Six Fields – Wheat Beer

A Secret You Didn't Know About Marketing Funnel

What Is A Marketing Funnel?
Did you know that only 1% of customers make purchases based on the first contact? You should contact your customers at least six times for them to consider buying your product/service.In this era of digital marketing, not only understanding your customer is essential, but knowing their journey is relevant too. Hitting your customer with relevant information at the right time and the right place is the key to approach the right customer.
A marketing funnel helps you understand your customers throughout their journey. From the initial stages, when the customers become aware of your offering to the final purchase decision, marketing funnel maps out the route from awareness to the conversion of your product/service. Marketing funnel helps you figure out how you can influence your customers at different stages of their buying decision. By mapping your customer’s journey with your marketing funnel, you can potentially drive greater sales, more loyalty, and stronger brand awareness.
Thus, marketing funnel helps you in both branding and marketing of your product/service.

Different Stages In The Marketing Funnel
There are four stages to a conventional marketing funnel, namely, awareness, interest, desire, and action. .

Awareness
The prospect is facing a problem and is searching for the solution. At this stage, you must make sure to let your prospect know that you exist and have the right solution for his problems..

Desire
At this stage, the prospect expresses intent to buy your product or service. At this time, you should try to nudge and convert your customer’s high intent to purchase decision. You must interact with your customers and give them a lucrative offer to expedite their decision. The conventional marketing funnel is broad at the top and narrows down as we go down. Hence the prospects keep on decreasing with sequential stages of the marketing funnel. According to a survey, businesses lose almost $1.6 trillion a year when customers leave them. The worry of the same lead marketers to revamp marketing funnel with additional two stages: Loyalty and Advocacy.

Now, instead of a conventional cone-shaped funnel, the new marketing funnel is in the form of a bow. Across the funnel, the customers increase as you reward them for their loyalty. Let us take a look at it:

Revamped marketing funnel
Your relationship with your customers should not end after they purchase your product. Instead, you should try to retain your customers at all costs. The cost of acquiring any new customer is 3x higher than retaining one.

The Revamped Marketing Funnel Consist of 5 Stages:

Awareness
You make your prospect aware of your product or service. You do this by posting content on social media, blogs, communities, forums, etc.

Consideration
At this stage, your prospect has visited your site or got a positive review of your product or service and is considering your offering among several others. At this stage, you must try contacting your prospects and tell them why your product or service would be more desirable than others.

Conversion/Buy
The prospect will go ahead with your product or service over the competition. The visitor will now become your customer.

Loyalty
To hold onto your customers, you must give them the reason to stay. What would be better than offering them special discounts on special occasions like birthdays, anniversaries, etc.? Regular email interactions, social media conversations, and quality check calls can help you earn your customer’s loyalty.

Advocacy
Once your customer becomes loyal to you, they will help you spread word of mouth. One mistake which companies make at this stage is not rewarding their customers. You should convert your loyal customers to your brand advocates. People do not trust brands as much as they trust other people. So, having your customers onboard as advocates will increase your brand’s credibility.

Below are the suggestions for you to convert your customers into advocates:
• Rewarding them for being loyal in terms of exclusive discount coupons.
• Taking input from your customers to improve your product/service.
• Monetizing their efforts.
• Offering regular discounts.
• Sending occasional gifts or sample products.

Benefits of Marketing Funnel
Marketing funnel simplifies your customer’s journey. It maps out the entire decision process a prospect goes through and how you can leverage the same to convert the potential prospect into your customer. From online to brick & mortar business, from product-based companies to service companies, marketing funnel helps you measure the output at every single stage. And based on the same, you can decide how to improvise your strategy. For example, if a customer leaves after the second stage, i.e., consideration, you should go for influencer marketing and create forums to help them know why your product or services is better than competitors.