What is a marketing funnel?
A marketing funnel is a way of breaking down
the customer journey all the way from the “awareness” stage (when they first
learn about your business) to the “purchase” stage (when they’re ready to buy
your product or service).
First, you want to attract awareness to your
business by ranking high in search, publishing white papers, etc. As leads
progress through your funnel, your outreach methods will get more and more
personalized (sometimes involving a product demo or a phone call) until the
sale takes place.
·
Awareness – the customer is aware of the existence
of a product or service
·
Interest – actively expressing an interest in a
product group
·
Desire – aspiring to a particular brand or
product
·
Action – taking the next step towards purchasing
the chosen product
Example 1:
Norman
Newbie owns a software company with ten salespeople and one product. He’s not a
very savvy marketer, so his sales process currently involves handing his
salespeople lists of leads that he purchased online and having them “dial for
dollars.” His salespeople frequently get frustrated since his leads aren’t
always good quality. Because they’re usually calling on people who A)
aren’t interested in his services and B) are not a good fit for them, the
salespeople close less than 1% of the prospects they initially reach out to.
Example 2:
Molly
Marketer has a similarly-sized company, but instead of taking Norman’s
traditional outbound marketing approach, she’s created a marketing funnel that
helps her three salespeople close more sales with less effort.
Molly
started by building a series of attention-grabbing content marketing pieces that are tied to landing pages on her
website. Potential customers can engage with her content (blog posts,
infographics, videos) and learn about her company and its services without a
cold call from a salesperson.
When these
would-be buyers become interested enough in her products, they request an
online demonstration by filling out the form on her landing pages. These
requests are routed directly to her salespeople, who, because they’re dealing
with warm leads, close roughly 50% of the customers to whom they demo. Molly’s
company closes more sales than Norman’s, with fewer salespeople and no time
spent on cold calling.
Obviously,
these are simplified examples, and most businesses will fall somewhere in
the middle of this “0 to 60” spectrum. Even if you’ve never heard the phrase
“marketing funnel” before, make no mistake about it: you have one.
Whether
you’re an old hand looking for fresh ideas on optimizing your current funnel or
a newbie wanting to learn how to make an effective marketing funnel, you’ve
come to the right place!
Creating Content for Your
Marketing Funnel:
Now that you know how people make
decisions, you can use this knowledge of the buying process to make a
marketing funnel by creating content that will appeal to people at every stage.
Take a look at the following sales funnel temp to see how this
translates:
As you can see, each color-coded
piece of the funnel pictured above roughly corresponds to stages 2-4 in the buying
process. The widest tier at the top of the funnel represents “awareness,” the
point at which potential customers are beginning their information search.
The second tier is “consideration,” roughly corresponding to the evaluation of
alternatives described in the purchase process above. And finally, the third
tier, “decision,” is self-explanatory.
As a note, stages one and five
have been left out of this model. Though all companies should have a plan
for addressing post-purchase follow-up, it’s up to you to determine whether or
not it’s worth your company’s time to try to reach buyers in the first stage of
the process. It can be difficult to convince people that they have a problem if
they haven’t already felt it themselves, but if you’re selling a new type of
product that meets a previously unrealized need, you might want to focus
your energy on this area.
For each stage of the funnel,
you’ll need to answer the following questions:
- How will customers
at this stage find me?
- What kind of
information do I need to provide to help them move from one stage to the
next?
- How will I know if
they have moved from one stage to another?
The image above gives some hints
as to how you might answer some of these questions, and you’ll find that some
are easier to answer than others. To continue with our earlier example, let’s
explore how Norman could answer each of these questions in order to create the
foundation of his marketing funnel:
Stage 1 –
Problem/Need Recognition
Because Norman sells a high-dollar
software product that meets a need that most businesses are familiar with, he
decides that it’s easier to focus on attracting and converting customers who
already know that they need his product, rather than trying to create the need
in the first place. If he was a startup or a company with a new idea, he might
choose to invest more of his time and energy here.
Stage 2 –
Information Search
How will
customers at this stage find me?
Given the broad appeal of his
product and its high-dollar nature, Norman decides that the following
strategies will be most appropriate:
- Paid advertising on
Google AdWords that lead visitors to a landing page with an opt-in
form requesting a free online demonstration
- Guest blog posts on
industry websites that provide viewers with unbiased information on what
to look for when buying his type of software
- Optimizing his
website for keywords that indicate an information search in progress
in order to capture organic search traffic
- Social media posts
that educate viewers on a wide variety of industry issues
What kind
of information do customers at this stage need?
- Content that
confirms that the need they’ve perceived is valid and should be remedied
(for example, blog posts that appeal to the visitor’s frustrations with
emotional descriptions of the problem and how the product solves it—“Why X
is a Problem and What You Should Do About It”)
- Content that
describes the attributes of the product to encourage viewers to include in
their future evaluation of alternatives (for example, blog posts with titles like “Getting
to Know Product X”)
- Content that
introduces the company and intrigues the potential customer enough to move
to the next stage of the buying process (for example, Facebook posts on
“Behind the Scenes at Norman’s Company”)
How will I
know if customers have moved on to the next stage?
Norman will know when customers
have moved on to the “Evaluation of Alternatives” stage when they request a
free online demonstration, indicating that they are interested enough in the
product to compare it against others.
Stage 3 –
Evaluation of Alternatives
How will
customers at this stage find me?
Most prospects will enter this
stage after identifying Norman’s company as a possible alternative and
completing the information search process described in Stage 2. However, some
customers might be introduced to his brand after completing Stage 2 with his
competitors, as in the case of an industry blog running a comparison chart of
the different competitors in his space.
As a result, Norman decides that
it’s prudent to set up Google Alerts for his competitors’ names. Whenever they
appear online, he makes it a point to try to get his company mentioned as well
by reaching out to publishers, leaving comments, and responding to questions he
sees about his competitors.
What kind
of information do customers need at this stage?
- What differentiates
Norman’s product from his competitors’ products? Instead of relying on
external sites, Norman could create his own product comparison chart
showing how his product is different from others.
- Have other buyers
been successful with Norman’s product? Case studies of past customer
successes can be extremely helpful in terms of moving customers from the
evaluation stage to the purchase decision.
- Why should they
purchase from Norman? To meet this need, Norman might publish a white
paper based on primary research he’s conducted that establishes himself as
an industry authority (or, better yet, he might place this behind an
opt-in form that causes visitors to take the psychologically-compelling
step of engaging further with his brand).
How will I
know if customers have moved on to the next stage?
Visitors who move on to the
next stage are those that make a purchase, so any indication that the buying
process has begun means success — from verbal confirmation of a deal’s
acceptance to the receipt of a formal contract. However, if Norman uses an
online shopping cart system, he might also find it useful to track abandonment
rates, as reaching out to these customers could help reveal reasons visitors
aren’t progressing to the next stage or provide salespeople with leads that can
be easily closed with a single outreach phone call.
Stage 4 –
Purchase Decision
How will
customers at this stage find me?
Customers at this stage will have
already found Norman’s company by progressing through stages 1-3. There
is no extra outreach Norman needs to do at this point, as it is exceedingly
rare for customers to purchase without conducting any type of information
search or comparison of alternatives.
What kind
of information do customers at this stage need?
Since Norman is selling a
high-dollar product, he needs to do two things: help prospects be comfortable
with the purchasing process and make the purchase process as easy as possible.
- To help make
customers comfortable, he decides to create a few blog posts on what
happens after the purchase is completed to ease potential worries about
investing with his company (for example, “10 Ways Norman’s Company
Simplifies Software Onboarding”).
- To minimize
confusion, he adds information to his checkout pages in order to make it
as obvious as possible what prospects should do next in order to purchase
his solution.
How will I
know if customers have moved on to the next stage?
Customers will move on to Stage 5
when the sale is complete. Although we won’t detail it here, Norman should
brainstorm the kinds of information these customers will need, as well as how
he’ll provide it as part of a cohesive onboarding process. Though he
doesn’t need to worry about customers finding him at this stage or moving
on to the next one, it’s still important to meet their needs so that they walk
away feeling good about their purchase decisions!
After completing this
brainstorming process, Norman creates an overall list of all the different
content pieces he’ll need to create and deploy, including:
- Google AdWords ad
copy
- Landing pages with
lead generation forms for customers requesting online demonstrations
- Guest blog posts
- On-site page and
blog content written for SEO keywords
- Blog post: Why X Is
a Problem and What You Should Do About It
- Blog post: Getting
to Know Product X
- Blog post: 10 Ways
Norman’s Company Simplifies Software Onboarding
- Social media posts:
Behind the Scenes at Norman’s Company
- Product comparison
chart
- Case studies from
successful customers
- White paper
- New checkout page
content
Since this is a significant amount
of content, Norman can choose to roll it out over time, enlist other employees
in the creation process or outsource some of it to freelance workers.
Another Way to Remember Content Creation
Stages:
There’s another way to remember stages of the
sales funnel and match it to content creation — with the acronym AIDA:
- Attention: This
is similar to the problem/need recognition stage. Customers experience a
problem, but must recognize the problem. You create content to draw
attention to the need.
- Interest:
Interest and information both start with the letter “I.” This is the stage
at which customers are actively seeking, or interested in, information to
help them solve their problem. As they move through the sales funnel from
recognizing or drawing attention to the problem, their interest is sparked
in a solution. They need information to move into the next phase.
- Desire: Customers
have moved from attention or recognition of the problem through
information-gathering and interest. Now they have a desire for a solution.
Customers evaluate alternatives and your job, through content creation, is
to spark a desire for your solution. You must convince customers, as they
examine various solutions to their problem, that your solution is the
right one for them.
- Action: Now it is
time for customers to make the purchase decision, or to take action. Make
it easy for them to say “yes” to taking action. Have a strong call to
action in your copy, and a simple path to follow to complete the sale. The
easier you make it for people to take action, the more sales you’ll
generate through your sales funnel
