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How to Create a Marketing Funnel: A Strategic Guide for 2024

Mar 30, 2024

Making marketing-related content without the aid of a funnel or strategy for marketing can be like setting sail without a course or a map. The funnel that you use for marketing will help to help inform your plans behind the scenes so potential buyers are steered down a path from brand awareness up to a purchasing decision.

This guide will begin with an in-depth look into what marketing funnels are as well as how they function as well as a few terms that shouldn't be confused with funnels for marketing. Then, we'll dive into nine simple steps you can use to design your own marketing funnel right now.

Go ahead:

What are funnels in marketing?

A marketing funnel represents the customer's journey. The funnel marketing process starts with awareness, and concludes by converting.

The marketing funnel is an ideal visual tool marketing professionals use to illustrate the journey because marketers expect to witness anywhere from 20% to as much as 80% of their customers fall off in each step. When people stop dropping off, the pool of potential customers gets smaller and smaller, with only a tiny percent of those who are in the awareness stage making it into the conversion phase.

The number of stages within a marketing funnel depends on the strategy of your company. A company might have three stages, while another may have four or five. Our own guide on making a funnel to market will walk you through five.

  MOFU, TOFU and BOFU: What they are  

As funnels vary from company to company, it is common to hear terms in marketing like top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) and middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU) and bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU). These terms are used to describe the general position of content or a client inside the overall funnel.

TOFU content is always about building awareness and BOFU content will include driving conversion-driven content. But MOFU content lies between these two and is often blurred borders with its neighbors.

A blog article is usually about generating branding awareness, and this is especially true when it's educational. But a blog post that compares two competing software programs is crafted to attract potential customers who aren't yet at the awareness level. Still, the blog post might be driving website traffic as well as promoting brand recognition and consequently accomplishing the goals of both MOFU and TOFU contents.

In the break-down of marketing funnel stages in the following section, we've listed five complete stages because we believe this is the most flexible approach. The majority of funnels consist of at least three stages with the stages four and five being optional.

Awareness

The first stage, awareness, refers to brand perception. The goal of this stage is to make potential customers aware of your brand or the specific service or product. The people in this stage are at the top of your marketing funnel.

Many times, prospective customers in the awareness stage have a problem, but they may or may not understand the answer to their issue is.

Also, it's possible that future customers will become more aware of your business's brand in the absence of an issue that your company solves.

A customer, for instance, could find out about your cooler business shortly after buying a new cooler. When they've followed you on Instagram you, they've reached the phase of being aware, even if they're not in the market for an entirely new cooler.

Naturally, the awareness phase generally includes social media, digital marketing, and other strategies for marketing content. Search engine optimization (SEO) is also an important role during this phase, since it's a method that could use through YouTube, Google, and even Instagram to get your content in front of more people.

Consideration

Customers in the stage of consideration in your marketing funnel have moved beyond awareness and are now actively pursuing a solution to an issue. They are in the middle of the funnel.

The consideration stage typically includes information designed to bring people towards making a purchase decision. This often includes ebooks and research reports, as well as webinars, demos, tutorials, templates and white documents. They can also contain blogs or landing pages as in the example above.

Conversion

At the point of conversion in the funnel of marketing, potential buyers make a purchase decision.

In this stage of the buyer's journey, the buyer is already familiar with your brand and your offerings and is looking for details to aid them in making a final decision. They are considered to be on the lower end of the funnel.

Marketing assets in this stage will often include product demos Free trial periods, pricing or breakdowns of plans cases studies, as well as social proof. For many of these assets it is the aim to strengthen the prospective customer's understanding of your product or service's value to them.

Loyalty

A few marketing funnels come to an end after stage three. While this may seem reasonable in certain situations but we know that a customer's journey doesn't actually conclude with a purchase. It goes far beyond that.

Take Alex's fictional scenario. Customers walked through her company through the marketing funnel, and they got to the next stage, the purchasing decision. Only after making the decision to purchase that they began to drop off to the business and the product in search of alternative options. This is a sign that the customers weren't loyal.

Customer loyalty is the ongoing, positive relationship between an organization and its customers. Since it is less expensive to keep customers than to find new ones The loyalty phase of your marketing funnel may be the stage with the most return on investment.

Things you can try to encourage customer loyalty are:

  • Providing excellent customer service
  • soliciting input from the customer and then acting upon the feedback
  • Always looking for ways to better understand the needs of your customers
  • Offering comprehensive customer education

Advocacy

The fifth stage in our marketing funnel is the advocacy. Customers at this stage go beyond your average loyalties; they're your business's biggest fans. When asked if they would suggest you to acquaintances and relatives, they answer in a clear yes. Then they'll perform it.

To further increase your investments in customer satisfaction, the advocates of your brand bring others into your marketing funnel all independently, through the word of word of.

You can, and should assist clients at this point by offering referral and affiliate programs. They are designed to encourage customers to broaden your brand exposure by sharing the experience with family and friends and coworkers. They can also share their experience with neighbors or anyone they think will benefit from what you have to give them.

Marketing funnels Vs. AIDA funnels: What's the difference?

In the world of marketing funnels AIDA funnels have earned themselves a position in the marketing hall of famous. Developed by Elias Lewis in 1898, AIDA funnels are often used interchangeably with funnels for marketing, however AIDA funnels have distinct differences.

Let's begin by examining the reasons why they are mixed up.

Both AIDA funnels as well as marketing funnels direct potential customers through the awareness, consideration and buying phases.

AIDA is an acronym for: AIDA acronym means:

  • An Attention - Potential customers become conscious of your company's name and product or service
  • I am interested - Conscient of who you are and what you offer, potential customers are intrigued by how you can help them.
  • D esire - At this stage, potential clients are already familiar with your company and your offering and have begun to envision what their life would look like after a purchase
  • The action buyer is able to make a buying decision

AIDA funnels can be described as linear designs with only four stages. However, marketing funnels are more complicated. In fact, the 5-stage marketing funnel is an example of the funnel which goes much further than the AIDA model.

The AIDA model will never incorporate advocacy or loyalty because the 4-stage limit. The marketing funnel will give marketers more flexibility, because they can include and remove stages to describe their customer journey more accurately or even as far as creating the cyclical funnel.

The comparison between marketing and sales funnels

Sales and marketing funnels that are similar to AIDA funnels, are also often utilized to refer to them interchangeably.

For example, an automotive company could use online advertising and PR for brand and brand awareness (stage one) however, the salesperson at the dealership assists leads throughout the purchasing process (stages three and two). If this is the case, you'll see an obvious distinction between marketing and sales.

Conversely, for an online business, such as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company, a marketer might be able to guide a potential customer from the awareness stage to making a purchase, potentially bypassing the need for direct contact with a sales representative. In this scenario the funnels are functionally identical.

Whatever the situation, marketers and sales professionals play crucial roles in both funnels. Both of them often overlap and blend together. The distinction between the conclusion of a marketing funnel and the start of a sales funnel may not be general, but it is specific to the company's approach and operations. Understanding when you are able to determine where and how to define the distinction is vital, yet it is a unique choice that only you are able to make.

Create a marketing funnel using 9 steps

After gaining a thorough grasp of how a funnel works and how it works, let's take a look at the fundamental steps involved in creating your own marketing funnel, beginning by understanding your customers.

Find out and comprehend the audience you want to reach

The very first stage of creating an effective marketing funnel has two steps.

By having the proper information you'll be equipped to tailor your marketing efforts for the people you want to reach, thereby improving your funnel's likelihood of success.

Map out the customer journey

The map of your customer's journey outlines every interaction potential clients have to your company from the start of the funnel until the final point of your funnel's marketing strategy. This means it'll include the interactions you have with your company's social channels as well as your website and support staff.

This requires identifying the various phases of your funnel and mapping customer interactions and experiences to each of them. For example, in the awareness stage, potential customers may initially come across your brand via blogs or social media posting, and in the consideration stage, they might explore your website or engage with your emails.

The understanding of how the customer journey intersects with each stage of the funnel to market is crucial for optimizing customer experiences and leading them toward conversion

Set objectives for your marketing funnel

After you've outlined your customer journey map and funnel marketing strategy, you can set clearly defined goals for each stage of the funnel. We recommend creating SMART objectives. The word SMART means: Specific, measurably, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.

A good Example of a SMART goal on the highest point of the funnel is to "boost blog traffic by 5% between 2024 and 2024%." An example for the middle to bottom of the funnel could be "Increase the number of ebook downloads to 10 10%."

Setting SMART goals like those will let you evaluate each stage's progress as well as general success. If your funnel's performance doesn't match your expectations it will be clear what to do about it. efforts (more on that later).

Identify the best ways to engage

Step four in creating a marketing funnel is the first step that significantly pulls from the efforts you've made so far.

In this case, you'll have to combine insights from your research on the target audience (step one) along with the steps in your channel (step two) and your SMART objectives (step 3.) to determine the most effective methods for engaging your customers. The goal is to align the presence of your business with the audience's preference.

For example, if your audience is GenZ college students (step one) and the goal is to raise awareness about social media by 10% in the coming year (steps two and three), a social strategy that prioritizes TikTok as well as Instagram will serve your strategy better than focusing on Facebook and Pinterest.

Other channels for engagement include platforms such as Reddit, YouTube, and X, podcasting, television as well as printed media.

Design a strategy for content creation and optimization strategy

Once you've identified channels for engagement, it's time to create content for the top and middle-of-the-funnel.

Similar to step 4 which depended on steps one two and three, this stage is dependent on all four steps. Your content should be tailored according to your intended audience's problems, the funnel stage, channel for engagement, and the goals you have set for yourself.

As an example, prospective customers who are in the phase of awareness would benefit the most from education material. If you're aware of the fact that your market is looking for info on Google and your goal is to drive more web traffic to your site, the creation of an SEO blog article on a frequently asked question in the industry you work in is the ideal way to bring visitors to your website and increase brand recognition.

The key is to not only optimize your content for your potential customer's precise funnel stage or pain point, but to also optimise it for the search engine responsible for distributing your content. Google is by far the most used website traffic search engine, but social platforms are also search engines, each with its own unique algorithms.

Use lead capture to implement nurture tactics

When you're creating your content and progress towards the middle and at the bottom of your funnel, it's time to begin offering different kinds of content.

Be aware that customers who have reached the bottom part of your funnel currently in the consideration and conversion phases, and are looking to learn about your service or product more deeply.

Content that can help customers comprehend your business more fully is a combination of ebooks, webinars and live demonstrations. However, it's crucial to recognize that producing such content comes with higher costs when compared with TOFU content. Though businesses don't typically charge for content that is of high value however, they typically require some form of exchange, commonly as details.

This is where lead magnets are available.

Lead magnets are powerful tools to attract and capture leads effectively. They are usually more extensive and valuable than content from TOFU, causing businesses to ask for contact details including email addresses and phone numbers, in exchange for access to high-value content.

For example, author George Pitts has a link to his lead-in magnet in the bio of his Instagram bio. The lead magnet can be a resource guide, a workshop, or an online webinar. It helps the instructor create an email list and share his style of teaching with his students, provide the value and eventually, create an offer for a course. You can use lead magnets the same way to collect emails from people who are interested in your business and help them grow to a sale.

Other information such as the title of the job, income, etc. could help companies make leads more qualified.

After you've collected your leads, it's time to either do two options: take the leads forward or cultivate them.

A lead nurturing campaign is simple: your goal is to remain at the top of their mind, whether that's with pop-up ads as well as a personalized email campaign or any other method. At some point, they'll want the product you offer which is why you should be the first name you think of when they're looking to purchase.

Drive your audience toward conversion

Leads on the verge of transformation require a much more precise method than those who have been nurtured.

Consider lead nurturing as a pattern of holding, keeping people interested and not letting them fall off. However, for those that are eager to move on, it's about pushing them forward and refusing to let them be idle or to pull back.

Here's how to push users to convert:

  1. Utilize social proof. Potential customers in the process of conversion will react positively to testimonials from previous customers as well as relevant case studies as they are a reflection of the needs of their customers and personal experiences.
  2. Set up offers in a strategic manner. As your audience nears making a purchase decision, they'll be more likely to be attracted by discounts and bundles or deals that last only a few days, especially if these offers create the impression of urgency.
  3. Leverage persuasive calls to action (CTAs). Your CTAs must be concise, compelling, and convey the value. Examples "Launch your first course and start earning for free" is more action-oriented as opposed to "Get started now ."

Assess, evaluate and improve

The effectiveness of your marketing funnel may last for a long time, it's not truly "evergreen." The marketing funnel need continuous monitoring and analysis.

You can evaluate your funnel's success using tools like Google Analytics and Hubspot to monitor downloads, web traffic as well as other indicators.

If the product you're offering is housed on a Software-as-a-Service, you may be able to track some metrics directly on the platform. As an example, Funnels allows creators to create leads and keep track of them through offering digital goods for free or parts of a premium product for free.

The metrics you need to monitor will vary depending on the funnel stage and the goals you want to achieve. In order to help you start, we've compiled a list of the most common metrics that people monitor based on the stage (TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU). ).

Top-of-the-Funnel

In the top of the funnel, you want to learn more about the behavior of your customers. Like, for instance, where your customers are engaging in your posts, and how?

ToFU helpful metrics to track are:

  • Site traffic - The distinctive amount of people who visit your site will inform you the number of new users are visiting your web page.
  • The source of traffic - This informs you where and how visitors arrive at your website. The types of traffic you can count on are organic (the outcome of an SEO strategy) as well as paid, social, and referral (the result of backlinks) traffic.
  • Brand mentions and PR coverage Though they're not necessarily a measure These things may reveal how others feel about your company.
  • Social media engagement is comprised of impressions, likes comments, shares, and followers. It also indicates how successful your social marketing strategy is.

The general goal for these measures is to observe an increase in the number of months or even year-over-year.

Middle-of-the-Funnel

The data you collect in this portion of the funnel will help you determine how valuable your content is for potential buyers.

MoFU-related metrics that are helpful to track include:

  • Lead conversion rate. It measures the effectiveness with which your visitors are converted into leads.
  • Time on Page & Site Time on Page and Site visitors spend on a specific page or your site (if they visit many pages) may indicate the worth of your web content.
  • Page views and bounce rate per session reveal the quality and content quality. The high bounce rates as well as the low page views per session suggest that visitors aren't satisfied with what they see on your website.
  • Cost per lead is a measure of how efficient or costly your lead generation efforts are. Although the price per lead isn't necessarily indicative of a "good" funnel or "bad" funnel smaller figures are more appropriate here.
  • Click-throughs and opens to emails This indicates how successful and persuasive your copywriting is when it comes to email marketing campaigns. Effectively written headlines and emails generate more opens and click-throughs and drive traffic to your website.
  • Landing page clicks and scrolls An abundance of scrolls and clicks suggests visitors are interested in the content on your landing page.

If the content you're measuring in this section isn't as high as your goal, it could indicate that the quality of the content you've created isn't quite up to the standard, or that you're aiming at the wrong people, or that you aren't providing enough value of your marketing funnel.

Bottom-of-the-Funnel

Because BOFU indicators are so closely tied to buying behaviors, they are easily tied to revenue that is generated. This is why these metrics help you gauge the effectiveness of conversion efforts and provide direct insight into your strategy's economics.

The most useful BOFU metrics you can monitor include:

  • Conversion rate - Also referred to as lead-to-customer conversion rate, this indicates how effective your funnel is at converting leads to buyers.
  • Longevity of your sales cycle length of your sales cycle indicates how effective your sales funnel (the BOFU phases of the marketing funnel) is.
  • Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) The ad spend at the top of your funnel can be used to raise the purpose of generating awareness. Since it's not linked to any purchase decision it's harder to determine. At the other end of the marketing funnel the ad's spend could be tied to purchase behaviour. A high ROAS suggests your ads can be effective in generating sales.

A poor BOFU indicators include a low conversion rate, a high CAC, poor CLV, an extended time to sell, and poor ROAS. If you're noticing any of these indicators, it means your conversion process is inefficient or that you're spending too much to acquire customers compared to the much you'll earn from that relationship.

Post-Purchase

Similar to a bounce rate on your site, post-purchase metrics allow you to gauge your customers' satisfaction with your product or service.

Helpful BOFU metrics to monitor include:

  • Customer retention rate - This measurement determines how many clients the business keeps for a specific period, measuring satisfaction as well as loyalty.
  • Net promoter score (NPS) The score is a measure of satisfaction and loyalty, asking how likely customers are to recommend your offering to their family, friends or coworkers.
  • Churn percentage customer churn refers to the number of customers who have stopped from using your service or product during a time-span.
  • Rate of Upsell/Cross-Sell - This refers to your ability to market additional products or services to your existing customers.

Post-purchase analytics are related to the loyalty and advocacy stages of the funnel for marketing, and don't appear in the entirety of marketing funnels. Let's take a look at ways you can integrate the post-purchase metrics into your funnel.

Get customers to engage with you after the purchase

Keeping existing customers happy is almost always more affordable than acquiring new customers. Similarly, satisfied and loyal customers can become brand advocates, recommending you to your family and friends as well as coworkers. This kind of advocacy could be described as word of mouth marketing and is highly desired due to its impressive return on investment.

Customers who have already spent money nudge their families and friends through the path you've set for them, often for free. Although word-of mouth marketing isn't expensive, it isn't a reason to not spend money on your client post-purchase. There are a few ways that you can make sure that clients are happy about your service or product:

  • Relevant product recommendations Cross-selling or upselling in the right context, could bring even more value to your customers.
  • Content that is engaging - Customers have a desire for content. So make sure you incorporate them in your content strategy. For the best results, we recommend creating special content that is targeted to existing customers.
  • Community building - Facilitate an online community that allows your clients to exchange ideas solve problems, celebrate the accomplishments of each other.
  • Customer surveys collect data from your existing customers and then use the information to improve their experience and for future customers, too.

Final Thoughts

The art of creating a marketing funnel isn't an overnight process, but a cyclical journey of growth and improvement. In the process of gathering data about your current customers, former customers, and prospective customers, you'll be able to make your funnel more effective throughout the entire process. Remember, optimizing your funnel isn't just focused on achieving better results It's about providing a better experience to those who use your services. Every step you make will bring your business closer to serving your own community more effectively.