Gathering and converting leads is a challenging process. One of the reasons why is because making a purchasing decision is not a linear decision. Building a marketing funnel is one of the secrets to helping shift customers throughout each phase until they reach a decision.

A marketing funnel helps you visualize your customers’ journey and discover conversion opportunities. 67% of the buyer’s journey is done digitally. Depending on your sales process without a marketing funnel could be leaving money on the table for your company.

So, what’s a marketing funnel and how do you build one? Keep reading to learn everything you need to know.

What Is a Marketing Funnel?

A marketing funnel is a model consisting of different strategies to guide customers to buy. A marketing funnel will help you capture, nurture and lead prospects to buy. 

Think about a marketing funnel like a map or route to your products or services. In the first stage, it helps prospects find your business and learn about your products. 

The following stages involve a series of engagements and efforts to convince them to convert into active customers. 

Customers take their time before making a buying decision. Customers may compare pricing, read reviews, and perform several evaluations before clicking “buy.” Building a sales funnel is the way to pay attention to your customers’ journey.

Why a Marketing Funnel?

Closing sales is a constant challenge for many marketers. According to Hubspot, 61% of companies struggle with generating traffic and leads. And without proper prospecting, it isn’t easy to build a successful business. 

The priority for 75% of marketers is to close more deals. But this is becoming increasingly difficult as more information becomes available online. Regardless of what they’re buying, they’ll take their time to compare different options.

Don’t forget your customer’s journey is unique, especially if you’re running a Saas business. Thinking through their journey for your products helps you align your strategy with their needs. 

The sales process for digital or subscription businesses is different from traditional models. With conventional companies, the relationship with customers may end with a sale. 

In modern setups, the customer journey is often recurring. You’ll need more than the average engagement strategy to keep your customers coming back. A sales funnel is the key to ensuring renewals and repeat transactions. 

Stages of a Marketing Funnel

A marketing funnel takes your prospects through three critical stages in their lifecycle with your business. Keep reading to understand the stages.

Top of the Funnel (TOFU)

Think about your marketing approach taking the shape of an actual funnel. The top or wide-shaped part of the funnel is the TOFU level. This is the stage where you want to attract and gather as many leads as possible. 

Top of the marketing strategies mainly focuses on increasing brand exposure and awareness. At this stage, your customer may not know whether your product exists. Your goal is to introduce your brand to your prospects.

TOFU isn’t usually very targeted because you’re targeting broad audiences. Most of the prospects are typically total strangers. They’re in the research phase of their buying journey.

Think about sharing educational content to fulfill the needs of TOFU prospects. Share tips, solutions, and expert insights to help them address their needs. Any content sounding like a sales pitch will likely put off cold prospects. 

Middle of the Funnel (MOFU)

Once a prospect knows your brand, you’ll want them to move closer to conversion. At this point, your prospect is familiar with your niche. Since they haven’t made up their mind, they’re also likely researching more about your competition. 

The TOFU level of the sales funnel helps you gather your prospects’ data. So at MOFU, you can align content with your marketing funnel’s audience segments. 

MOFU marketing is about showing your prospect you’re the best in your niche. With segmentation, you can create relevant messaging to sway them in your favor. 

Common MOFU marketing strategies attempt to generate brand recall and encourage engagement. Examples include display and retargeting ads. Given your prospect also knows about your brand, ads will help test their readiness to buy.

MOFU also happens at the consideration stage in the buyer’s journey. This is the stage to strengthen your prospects’ trust in your brand. Whitepapers, case studies, and segmented emails are some of the strategies marketers use to reinforce their brand’s values. 

Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU)

BOFU is the final stage in a standard marketing sales funnel. This is a critical stage. Your prospect is probably evaluating your product or they’ve made up their mind. 

A BOFU prospect is likely to be interested in the precise details of your offer. They are probably comparing benefits, prices, and features. Your task here is to convince them that your product will help. 

Make them more confident about using your products. Share testimonials to help them see your product is really impactful. 95% of people say reviews/testimonials influence their decision.

The BOFU is also an opportunity to concentrate on your brand’s uniqueness. Personalize content and make it effective for prospects to convert. 

How to Build a Marketing Funnel 

You want to do your best to generate and convert more traffic. If you’re building a new product, you must start from scratch. Start by defining your marketing channel audience segments. 

If your product has been in the market for quite some time, you may be more worried about conversions. You’re probably wondering how you’ll prevent the leaks in your sales funnel.

Here are some simple steps to help you build your marketing funnel.

Create or Refine Your Buyer Personas

An effective marketing funnel aligns content with the needs of your audience. Defining buyer personas help you to know what type of content suits each buyer or audience group.

Your customers are everywhere online. Defining buyer personas will help you identify critical touchpoints along your customer’s journey. This is important when you want to build a smooth sales funnel. 

Create Content

The backbone of any solid marketing strategy is high-quality content. Quality content is a must-have across all the stages of your sales funnel.

SEO-optimized content is essential in TOFU marketing. People looking for information related to your business online will find your content if you SEO’d it. 

Paid ads are one of the quickest ways to raise awareness about your business. Place native ads on websites within your industry or niche. Google ads and paid social may also help you reach a larger audience faster. 

Once brand awareness efforts begin generating traffic, consider building your customer base. Gather your prospects’ data for segmentation and relationship-building campaigns.

You want to engage prospects and show them how your product will help them solve their problems. You’ll share specific and actionable information to provide them with relevant answers. 

Launch a nurturing campaign with initiatives like ebooks, newsletters, and online classes. Look for your prospects’ attention and continue sharing content that will help them understand your brand.

Paid and targeted ads will be handy when your prospect is ready to convert. Make sure your content delivers a message that aligns with your audience’s pain points. 

Make Your Offers Irresistible

Qualified prospects will still need some convincing to choose your offers. Remember, they have information about competitors information. 

Make your offers enticing to capture their interest and encourage them to convert. Compel them to take the next step with demos, free consultations, trials, or discounts.

Focus On Customer Retention

Your next goal should be to keep customers and increase brand loyalty. Acquiring a new customer is five to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one. 

Make sure your product is user-friendly. It should be functional, easy to use, and free of bugs if it’s an app. Many customers may not continue using your app or software if it lags or loads slowly.

Build a responsive and reliable customer support system. Develop a rich knowledge base to encourage self-service. Customers prefer knowledge bases to other self-service platforms. 

High-quality customer service will also help keep customers and grow your customer base. Three out of five customers say good customer service can make them feel loyal to a brand. Make sure your customer service is available 24/7/365.

Test to Build a Leak Proof Marketing Funnel

One crucial step is to ensure your sales funnel is worth your time. Gather data and test to confirm if your funnel leads you to success. It would be best to build and test different versions to go with the cost and ROI-efficient option. 

Testing your sales funnel will help identify leaks and take action to prevent waste of resources. Your marketing funnel may not work effectively. Testing will help you optimize and increase your chances of success. 

Are You Gathering and Converting Enough Prospects? 

Consider building a marketing funnel whether you’re launching a new product or service or looking to convert more leads. A marketing funnel will provide you with the data to measure the effectiveness of your marketing strategy. 

Once you know where you’re leaking leads, you can build a more effective marketing strategy. Marketing is too expensive to be wasting your resources. Contact us at Brandhouse to help you create a leak-proof sales funnel for your business.