Introduction:
If you’ve landed on this post, you’re probably wondering to yourself… ‘What is a marketing funnel and how do I create one?’
Here’s the short definition: A marketing funnel is the series of steps that guide your buyer from their initial awareness of your organization, to finally completing their purchase or registration.
While the execution might vary slightly between different industries, all marketing funnels contain the same elements and strategies to move buyers from the top of the funnel (awareness stage) to the bottom of the funnel (buying stage).
It requires a mix of planning, automation, and creativity, but if you’re up for the task, it can yield infinite returns for your organization.
So if you’re looking for an easy to follow, step-by-step guide on how to create an effective marketing funnel, keep reading….
The Buyer’s Journey Pyramid
Now before you crank up the volume of your favorite creative working soundtrack and whip out a handful of colored sharpies to sketch the outline of your first marketing funnel, hear me out….
It is impossible to build a winning marketing funnel until you understand the buyer’s journey specific to your organization.
The first crucial step is defining the various buyers your organization is actually selling to, before you start trying to sell to them.
The Top Of The Buyer’s Journey Pyramid
(Ready To Buy)
At the top of the pyramid, we find 3% of your prospects who are itching to take out their wallets and buy your product or service, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to buy it from you.
These are the prospects that are easiest to sell to, because most of the time, they’ve done their research on your product or service and they know exactly what they’re looking for.
The biggest hurdle in converting these customers is simply convincing them that what you offer is the best solution that will meet their needs.
As great as these prospects are, keep in mind that in highly competitive industries, the acquisition costs for a share of these “ready to buy” prospects can often run you in the tens of thousands of dollars, making it extremely difficult for startups and newly established companies to run profitable advertising campaigns.
The reason why most marketing campaigns fail is because they tend to speak to all prospects as if they’re all ready to buy, when in reality, 97% of them need more time to think about it and truly understand the value of what you offer on a deeper level.
That’s why the greatest opportunity for marketers today is to focus on the middle and bottom of the buyer’s journey pyramid where a staggering 97% of these prospects exist by guiding them rather than selling them.
In other words, your marketing funnel should build so much trust, credibility, and authority in what you offer, that the sale comes naturally.
It might take a bit more work to convert these prospects, but you’ll definitely face less competition and you likely won’t need to spend as many marketing dollars to get them to buy from you.
The Middle Of The Buyer’s Journey Pyramid
(Gathering Information)
Right before a prospect is ready to buy, they often gather information that gets them closer to making their purchasing decision.
17% of your prospects exist in the middle of the funnel.
They care most about making the right buying decision and are willing to wait to avoid making the wrong choice.
When a prospect reaches the middle of the pyramid, they commonly review web-based content that highlights the unique selling propositions from a short list of companies they’re actively considering.
Your prospects may also check out previous customer reviews on your website, or browse public review sites like Yelp and Google My Business to read others’ experiences in buying from you.
The keys to moving your prospects from “gathering information mode” into “ready to buy mode” is building more trust in your company and separating yourself from your competitors through content, visibility, and strategic messaging. We’ll cover this in more detail in our middle of funnel section below.
The Bottom Of The Buyer’s Journey Pyramid
(Interested But Not Taking Action)
Consumer attention spans these days are about the same as a goldfish and maybe worse.
Nearly all of us have fallen victim to shiny object syndrome….
In other words… we see something interesting, get excited about the idea of having it, only to completely forget about it not even a few hours later.
Think about it… how many times in the last few months have you come across a product or service that’s interested you, but you never took the next step to revisit their website to look at it again, explore it further, or compare it against other options in the marketplace?
Probably a lot.
And the reason you didn’t buy was likely due to the lack of a marketing funnel.
A Practical Example…
So let’s flip this situation around and enter the wild and whacky world of marketing funnels in action.
Imagine this scenario: It’s 7:55pm and you happened to see an ad for noise canceling headphones while you were scrolling on Instagram.
You were intrigued because you’re working from home for the next few weeks, but you’re constantly battling your screaming toddler from interrupting your workflow.
You visited the website and started comparing the product against similar noise canceling headphones, but you just noticed it‘s 8:00pm and it’s your night to put the little one to bed.
Unfortunately, it’s taking him a bit longer these days to fall asleep because he’s going through a massive growth spurt, so the next time you get a chance to start thinking about purchasing those headphones is an hour later at 9:00pm.
But since it took an hour for Johnny to fall asleep and you’re mentally exhausted, suddenly the idea of cracking that bottle of wine that’s been staring at you all week in the kitchen seems like the perfect end to the night.
And before you know it, you’ve completely forgotten about those headphones…
….I may or may not have described a typical night at my house with 3 kids under the age of 3 but we’re not talking about that right now.
We’re talking about marketing.
Now back to our imaginary story…
You wake up the next day and follow your normal routine of checking Instagram in the morning and suddenly you see another ad about those very same headphones you were just interested in last night.
The ad mentions the headphone’s patented technology that makes it impossible to hear someone screaming at the top of their lungs next to you.
And because the idea of working in silence is one of your biggest pain points right now, you cave in and buy it.
That 2nd ad that led to a purchase is called a “retargeting ad” using pixel tracking and it’s one of the best tricks to use in your marketing funnel. We’ll cover more of that in our funnel technology section below.
The 20% of your prospects at the bottom of the funnel are somewhat interested in your offer but they’re not taking action because they simply need to understand more about what makes you the best option to justify buying your product or signing up for your service.
You can build value in the middle of the funnel by demonstrating social proof in the form of customer testimonials, or highlighting unique product features that your competition doesn’t offer. Anything that increases your credibility and trust is fair game in the middle of the funnel.
The Basement Of The Buyer’s Journey Pyramid
(Not Interested Yet)
A mind-blowing 60% of your prospects aren’t even interested in what you have to offer yet.
The main reason for this is because they’re not aware of their need for your product or service.
That’s why creating content and messaging that educates your prospects on common pain points and your proposed solutions to meet this need is key to consistently feeding your marketing funnel with qualified prospects.
The best part about reaching this audience is that your content automatically positions your company as a trusted authority because you educated them about their needs first.
Nurture them properly with value along the way, and you’ve got a loyal customer that will likely do business with you again.
We’ve put together a helpful template to guide you through this buyer journey mapping process below.
Now that we’ve got the buyer’s journey out of the way… it’s finally time to start building your marketing funnel.
**Cue The Slow Clap**
The Top Of The Marketing Funnel
At the top of the funnel (TOF), 80% of your prospects are simply aware that you exist and nothing more.
Most prospects become aware of new brands through direct advertising, digital advertising, content marketing, researching websites on search engines, or good ol’ fashioned word of mouth (to name a few).
TOF prospects aren’t seriously considering you yet, or even thinking about comparing your offer against the competition.
They know you’re out there because they’ve viewed your content and maybe even got as far as landing on your website’s home page, but they need more time to think about your offer, build more trust in your organization, and get more value from your content before they’re ready to make a purchasing decision.
Creating effective brand awareness content that feeds the top of the marketing funnel with qualified prospects is the next crucial step in building out a marketing funnel strategy.
Because think about it… no customer in human history has ever purchased anything from a company without becoming aware of them to begin with.
But for some reason, the first prospecting ads we keep seeing in 95% of marketing campaigns and related messaging are all pushing for the sale far too early in the process as if the prospect is magically ready to buy as soon as they see the ad for the first time.
This couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Instead of pushing “buy now” urgency and a 25% off discount, this bike shop would have been much better off posting a guide to purchasing a performance bike to fill the top of the marketing funnel
Trying to explicitly sell your product in your TOF content is just like walking into a room full of people you’ve never met before and out of nowhere, a creeper gets down on one knee and asks you to marry them.
…Talk about awkward!
So instead of trying to sell, sell, sell right out of the gate, the best TOF content generates brand awareness by:
1. Highlighting the unique needs their target customer has
2. Positioning the product or service as the best option that will meet their needs.
To make this a bit more practical, let’s analyze how Microsoft built a sales funnel for their office collaboration software called Microsoft Teams….
Examples Of Effective TOF Strategies
At the top of the funnel, Microsoft created a few pieces of content that accomplished two things:
1. Highlights a key goal their target customer has (who is a business owner or manager). In this case, a primary goal is to create a culture of productive and connected employees.
2. Presents a few unique features of the software that will help their target customer achieve these goals (Chat, meet, call, and collaborate)
Here you can see how this Facebook ad calls out the needs for connected and productive employees and presents a solution through mentioning some of the software’s unique features. This is called an outbound strategy to create awareness about the product.
When a prospect reaches the blog section of the website, they can find a helpful guide for deploying the software. This is considered an inbound strategy to drive TOF awareness about how the product works and how to use it.
The best TOF content to use in your marketing strategy should be easily digestible, not too long, and provides a quick answer or solution to an immediate problem, pain point, or need that your target customer is facing.
Some examples of effective TOF content may take the form of checklists, quizzes, blog posts, e-books, whitepapers, and short videos under 1 minute (and ideally 30 seconds or less).
If your TOF content was a person, it would be more of a ‘helpful guide’ than a ‘sleezy salesperson.’
Let’s explore a few more TOF Marketing Funnel examples…
Toast
Toast sells web-based software to restaurants. They filled the top of their funnel with a quick downloadable checklist that helps prospects understand the elements missing from their website. They didn’t lead with a discount or a free trial because they understand that nurturing and educating their TOF prospects is most important in the beginning stages.
Care Of
Care Of sells high quality vitamins and supplements with transparent ingredients and a top of the line supply chain. They filled the top of their funnel with a quiz, which captures leads 31.6 percent of the time, considered among the highest opt-in rates in the marketing industry.
AZ Residential Management
AZ Residential Management manages residential investment properties for landlords in Arizona. They created a free e-book guide with a ton of value for their top of the funnel prospects to fill their sales pipeline.
Marketing Funnel Technology
Let’s pause the guided tour of the marketing funnel for a quick second and discuss some of the technology that helps convert a larger percentage of passive prospects into paying customers by building value and credibility in what you have to offer.
Landing Page Software
If you are using paid digital advertising through Google Ads or Facebook Ads, sending traffic to a landing page instead of the homepage of your website can significantly increase your conversions.
A landing page is focused on the offer you were promoting in your ad and it can collect valuable contact information from your prospects such as an email, phone number, social media profile, or physical address.
My favorite landing page software companies are Clickfunnels, Instapage, Leadpages, and Unbounce.
Automated Drip Messaging Software
Once you’ve gathered a prospect’s contact information, you’ve gotten their permission to receive more messages from you.
Creating an email drip campaign and feeding valuable content over time with the intent of getting previous visitors to return to your website is one of the best tried and true strategies to nurture your prospects until they’re ready to buy.
To do this effectively, you can use an email autoresponder from companies like ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, Marketo, GetResponse, or ConstantContact.
This software allows you to send automated, segmented email campaigns and collect information from your prospects in a database.
While email can be an effective channel to convert your prospects into paying customers, some recently introduced technology is just as effective to stay in front of your buyers in a less crowded environment (such as the email inbox).
Automated Facebook chatbots have seen a huge lift in usage over the last few years and studies suggest they have a 70–80% open rate, and a click rate of 15–60%, compared to email open rates that average below 25% and click through rates of 4% or lower.
Use tools like ManyChat, Chatfuel, SendPulse, or MobileMonkey to help you set up a chatbot sequence that can skyrocket your engagement rates by as much as 5x.
Another effective automated messaging tool is text message (sms) marketing.
In fact, prospects are 134% more likely to respond via text than email, yet only 11% of companies are using text messaging in their marketing mix.
It’s important to strike the right balance in your messaging, because no matter what platform you use, sending too many messages in the beginning of a prospect’s relationship with you will surely lead to an increase in unsubscribers and missed sales opportunities.
Pixel Tracking
A pixel is a string of code that makes it possible to create targeted ad campaigns to reach recent website visitors who have been to specific pages on your website.
The most popular platforms that provide pixel tracking are Google Ads (Which includes YouTube), Facebook Ads (Which includes Instagram), and LinkedIn.
Ad campaigns that use pixel technology to bring back recent website visitors are called retargeting (a.k.a. remarketing) ads.
IP Lead Tracking Software
Some of the most powerful website software that exists to reach your prospects is IP Lead Tracking Software.
This allows you to gather email addresses and other contact information that exists for any specific IP address.
Then you can feed these emails directly into one of your automated drip campaigns.
Keep in mind that the legality of using this software varies depending on what country you live in.
At the time of writing this blog post, it’s currently legal in the United States, but currently not allowed in places like Europe and Canada.
You can install your own IP Lead Tracking Software from companies like Visual Visitor, Act-On, Leadfeeder, and GetEmails.
Customer Database
If you collect physical addresses, consider using a CRM to organize your prospects’ information based on their level of intent.
You can use a free CRM like HubSpot or even Google Sheets will do the trick.
Staying in front of warmed up prospects by way of direct mail is a great strategy to get something physical and tangible in the hands of those interested in doing business with you.
For those selling higher ticket items, retargeting with direct mail can make your brand feel more premium once a prospect has passed the awareness stage.
Otherwise if you try prospecting with direct mail, you’ll probably end up in the junk mail graveyard…
Now that you’re aware of how to use different technology to stay in front of your TOF prospects and move them through the marketing funnel, let’s get back to our guided tour.
The Middle Of The Marketing Funnel
In the middle of the marketing funnel, 17% of your prospects are not only aware that you exist because you’ve already captured their attention, but they’re now finally considering you as a viable buying option.
Middle of funnel prospects identify themselves through high-intent activities that might look like visiting multiple pages on your website (especially purchasing pages), returning to your website for a 2nd or 3rd time within a few days, calling your phone number to request a quote, or exchanging their personal contact information to read your e-book or whitepaper just to name a few examples.
These prospects are likely doing research on what other people are saying about you on sites like Yelp, reading customer testimonials on social media, or browsing other 3rd party review sites to make sure they are making the right buying decision.
And one of the best ways to drive more sales from your middle of funnel prospects?
Audit your online reviews.
So in other words…. are your previous customers saying good things about you online?
And if there are any negative reviews, did you respond to those reviews and offer a solution to make things right?
When your prospects see genuine responses to a negative review, it can be just as valuable as getting a ton of 5 star reviews because it gives them insight into what it’s like doing business with you.
A common trait that middle of funnel prospects share is their need to know that you are the best option to meet their needs.
They’ve already done their homework on what they want to buy, but now they’re researching whether or not they can get your product or service for a lower price from a competitor, or if a different product or service exists that can better meet their needs.
To convince these prospects to do business with you, your MOF content should follow these three keys that will differentiate you from the competition:
1. Demonstrates your level of expertise
2. Presents premium benefits you offer that your competitors don’t
3. Builds social proof by sharing how other customers have benefited from working with you.
Let’s go back to our Microsoft Teams example and analyze how they’re driving sales in the middle of the funnel.
Microsoft’s webinar about how to run effective remote work meetings hits on all three of the MOF content keys listed above.
The best MOF content to use in your marketing funnel should be primarily data driven, builds trust and credibility in your organization, demonstrates why your product or service is the best option for your prospect, and if possible, you should try to collect contact information such as an email and phone number at this stage so you can opt them in to a drip messaging campaign and stay in front of them for longer periods of time using the technology we described in the section above.
Here’s a form that Microsoft used to collect information on their MOF prospects before providing access to the webinar.
Some of the best examples of MOF content are webinars, product demos, case studies, and competitor comparisons.
The Bottom Of The Marketing Funnel
So you’ve managed to get your prospect’s attention, and they’ve already compared your product or service to competitors in the market, and now they’re finally convinced that they’re ready to buy.
In a perfect world, all 3% of your prospects who have reached “ready to buy mode” are itching at the chance to buy from you.
But here’s the harsh reality: it’s a bit more complicated than that.
And the world is far from perfect isn’t it?
Bottom of funnel (BOF) prospects identify themselves by taking the highest possible intent activities during the buying journey.
These prospects might add products to their shopping cart but never complete the checkout process, they may ask detailed questions over email about purchasing your product or service, or schedule calls or product demos with your sales team.
They’re definitely ready to buy, but that doesn’t always mean they’re going to buy from you.
Look to convert your BOF prospects by improving your call-to-action, crafting an irresistible entry level offer, or offering a “try-before-you buy” free trial or deeply discounted trial of your product or service.
Here are 3 tips to crafting BOF content that is built to sell:
1. It clearly states your competitive advantage
2. It answers your customers’ most common questions right before and after they buy, which further demonstrates to your buyer that you know them better than anyone else in the industry.
3. It builds even more social proof and credibility in your organization through your BEST customer success stories.
Back to our Microsoft Teams marketing funnel example, they offer live classes for their BOF prospects to help get their questions answered and get their team up and running with the software.
Bonus: Customer Retention
Congratulations, you’ve closed the sale.
But the work shouldn’t stop here.
One of your biggest marketing priorities should be driving continual sales or upselling your previous customers into doing business with you again.
Why? Because on average, the marketing cost to acquire a new customer is 5x more than selling to someone who’s purchased from you before.
Even if you increased your amount of repeat customers by as little as 5%, it could increase your profits by more than 25%.
These staggering statistics show the importance of continuing to nurture your customers with content even after they’ve exited the funnel.
But guess what most people see after they buy something online?
Daily or weekly emails practically BEGGING them to buy something AGAIN.
It’s about as repulsive as waking up to 20 text messages the next morning after a first date about how much your date can’t stop thinking about you and how they can’t wait to hang out with you again.
Creepy.
Clingy.
…..Just don’t do it.
I’m begging you.
Please don’t.
So instead of begging your customers for the next sale and throwing 50 different combinations of discounts and offers against the wall to see what sticks, we recommend building the value of the product or service they just purchased.
If you have an email list, PLEASE stop sending only transaction-based emails and instead, think about how you can nurture the relationship between you and your customers through value-building blog posts about your product, eye-catching videos, or educating them on new products or services that you’re now offering.
Just don’t beg for the sale or overuse cheap discounts.
It makes you look desperate… kinda like that annoying first date example.
If what you sold them in the past was compelling enough, they know where to find you and it’s your job to keep your brand interesting through publishing content that stands out from the crowd.
Conclusion
Building a unique marketing funnel for your organization should nurture the relationship between your prospects at each stage of their buying journey.
Before you get started, don’t forget to first clearly define the different ways that your buyers may show intent at each stage in their journey.
Once that’s done, build content at the top of the funnel that drives brand awareness and educates your prospects about solutions to their unique needs and pain points.
When prospects move into the middle of the funnel, they need to build more trust and credibility in your organization as the best option, so use case studies, product demonstrations, and webinars to further differentiate yourself from the competition.
At the bottom of the funnel, your prospects are finally ready to buy, so it’s crucial to create content and an irresistible offer that gives your prospects a taste of what doing business with you is actually like.
Then once you drive those sales, don’t stop content marketing to your new customers.
How has building a marketing funnel helped you grow?
Share some stories with me in the comments below!
