There is a lot of debate about the marketing funnel, from who owns it, whether it’s marketing or sales, and whether or not it still works for today’s customers.
There are many things you should know about the marketing funnel, and they’ll go over them here. They’ll also talk about recent changes and challenges for marketers. I’ll show how the horn can be used for both B2C and B2B businesses, explain how the funnel can be turned to get more leads and show how the funnel can be used in a nonlinear way.
When someone buys something from you, they go through a funnel
The marketing funnel is a picture that helps you understand how to turn leads into customers from a marketing and sales point of view. The idea is that, like a funnel, marketers cast a wide net to get as many leads as possible. Then, they slowly guide potential customers through the buying process, narrowing down these candidates at each funnel stage.
When you want to make money, you want to make this funnel into a marketing cylinder, and you want all of your leads to become customers. Businesses can’t do this, but it is part of a marketer’s job to turn as many leads into customers as possible, making the funnel more cylindrical.
There are different stages in the marketing funnel and different types of sales
Awareness: This is the last step in the marketing funnel, called “awareness.” Marketing campaigns and consumer research and discovery are used to get people into this stage. There are a lot of ways to build trust and thought leadership: advertising, trade shows, content (blog posts and infographics, for example), webinars, direct mail, viral campaigns, social media, search, media attention, and more. Trust and thought-leadership are built with these things: As information is gathered and leads are moved into the lead management system, generating leads is taking place. They will be nurtured further down the funnel.
The next step after leads are made is to get them interested in the company, its products, and any helpful information and research it has to show them. This is a good time for brands to build relationships with people in their lead database and show them what they do. Marketers can use emails, classes, newsletters, and more to connect with leads.
This is when leads have been turned into qualified information and are seen as potential customers. They can also keep in touch with them with personalized content, case studies, free trials, etc.
Intent: Prospects must show that they want to buy a brand’s product to get to the intent stage. These things can happen after a product demo when a product is added to a shopping cart on an eCommerce website, or when a survey is filled out.
Evaluation: At this point, buyers have made up their minds about whether or not to buy a brand’s product or service. When people buy a product, marketing and sales usually work together to help them decide and convince them that their brand’s product is the best one.
When you buy: You’re here. When a person is ready to buy from a company, they go through this last step in the marketing funnel. This is where sales take care of the sale. A good experience can lead to referrals that fuel the top of the marketing funnel, and the process starts over again.
The following are the main differences between B2C and B2B funnels:
• Most B2C customers go through the funnel independently or with a small group of trusted advisers (usually friends and family). B2B customers, on the other hand, typically have a larger, cross-department buying group. The average number of people in a group buying B2B products is about 5.4 people.
• B2C customers may not interact with a company representative, especially on eCommerce websites. B2B customers, on the other hand, usually interact with a sales representative at the bottom of the funnel.
Owning the funnel is the difference between marketing and selling: holding the funnel.
There is a lot of debate in the marketing and sales worlds about who owns the funnel.
One side says that people have become more reliant on digital content to make purchasing decisions. As a result, marketers have taken on more responsibility for the funnel as they continue to nurture prospects through the purchasing process. Grab a look at the diagram below to see how marketing and sales have been in charge of the funnel over the last few years.
The customer experience funnel is shown.
As you can see, we’ve boiled down the essential parts of the customer experience funnel and explained them below.
Next, make them repeat customers. This means increasing customer retention and encouraging them to buy more and bigger things. Marketers keep doing things at the bottom of the funnel to make people want to do more.
Loyalty: In the loyalty stage, customers start to like a brand, think of it as their own, and make their own products. People need to be engaged with a brand, and marketers can help this happen by building communities, hiring people, and reaching out to people.
Customer loyalty makes them more likely to give business referrals and recommend products from the same brand to their friends and family.
Advocacy: Turning your customers into fans is the best way to keep them coming back. There are many ways you can be an evangelist. You can write reviews of products, post about them on social media, and more! Influence: Having an outside endorsement that isn’t connected to your business is very powerful. Marketers can work to build up their communities so that advocates can better support them, ask them to participate in case studies or talk to them about customer-generated content on social media.
Conclusion
Google Analytics has funnels, and I’ve written a lot about them in the past. This is a straightforward way to see what prospects do before buying from you. Make sure you’re signed in. Then, click Admin > Goals > +New Goal > Choose A Goal to make a goal for Google Analytics, and then click Save.