If you’re used to marketing your own business, you’ve probably heard the term “marketing funnel” before. Marketing funnels are essential if you want your business’ sales process to run efficiently, so it’s a good idea to understand them and use them to your advantage.

Basically, marketing funnels are made up of several stages that people move through in order to eventually convert into customers. The journey starts at first awareness of your brand and goes all the way through to the actual sale. It’s the process of turning a visitor to your site or store into a paying customer. It’s called a funnel because it’s wide at the top and skinny at the bottom – a lot of people will visit your site or come in the doors of your store, but a much smaller number come out the other end with your product in hand.

The funnel is important because you need to treat potential customers differently depending on where they are at in the journey.

The Five Stages

A typical journey has five stages and each one involves different types of interactions with the potential customers:

Awareness

This is the first stage. A person has just become aware of your brand and is interested in learning more. At this stage, SEO, e-books, whitepapers, online ads, videos, direct email and social media are useful tools for supplying them with more information.

Interest and Evaluation

Next, a person will begin to show interest in your brand. Then they will evaluate the purchase compared to other options. During these two stages, case studies, whitepapers, videos, drip campaign emails, social media, newsletters and webinars are helpful ways of convincing a person that your product is superior to others on the market.

Commitment and Sale

In these last two phases, a person commits to your brand and then goes through with the purchase. Trials and demonstrations are great ways of getting people in these stages to take the plunge.

Marketing funnels help you create content that will bolster your CTA throughout each stage of the process. If you aren’t speaking to people with the right message at the right time, you can end up distracting from your CTA.

How to Optimize a Marketing Funnel

In order to optimize your marketing funnel, you need to answer the following questions for each stage:

  • How will customers at this stage find out about me?
  • What kind of information do I need to offer to help customers move from one stage to the next?
  • How will I know if they have moved to the next stage?

Finding the answers to these questions will help you create the best foundation for your marketing funnel.

Why Marketing Metrics Are Important

Marketing metrics are a key component of the marketing funnel. They help you to understand your leads and adapt your communication with them in order to boost conversion rates. For example, you can use metrics to determine which leads are more qualified so you can focus your spending on those instead of wasting it on people that don’t have real sales potential.

It’s important to figure out which metrics you will track. These are some of the most useful:

  • Sales funnel conversions: This tracks the number of prospects that enter your funnel and turn into customers.
  • Entry sources: This tracks where customers came from.
  • Duration in funnel: This tracks how long a customer stays in each stage of the funnel.
  • Engagement rate: This tracks the level of engagement with each piece of content so you can see how well each one is performing.

Keeping track of these metrics will help you continue to ensure that your marketing funnel is optimized and effective. ConversionFly offers 21 Key Marketing Metrics that help you scale your funnels and campaigns, allowing you make actionable, confident decisions in your everyday marketing.

The marketing funnel is and will continue to be one of the most effective ways to sell products online. If you are building your business and looking for a way to get your message, service, book, software etc. out, a marketing funnel may be a great way for you to convert online.