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Digital Marketing Funnel
[How To Turn Searchers Into Customers]

Marketing funnel is a system designed to attract the target audience(your potential customers) and convert into paid customers by capturing the prospect’s inquiry, need so that prospect can build trust on your brand.

Digital Marketing Funnel depicts the customer buyer’s journey – discovering a problem, looking for a solution, comparison between solutions and finally purchasing the solution.

Marketing Funnel helps in converting the searchers into customers. It also helps in improving the conversion rate.

It is funnel shaped because people tend to filter out at each stage of the funnel. And it’s okay, every business runs like this.

And it should be run like this because you must focus only on your customers who are actually gonna buy. So they are the one who filter out at the bottom of the funnel

They would be few but valuable.

The top stage of the funnel is always larger than the bottom of the funnel.

It means if 1000 people become aware of your brand. Only 50-60 people are going to purchase your product(number depend on many factors*)

And it is not necessary that your prospects find you at the top of the funnel. They can find you even at the bottom of the funnel(at the buying stage). So you have to create content according to that.

Why Digital Marketing Funnel Is Important?

In traditional marketing, you broadcast your product to the mass market without knowing their interest and tracking of ROI.

So you are wasting your time, resources, money etc to those people who are not even thinking about your product.

But in digital marketing, you can target only those who have interest in your product or service.

Plus you can track your marketing performance by setting some KPIs and evaluating data. You can easily improve performance according to data.

Digital Marketing Funnel helps you to build strategies and tactics to target only potential customers and improve your conversion rate by analyzing and measuring the data metrics.

So In Marketing Funnel, you have to target your segmentation. Very few people from segmentation are going to buy your product/ service…..

But how are you going to find these valuable people(ie your customer) ?

Yes by the help of the Buyer persona.

Buyer persona is a semi-fictional character of your potential customer. Information like their goals, pain points, challenges, industry etc should be written on buyer persona.

You have to create Buyer Persona by the help of market research(if your business is new) or by the help of your customer’s data(for old businesses). You have to know your customer’s interest, need and pain point.

With the help of Buyer Persona, you have to make a plan for your content marketing strategy.

Marketing Funnel also helps you to target your prospects, no matter what phase they are in their buying journey. If they are looking for some information, you should be the one who provides information.

If they are in a buying mood, you are the one who fulfill their needs.

You can create content according to the customer’s buyer journey (i.e. stages of the marketing funnel) so that they can easily convert into customers.

With the help of funnel, you can find the reason why prospect/visitor is not converting by the help of data and metrics….

And adjust the content strategy…(in detail in the article)

Our mission as a marketer is to make a marketing funnel stronger and increase conversion rate by always appearing in front of the customers whenever they search and need.

Why Customer Buyer Journey Is Important In Digital Marketing Funnel?

Think of yourself as a customer. Do you purchase at a single time when you search the product?

Or do you research about the product and check all the brand alternatives?

Or do you check the reviews of the products before buying the product or service?

Yes … You do all the search related to product, check reviews on forums, ask friend, take recommendation etc.

Same thing done by Rakesh who wants to purchase the hosting service. These are the steps he majorly takes from beginning to the end of the purchasing the product :

Check the article “best hosting provider in India” and get 7 recommended hosting provider(but still he needs the best one)
Check all provider’s prices and details.
Check the YouTube videos for more details.
Ask friends for the help and they suggest 3-4 hosting providers.
He goes for reviews on quora and gets puzzles.
Open facebook and get the advertisement of one of the hosting providers(due to fb pixel)
Click the advertisement and reach to their webpage
And finally purchase the hosting.

How digital marketing funnel takes play the role in customer buyer’s journey

Check the article “best hosting provider in India” and get 7 recommended hosting provider(but still he needs the best one) – Content Marketing
Check all provider’s prices and details.- Content Marketing
Check YouTube videos for more details – Video Marketing
Ask friends for the help and they suggest 3-4 hosting providers. – Referral
He goes for reviews on Quora and gets puzzles. – Content on Forums
Open Facebook and get the advertisement of one of the hosting providers(due to fb pixel) – Facebook Advertising
Click the advertisement and reach to their webpage – Landing page
And finally purchase the hosting. –Conversion Done(Last stage of Funnel)

So it is necessary to have a customer’s buyer journey so that you can be available on different platforms to meet the customer’s inquiry or requirement.

If you are unaware that your customers may not have technical knowledge related to your product or service, then you think video marketing is time or resource wasting.

So Know your customers, know their journey and convert them into customers.

Stages Of Digital Marketing Funnel

There are mainly three stages in the marketing funnel.

Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion.

These stages are from top to bottom of the funnel.

*Top Of The Funnel(Awareness) – Can’t define the problem(less technical words, question format)

*Middle Of The Funnel(Consideration) – Researching different solutions(technical words, branded words)

*Bottom Of The Funnel(Conversion)- Final purchase(words contain ”buy”,”online”)

But the number of stages depends on your product or service. If you are in the solar business, there are more than three stages because it is costly and the prospect needs extra time and trust to purchase from you.

Example of searches according to the stages of funnel(take the same example of Rakesh who need hosting service)…..

Top Of The Funnel (less technical word is used)

“Which web hosting is best for small business”
“Which web hosting is best in India”
“Which web hosting is best for beginners”

Middle Of The Funnel (branded words)

“A2 web hosting vs Greengeeks web hosting”
“Siteground web hosting reviews”
“Web hosting comparison”

Bottom Of The Funnel (purchasing words)

“Hostinger hosting buy”
“Buy web hosting GoDaddy”

Top and middle funnel are for prospecting while middle and bottom of the funnel are for capture and nurture leads.

#1 Awareness( Top Of The Funnel)

Main goal – Brand awareness

In this awareness stage, you have to create awareness about your product, service or brand among your target audience(potential customers)

Tactics-

Try to get visitors familiar with your brand (Add your brand name in the content)
Try to create interest in visitors’ mind about your website (so that they want to revisit your website again and again in future).
Try to land potential customers in the conversion path.

You can create awareness of your brand by

Creating content for social media(where your target audience spend most of their times)
Creating podcast(your potential customers want to listen you)
Creating videos (so that searchers can find you on YouTube)
Creating articles for Medium or press releases.
Creating articles for your website(so that your solution can show on google searches)
Creating opportunity for guest post
Creating advertisements on social media or forums
Creating content or answering problems on communities(facebook groups, slack)

Keywords– Informational keywords only.

Content format– Articles, Social post, Videos etc.

The aim of this awareness stage is to fulfill the queries and hope the content will rank in the search engine result page so that searchers can find you.

#2 Consideration(Middle Of The Funnel)

Main goal – Consider your product as highly valuable

In this consideration stage, you have to make your product/service considerable by your potential customers…

So that they will consider your product/service while comparing with others before final purchase.

Tactics–

Try to make action by the customer.
Try to join a newsletter or email signup by the visitor.
Try to create need, urgency or scarcity of your product.

You can make your product considerable by:

Making comparison of your brands with others
Showing your brand’s Unique Selling Proposition.
Providing special offers for a limited time.
Providing free trials of your product/service.
Positioning your product/service as best in customer’s mind.

Keywords- Navigational keywords

Content format- Case studies, demo videos, product/service description

The aim of this consideration stage is to be in the option of your potential customer’s shortlist.

#3 Conversion(Bottom Of The Funnel)

Main goal – Conversion of prospects into customers.

In this conversion stage, you have to make a little persuading language and give a nudge for your product or service

Tactics–

Try to convert into customers by convincing them.
Try to convert prospects into customers by retargeting through Facebook or LinkedIn advertisements.

You can make conversion by:

Providing the positive reviews to your potential customers
Using emotional and persuasive words in your landing page
Providing case studies
Providing free consultation

Keywords– Transactional keywords

Content Format– landing pages, reviews, case studies, testimonials(video or text form)

The aim of this conversion stage is to make a final purchase of your product/service

Note- Content format and keywords will be differ in every stage of the marketing funnel.

How To Create Digital Marketing Funnel? (Step By Step)

Stages of funnel
Create buyer persona. Evaluate your product/service customer buyer journey….
And then find out how many stages do you need in your marketing funnel for your product or service.
Create Content Marketing Plan
Decide the channels for the content creation. Research keywords according to the stages of the funnel.
Classify the keywords into informational, navigational and transactional keywords.
Create Content marketing strategy with your team.
Do competitor analysis.
Create content
Create content according to the keywords for the different platforms(according to the customer buyer journey).
Create highly valuable content, rank on the Google and beat the competitors.
Install Facebook Pixels And LinkedIn Insight Tag
Facebook pixels and LinkedIn Insight Tag are helpful to track the actions taken by the visitors on your website.
They also helps in targeting and retargeting the audience in the Facebook and LinkedIn advertisement.
Email Marketing
Email marketing helps you to give a personalized way to connect with your prospects at their comfortable time.
Retargeting
Retargeting by advertisement is the powerful way to capture the prospects who have interest in your product/service.
It also helps to remind your prospects who was going to purchase the product but leave in midway.
Retention Plan
Make some retention plans for your old customers.
Provide them full customer support. make them happy and satisfied so that they can do advocacy for your brand.

Make Sure Your Eyes On:

Data – Data, analytics and metrics. Check regularly. Set KPI to measure data in each stage of the funnel for better conversion.
Email opening ratio. If it is not good, check emails and find the reason and fix the issues.
Landing pages – If retargeting is not going good or conversion ratio is low, then there is a problem in landing page.
Quereis- Check your branded queries on forums like reddit, quora etc. Answer appropriately
Negative reviews– Check your negative reviews timely. Solve their issues. Reviews can also help in getting some innovative ideas.