Marketing Funnel: a simple but effective explanation of what it is and how to create an effective one

A complete guide to the Marketing Funnel, which enables businesses to attract only those genuinely interested customers in the product or service on offer.

Limiting waste of time and money is often a must for business owners. For this reason, it is extremely useful to create an effective Marketing Funnel, which, if used well, allows you to attract only those customers who are genuinely interested in what you are offering. Here is the complete guide.

What is a Marketing Funnel?

A Marketing Funnel (also known as Sales Funnel, Purchase Funnel or Buying Funnel) is a model used to describe and analyse the path taken by a consumer during the process of buying a product or service.

This path starts at the stage where the consumer becomes aware of the existence of a brand, product or service and, step by step, leads to the moment of purchase. Of vital importance, however, is also the next step, in which the customer, if loyal, can become a fan, testimonial or brand ambassador.

The funnel metaphor is central to this marketing model. Daily, a consumer is confronted with a wide range of different brands familiar to him or her and progressively skims through them until they choose the product or service they consider most suitable.

The number of people who leave the sales funnels as customers is clearly smaller than the number who enter it. However, a good strategy allows you to ensure that as many people as possible make it to the final moment of purchase. More importantly, it allows you to intercept only those really interested customers.

Marketing Funnel: how to create it

The four macro-phases of the traditional Marketing Funnel model are:

• awareness;
• interest;
• consideration
• purchase

Figuratively, the awareness phase is at the top of the funnel (the widest). Going down, then, one arrives at purchase (the phase that is in the lowest and narrowest part of the funnel).

The first phase, awareness, is where the influence of advertising manifests itself: the consumer becomes aware of a brand, product or service.

In the second phase, interest, the consumer starts to become familiar with the possible purchase after gathering the information he needs.

The phase in which the consumer compares the brand, product or service with others in its category (based on characteristics, costs and benefits) is when he starts to consider buying it seriously.

Finally, it leads to the moment of purchase, a fundamental objective for every company.

As already mentioned, it is advisable to add the next stage, loyalty. Once the purchase has been completed, the consumer can see whether his expectations have been met. If so, he will be inclined to buy from the brand again and recommend it to others.

Marketing Funnel: the best strategies

A business must send the right message to the right potential customer who will appreciate it.

In its journey to turn an unknown person into a loyal customer, funnel marketing intersects with inbound marketing, which is all about getting people to find the brand when they need it.

The right strategy attracts people, captures leads (potential customers who show interest in a product or service), nurtures those leads, drives them towards a sale, pampers them and builds loyalty.

A brand needs to be clear about who its best customers are or could be. To do this, it is essential to define Buyer Personas (general representations of typical customers).

To be in control of the entire consumer journey, a business needs to be fully aware of the needs it can satisfy and the problems it can solve, but also of the biases that may arise in the 'path to purchase'.

In order to attract the right people, it is necessary first to define the channels where to get in touch with them. The tools made available by the web are many and range from Facebook Advertising to organic SEO traffic, via Google Adwords and email marketing. Precise targeting is, as never before, essential.

As a second phase, it is important to build a landing page that is clear, precise and immediate.

Offering a free trial, or another 'lead magnet', could be the right move to incentivise the consumer to buy at the stage when they are still considering whether or not to complete the purchase. It is also possible to get their contact details to contact them later.

It should be emphasised that the connection with the customer must be maintained with new offers and exclusive content to build loyalty.

Last but not least, in the third phase, it's crucial to expand the strategy to as many targeted people as possible. This, of course, means that you must set up a complete translation of the funnel's system. From top to bottom because catching a potential customer but providing him with a landing page in a foreign language from the one he usually speaks, means losing the lead on the spot.

When you reach that level of sophistication, your Marketing Funnel can be considered complete.

Conclusions

Setting up a working Marketing Funnel is far from easy, and it will probably take some time. Nonetheless, as soon as you find a functional system, you can finally exploit it completely by translating it into as many languages as possible (of course, linked to your target audience). We at Hero Translate can be the biggest weapon at your disposal for that final part.

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