Once people know about your brand, it’s time to get them genuinely interested in what you have to sell. 

Share case studies and testimonials

Your ToFu content can help people find out about you. Now it’s time to show them your product/service in action. If you already have some clients, invite them to help you make client testimonials. 

Content repurposing is a great idea at this stage: you can use one case study as a video, blog post, social media posts and stories. 

If you don’t have clients yet, focus on numbers. Give people actionable information on how your product saves time/money, or ways in which it’s better than the rest. 

Run retargeting ads

Retargeting ads focus on people who’ve visited your site, social media, and/or clicked on  your ads.

It’s the best way to stay top-of-mind with prospective leads, and they generally have a much higher ROI than standard display ads.

Offer free trials, samples, or consultations

According to one study, 54% of consumers kept subscriptions after a free trial. So, offering customers a taste of your product for free has a pretty solid chance of turning into  a profit.

Of course, sometimes a free trial simply doesn’t make sense. If you offer certain services (e.g. design), many people will take advantage of this option simply to get some free work from you.

In this case, offering a free consultation or a personalized demo is a fantastic way to get closer to those prospects that are truly interested in buying. 

5. Conversion Stage

Finally, we’ve arrived at the conversion stage. You’ve nurtured prospects long enough and they’re ready to buy from you. So, what are some things you absolutely need to do at the very bottom of your digital marketing funnel? 

Optimize your landing/sales page

According to one study 60% of consumers abandon online shopping because of poor user experience.

So, optimizing your landing pages is of vital importance. Some common features of a high-performing landing page include a clear headline, features and social proof section, and a well-designed  call-to-action button. 

A good UX is even more important for ecommerce pages. Make sure all the product details and features are easily accessible, and create a smooth and secure checkout process (using integrated solutions, such as Wix Payments can help).

Personalized follow-ups

Whether it’s an abandoned cart reminder, sending a receipt, or a simple thank you for the purchase, following up is always a good idea. 

If appropriate, you can use your follow-up message to introduce customers to similar products. 

6. Loyalty Stage

The whole point of creating a marketing funnel comes down to this. Instead of thinking about customers as a one-time source of profit, the marketing funnel helps you build a long-term relationship. 

Send valuable newsletters

Yes, we all have inboxes flooded with newsletters we can’t remember signing up for. But, if you manage to create a valuable and exciting newsletter, it can be one of the best ways to get customers to purchase again.

Stay close to your brand. If people have bought shoes from you, they probably don’t care about your take on world politics. Here’s a great example to illustrate the point. Dusen Dusen, a towel and robe manufacturer created this fun towel care guide in the form of an email newsletter. And if you’ve purchased one of their gorgeous towels, it’s only logical you’d like to know how to keep them looking new.

You can also use newsletters to include exclusive offers and discounts. Personalization is key - create several email automation sequences based on their purchase behaviour (e.g. if someone has never bought children’s shoes, they’re probably not interested in seeing these types of offers). 

Ask for reviews/testimonials

You’ll need to cast a pretty wide net to find someone who’ll want to share a testimonial or review (especially a positive one!). So, the best course of action is to automate this via email a week or two after purchase.

Don’t be too pushy - it’s better to start things off as conversational as possible, and inquire how the customers are satisfied with the purchase.

Create a referral program

A great referral program can do wonders for your business - just look at Dropbox’s whose referral program got them 3900% growth!

Of course, it’s not always that simple. You’ll need to do a lot of financial planning to figure out what kind of referral program makes sense for you. Alternatively, you can have an invite-only referral program to avoid losing money instead of earning it. 

Offer upsells or new services

We’ve already mentioned this as a note in the newsletter section. However, upsells and new services are a critical aspect of a great digital marketing funnel you don’t want to miss.

If you’re launching a new service, it’s a great idea to allow previous customers exclusive first access. 

Final word

Armed with knowledge, you’re all set up to make your digital marketing funnel work for you. By taking actions suited for each stage, you’ll keep drawing customers towards your business, while also retaining long-term customer loyalty.

For more helpful reads on marketing, be sure to check out our comprehensive guides on Amazon advertising, Google Ads, and Facebook ad design.