5 Stages of the Marketing Funnel
You know what’s the secret to a killer marketing campaign? Yep, you guessed it — a top-notch marketing funnel!
A funnel is like your marketing companion, guiding you to generate quality leads, building trust, and connecting with your target users. The marketing funnel, also known as the sales funnel.
Now, hold your breath and look at the Stages of the Marketing Funnel you need to know to take your marketing to rockstar status!
1. Awareness: From Incognito to Aha Moment!
At the awareness stage, clients come to know about your product or brand. It’s necessary to build your online presence. Without it, your brand is like a needle in a haystack.
In this stage, you can start identifying common pain points of your target audience and then describe how your service or product benefits them.
Think for a moment, if you’re selling flashlights, you wouldn’t want people to be left in the dark, would you? You want to create awareness that they have a problem(darkness) and you have a solution(flashlight).
You can create awareness by building your digital presence on social media through content marketing and also create and optimize a website.
2. Consideration: From Maybe to Must-Have!
When customers move on from the awareness level, they enter into the consideration phase. Consider this stage as you’re trying to impress your potential prospect.
At this phase, you may have access to the customer’s personal information, which you can use to create customized offers for them.
You can provide detailed information about your service or product. Moreover, post helpful content, case studies, white papers, e-books, and video guides to influence their minds.
3. Conversion: From Window Shopping to Checkout!
This phase in the marketing funnel is very important. Many people struggle at this stage, just like the way struggle to get the last slice of pizza.
At this level, a customer makes a purchase from your brand. It’s a difficult phase, like convincing your friend to ditch a boring restaurant and try a new one.
To increase your conversion rate, use some influential tactics. Provide your target audience with specific reasons to buy from your brand.
You can offer a free trial or demo of your product. Post customer reviews and testimonials to create authority and trust.
4. Retention: From One-Time Buyer to Loyal Fan!
Now that the customer has already purchased from your brand, it’s time to create a strategy on how to stay in touch and build loyalty.
Thinking of the benefits of doing this? You’ll achieve retention, and your customers will come back to you and prefer your brand over competitors.
What can you do to stay in contact with them? Create a newsletter and ask them to subscribe. Send weekly or monthly newsletters.
If there are discounts or any offers going on in your store, you can email them. Offer them special discounts and gifts to make them your permanent clients.
5. Advocacy: From Fan to Brand Champion!
Want to take your marketing funnel to the next level? Consider this stage of advocacy. Advocacy refers to when consumers become fans of a service or product.
Your satisfied customers can become brand advocates, recommending your products or services to others through word-of-mouth, referrals, or online reviews.
To achieve this, you can continue to target your loyal buyers, and they can act as brand ambassadors.
Final Verdict
A marketing funnel helps guide prospects through each step of the customer journey. Every small or large business needs to follow the marketing funnel stages to generate more leads, and it helps build trust with your customers. The major marketing funnel stages are explained in the above article, and they are mostly based on the AIDA model.
