How Your Business Benefits from Using a Marketing Funnel

The internet has given businesses a platform to connect consumers to services and products. But this leverage should not just end at being able to reach potential customers. You need to implement effective marketing strategies to not only reach prospects but also convert them to paying clients. One way to achieve this is to provide solutions to customers at different levels.

You may have a great service or product, but not everyone will purchase it as soon as they notice it. Therefore, you must ensure that your brand is attractive enough to grab the attention of new leads. But attracting leads is not the only thing to do when you want people to know as well as purchase from your brand. 

While your business must have qualified leads, you need to move them through a smooth sales cycle. You may have heard about a sales funnel, but there is another important funnel that your customers go through – the marketing funnel.

What is a Marketing Funnel?

It is a process that is designed to attract and take customers through different stages that will lead to conversion – to purchase a service or product. It breaks down your client’s journey in this manner:

1. How the client discovers your company’s website
2. How they interact with the web pages
3. When they finally decide to purchase your service or product

In the first step, you attract prospective customers to your company’s website by utilizing advertising and marketing tools. Next, you persuade them to subscribe to your newsletter as this will give you access to their email addresses. Subsequently, you send emails to them, educating them about your services or products and how they can benefit from them. 

Some persons will get convinced and decide to purchase what you are offering. That is the point where a quality lead converts to a paying client. You now have to think of ways to keep your customers happy and ensure that they recommend your brand or business to their family and friends. In summary, the stages in a marketing funnel are:

1. Awareness
2. Interest 
3. Consideration
4. Conversion
5. Retention after conversion

Benefits of Using a Marketing Funnel

The benefits of using this technique in your business are:

You Get a Better Picture of the Customer’s Journey

A marketing funnel is a structured marketing plan. You can use it to extract precise details about your consumers who are at different stages in the funnel. With this knowledge, you can revisit your strategies and increase sales. Therefore, the technique enables you to better understand as well as follow each customer’s journey. 

Additionally, the technique guides your sales reps because they can easily trace when a prospect exits the funnel and the stage at which they left. It also reveals why they left, so you can use the information to improve on your marketing plan. This marketing approach is conversational and helps you to improve your customers’ online purchasing experience. And by implementing this technique, you are raising the customer experience bar.

From the beginning of the customer’s journey, which is the awareness stage, to the stage where they become loyal to your brand, you should link everything as the customer’s experience. This will enable you to come up with marketing plans that will target every stage with high precision. This approach optimizes your funnel for maximum results. 

Ability to Track Beyond Sales

If a prospect has never heard about your business, sending them sales emails, or cold calling them may not yield any positive response. When you keep doing this, it may affect your reputation negatively and reduce the likelihood of ever closing deals with them. But let us look at it from the point of trying to engage your prospective buyers to gain insight into their perceived needs.

First, you should understand what drives customers to research and pay for services or products. You can achieve this by informing new leads about the benefits or features of a product. People respond faster when you sell solutions, not just products.  

Second, from your funnel, you should decipher the decisions your prospects are making. As soon as you detect a conversion, you can start applying certain actions like email subscriptions, social media activities, or calls. When the prospect is fully educated and willing to decide whether to buy or not, your sales reps can start reinforcing everything your marketing team told them. Hopefully, they will be able to use the tips here to close most of the deals. 

You Can Optimize Your Strategy

Most times, it is not the service or product but the entire buying experience that makes a strong impression. It begins with your ability to analyze the behavior of customers as they journey through the funnel. This gives you more insight into each customer. You will understand what attracts them to your brand, the things that can improve conversion, and how to strengthen retention.

This insight enables you to adapt your funnel to fit into each customer’s intent or behavior. You will also structure your website to contain information that will influence visitors to act immediately. A strategic marketing funnel can control the behavior of consumers from a wide to narrower perspective. This allows you to deliver the right content to customers and at the appropriate moment.

Conclusion

We listed the stages in a marketing funnel and explained how they work. Your business can benefit in several ways, from identifying how your customers think and respond to information to knowing when a prospect leaves the funnel or converts. After a lead converts, the cycle continues; the process keeps evolving because your conversations with clients are evolving. 

You can leverage social media to advertise your services or products as a support to your marketing funnel. The most important thing is for your business to have a practical, effective, and logical marketing funnel that can attract potential customers. It should also sustain their interest in your services or products until they become paying customers.