What is a Marketing Funnel?
Marketing Funnel describes the customer as it is a way to see how potential customers go via different stages before making a purchase. Marketing funnel is a systematic process from being Audience to Brand Advocates to Prospects to Customers.
In marketing funnel as we go through different stages, the number of people started getting lesser and lesser. Each stage of marketing funnel has its different psychology and strategy. As the final stage is always to generate lead or sale. Hence, it is a final goal of the marketing funnel.
Stages of Marketing Funnel
Audience – Stage 1
Audience are those whom you are awaring about your brand, product or service. As they are the people who just know you. Audience know that your brand, product or service exist. This stage is also called Awareness Stage as this is Top of the Funnel. People in first stage are discovering you or your business through awareness ads like social media ads, google ads, blogs, social media content and more.
In the first stage of marketing funnel, you get to know your ideal audience. As your work here is to grab their attention and make your ideal audience remember your you or your business. The final goal of this stage is to capture target audience’s interest. It will lead audience to know about us or making them aware about you or your business do. You have to aware them through eye catching ad copies and running advertisement through platform you want.
Brand Advocates – Stage 2
Brand Advocates are those who like your brand, product or service. As the brand advocates knows you as well as they like your business. This is also called as Interest Stage as this is Middle of the Funnel. People in second stage are willing to know more about the business as they have started comparing options, watching or reading reviews. Therefore, people have started watching content about their particular interest.
Now they have started interacting with the brand with more seriousness. The ideal audience picked out from the first stage of marketing funnel are engaging more with the product or service. Brand Advocates are being targeted through remarketing ads, webinars or providing free content to the people. As the final goal of second stage is to make them trust our brand, product or service and nurture them like they come to the third stage.
Prospects – Stage 3
Prospects are those who may buy our product. As they are the people who know you very well and have started to make decision for a particular product. Audience in this stage of marketing funnel are willing to consider the product. This is also called Consideration Stage as this is Middle of the Funnel. People are evaluating about the product that purchasing it will be worthy or not.
They are watching reviews, comparing product and seeing that buying it at ‘y’ price will be worthy or not. Here, business is trying to build its credibility as showing testimonials to the people to increase their trust over the product. Moreover, we need to give people a reason to buy our product.
Customers – Stage 4
After going through all the stages of marketing funnel, this stage shows you the outcome.
Here the person has made his or her decision to buy the product and purchase it with his or her full will. Prospects collect all the information and make a final decision on the basis of their suitability. The customer is ready to buy but is also little insecure about his decision. These cases are the most common but it may differ according to the industry, product or price.
This is also called Decision Stage as it is Bottom of the Funnel. Customers want their decision to be right as they have made the decision after struggling much on buying or not. Therefore, as a business you have to give efforts on converting the prospect into customer. You have to give confidence to the people and make them depend on the product and trust the brand.
Re-Purchase – Stage 5
After the Purchase, you need not to stop because your work is not completed yet. The customer should think of Re-Purchasing product form your brand. It will only happen if the purchased product was according to their expectations and the trust if maintained with the brand. You have to make your product or service strong so that it increase re-purchasing power. This is also called Retention Stage as it comes in Post-Purchase Stage.
We have to keep them again in the middle of the funnel and re-target them through re-marketing ad campaigns. We have to give them best offers to make them our Repeat Customer. Moreover, to keep customer engaged with our brand, we have to place offers in front of them, keep them happy and make them loyal towards the brand.
Recommendation – Stage 6
Lastly, we should build a strong relationship with the customer that he recommends our brand to the other person. Therefore, he or she refers our brand, product or service to the other person in their network. They promote without any fees as brand receives a great incentive. This stage is also known as Advocacy Stage as it comes in Post-Purchase Stage.
Hence, the customer becomes a advocate for the brand and encourage their network to know our brand and use its products or services. They become a testimonial of your brand which increases the credibility of the brand. Therefore, as a business our role is to ask for reviews, offering referral programs and engaging with advocates on social media platform.
Conclusion
Creating a marketing funnel for your business will benefit you as it will help you to define your potential customers and analyze more efficiently. If you follow the systematical process of marketing funnel in your advertising strategy can help you achieve more better. Marketing Funnel clearly tells about your target audience. After knowing about all the stages of funnel, now should able to know how the marketing funnel works and by which process a person goes through.
