Marketing Funnel

Before the coming of the internet, it used to be physical shops in the physical marketplace. Let’s use this situation to explain the marketing funnel before we dive in to the digital marketing funnel.

I the no-internet era, let’s say I want to by shoe in a shoe from the market. I have my money and I embark on a journey to the marketplace. When I was going, I do not have in mind the particular brand of shoe I want to buy. I got to the marketplace and start moving from one shop to another. Not at this point, I represent thousands if not millions of people who want to buy show sharing this persona with me.

Top of the marketing funnel

Top of the marketing funnel: As I was moving, I was attracted to those shops that are in the front line. Those shops who placed their signpost and have their shops in front. As you know it is not always easy to have your shop in the front where you will be seen by buyers. Having your shop in the front becomes one of the strategies to have more customers. One of the reasons is that the many potential customers don’t what to stress themselves going inside the market. Arranging your shop well is another thing that attracts buyers to your shop. 

Marketing funnel in the internet era, digital marketing took over. Creating awareness online becomes the most profitable way to market. Because the internet has the largest market like the Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, X (Formerly Twitter), etc. creating awareness there becomes the way forward. 

Since the physical location of your business has become less important. Becoming that brand that is seen first online when prospective customers search for the product you sell become the key. It is about creating awareness online through ads placement or advertisement. It is about optimizing your social media platforms and posting regularly. Doing Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Enhancing your customer service skills which has a lot to do with psychology.

In the top of the marketing funnel, it is all about discovery of your brand and the solutions you provide. Is it what the audience you targeted are interested in? The beautiful thing about digital marketing is that the system allows you to channel your campaign to a particular set of people. This is called the demographics. To avoid spending on campaign on wrong audience you make the ads sending meaningful by targeting age, location, education, gender, occupation, etc.

This is made simple from what it used to be before the internet era. If you want to buy children shoes those days, you will ask anyone in the market the line. They will tell you to go to kiddie’s line and the place is far and you have to take the pains to go there.

In the top of the marketing funnel, if you don’t create awareness to your target audience, let them know what you can offer in a pleasing manner, you may be wrong. This will make you to spend many on ads without getting Return on Investment (ROI). You lose money chasing the wind. Channel your campaign and make the top of the funnel full to be able to have more potential customers into the middle of the funnel.

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Middle of the marketing funnel

In the middle of the marketing funnel, I want to talk about psychology a little because this is the engagement section of the business. The potential customer has seen your brand and what solution you offer. He contacts you by using the comment section, in-app chat or the contact details in your website for further inquiries.

Around December 18th, 2023, I was looking for a product called Vevo leather cutting machine 360mmX220mm. I searched on Google and found out that it was unavailable in Amazon and Alibaba. It was available in eBay, but the owner is not shipping to Nigeria. I searched more and found it in Vevor e-commerce store. This company is located in California. I contacted the company through the contact email in their website and they responded within minutes, telling me that the product is in stock. I inquired more it they have the envelope die set and they replied “No”, with every politeness available. This made me to understand that there are psychological dimensions of business. Thus, little interaction made me to become loyal to this company after buying this product from them.

This is the game of the mind. If you can win the mind of potential customers that results to a successful engagement which results to conversion. You are to understand the customers question and use wisdom to reply. There are individual differences. Customers behave differently and you attend to then in a way that leads to conversion. 

At the stage of engagement, some customers may be rude in their utterances. You can post your product or service on Facebook and a potential buyer or even someone who has no interest in buy makes comments of abuse. Sometimes it might be a comment downgrading your product or service. You have to apply wisdom in other not to return blow for blow. Engage for conversion.

Because from the beginning I talked about Search Engine Optimization and Social medial optimization. In marketing funnel system, you need good content. Good and unique content is the content that engages. It is content that gives you high conversion rate. Quality content is the content that makes potential customers pay. It is very important in the top and middle of the marketing funnel. It is like a bait that hooks and draws potential customers to become paying customers.

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Bottom of the marketing funnel

In marketing funnel stages, this is where the potential customer becomes paying customer. This is where the customer is presented with the referrals package. This is where the company generate revenue. Some potential customers after making enquiries and finding out details for your products are services, they would not pay. Most tomes the reason is that the pricing is higher than their budgets are they letter found a brand that gave them better quality. Some other time it might be that customer support did not do a good job but releasing full details coupled with skilful persuasion to pay. So much money might have been spent to create awareness in the form of advertisement. A lot of works would have been put in to engage the customer. Here is the paying time. 

Anytime a potential customer shows interest on a brand, his details is captured for follow up. This is where growth marketing skills are needed. At the bottom of the marketing funnel, you are building customer base not just working for the customer to pay. Retaining customers requires you to always reach out to them for support services. When you sell products or provide solutions to customers, you are required to follow up to ensure that they are having good user experience. This is a way to make your customers feel safe in your brand. They feel cherished respected which makes them refer families and friends.

In the bottom of marketing funnel, you include referral programs depending on the type of industry you are into. It is like a bait to bring potential customers to know your brand and patronize your business. Referral program could be viewed are a cyclic system that turns in new customers. Digital marketing in not only to recycle old customers but to turn in new customers and retain them.

Marketing funnel program makes it easy for you to optimize customer lifetime value. You have made advertisement budget to be able to promote your brand with the intention of increasing engagement, conversion, and revenue. You are now looking at how much you spent in the name of customer acquisition cost. Your customer lifetime value must always be greater than customer acquisition cost for you to remain in the business. 

Customer acquisition cost is the amount of money which can include salaries of your workers and the devices in your office which you used to bring in a customer.

I want to talk about the inclusion of salaries and gadgets that you are using daily for work.

You are paying your staff salaries for the works they do. These works they do include customer acquisition.

Your staff are using computers and internet services. Which means you pay for internet subscription for them to access internet. These to a larger extent should be part of your customer acquisition cost. You cover all grounds when you are calculating your customer acquisition cost.

Customer lifetime value means that amount you have gained from a customer starting from the time he started paying till the time he stopped paying. 

You calculate the Net cost of your services each time he purchases your service call it A. Then you calculate how much he pays each time he purchases your service call it B.  To get your customer lifetime value you have to minus A from B. 

In marketing funnel stages, return on investment should be key factor that motivates you work for customer retention and referrals. It boosts your revenue.

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Conclusion

Marketing funnel is a model of stages in marketing system that exposes what you should do at each stage in respect to the customer’s behaviour. The aim is to boost your brand awareness, increase engagement and conversion. It makes you work to retain your customers and make them loyal to your brand. You need to do SEO and Social medial optimization to help your business grow.