Digital marketing funnels are practically visual representations of all the steps you take in order to transform a visitor to your site into a paying customer. All competitors use marketing funnels, even if they are not aware of it.
To put things as simple as possible, the best marketing funnels have 3 parts:
- Top–The visitor does not know you, leaves and might never be back. Ad retargeting is vital in this case.
- Middle – The visitor wants to receive something from you, usually communication or a lead magnet was offered to obtain an email address.
- Bottom – Leads are converted into customers.
In order to create a really effective digital marketing funnel, you need to consider the following.
Awareness
When a visitor finds you, he/she does not know who you are. In just a few seconds, you need to capture attention. Content marketing is what helps you to do that. The content that is created needs to add value and showcase the expertise you have.
Besides capturing attention, you also need to implement call-to-actions so that the visitor can perform an action you want, like signing up for a newsletter. The re-marketing pixel also helps a lot in the event that you will want to use social media.
Creating Interest
When you go window shopping, something catches your attention. You go in and you try it out. If we are talking about clothes, what you saw in the window might not be something that is great for you. However, in the store, you end up seeing other shirts that are of interest to you. Some of them might look great and you end up buying. This is what the marketing funnel’s interest and evaluation stage is.
Based on specific criteria, you target some specific prospects. Then, you communicate with them in one way or another and build excitement through video marketing, blog posts, social media and whatever else.
Commitment
The only way to make someone commit to something is to establish trust first. For instance, you offer a reward when a goal is completed. The simplest example of this in online marketing is offering an eBook when a user signs up to a newsletter. However, in order to make the user commit, just saying you offer an eBook is not enough. You also need to showcase the benefits of that eBook.
Loyalty
The loyalty of anyone is always earned. You cannot force someone to be loyal. As a brand, customer retention is vital for future success and constant growth. During the creation of the marketing funnel, this is one of the most important parts that has to be well-built.
Make sure that you show your current customers that you care and try to keep providing content that is of interest to them.
Advocacy
After a purchase is made, the conversation should not end. In fact, the customers can be used as advocates of the brand you try to promote. Then, we should also highlight the fact that customers can be used for repeat businesses. This is important as it is cheaper to get return purchases than to get new customers.
Never underestimate the advocacy part of the marketing funnel. A customer goes through a funnel and already made a purchase. Also, you already spent money to get that customer. Then, the customer can become an advocate so more sales can be generated in the future, all at zero cost.
Conclusions
When you build a marketing funnel, every single element highlighted above needs to be taken into account. We cannot tell you how to do it because every single business needs a different marketing funnel. You need to build your own, based on as much data gathered as possible.
