Year-on-year, the offline and online marketing landscape continues to evolve. There was a time when selling was as simple as showing someone a products and a consumer just simple buys it — or so we thought. We were primed to thinking that marketing was as basic as buying and selling but there’s always that certain stimulus which convinces a consumer to buy your product.
In modern marketing, the process we just mentioned is called funnel marketing. This is when we create steps for a consumer to arrive at an end goal. Like in the example of Sports Medic Zone:
1. Consumers have to visit sportsmediczone.com
2. They will browse through the different products
3. They will add the products to their cards
4. Consumers will then proceed with their purchase or checkout
All these steps lead to one goal and that is to buy your product. Yes, it is true that other consumers take additional action steps before they purchase but those steps don’t matter in a purchase funnel.
Now why do we call this a funnel? Because the movement of consumers is shaped just like a funnel. Look at the figure below:
There are a lot of people who click and visit your website (first step). Once they are in your website, they will of course look around and see what you have to offer — then they will go to a particular product page (second step). If they are convinced with your product or what you offer, they wall add the product to their carts and purchase (third step). Now, that was just the trial purchase, the next question is how do to get them to buy your products again (fourth step). This process is what we call a marketing funnel.As people go through the different steps, there will be drop outs and the large number of people who initially visited your page start to thin out as they go through the steps.
Looking at the image above, you will see three main layers of the funnel, namely:
Top of the Funnel (Awareness)
This will be your awareness stage. This is when you mass broadcast your marketing campaigns to as many people as possible. Some strategies for this phase involve Inbound Content Marketing, SEM, SEO, Social Media Ads, etc.
Middle of the Funnel (Interest and Consideration)
Once you get the audience attention, you can now start nurturing these leads because they are most likely considering purchasing your product or availing of your service. In this stage consumer engagement is important. You can look at engaging content marketing, case studies, white papers, drip campaign emails, e-books, webinars, etc.
Bottom of the Funnel (Purchase)
This is where you ask yourself “what’s next?” After closing the deal with your customers. Here you need to make sure you make your customers happy so they will purchase again and will refer you to others potential customers. During this stage, you can have multiple remarketing and testimonial strategies in place.
There are several marketing funnel strategies. You are no limited to just lead generation or sales, you can create different funnels for different marketing objectives to see how your visitors react through your website flow. This way you can see which steps hinder you from achieving your business objectives.
Having marketing funnels in place greatly improves your marketing efficiencies. Now as you go back to your website look for those action points which you can use for your marketing funnels.
If you need help with setting up your funnels, or your drip marketing strategies, you can always reach out to us and we’ll provide you with a free consultation and website analysis.
