A marketing funnel is a series of stages to guide prospects through the customer journey. The funnel helps marketing teams plan and measure efforts to attract, engage, and convert prospects through content and other marketing materials (like landing pages and ads).
Marketing has always been about driving growth. And the formula for how to drive growth in today’s market has changed.
We live in a world where consumers are more informed and more empowered than ever before, and that means marketers need to change their approach. The days of “spray and pray” marketing are over. Today, if you want to grow your business, it’s all about creating a sales funnel that guides prospects through the customer journey—and helps your marketing team plan and measure efforts to attract, engage, and convert prospects through content and other marketing materials like landing pages and ads.
The problem is this: traditional marketing funnels were built on assumptions about what buyers wanted from companies and how they wanted to interact with them—assumptions based on decades of experience and data from previous generations of consumers.
Today's consumer is different: they want more personalization, and they want to do business with people who understand them as individuals.
So if you're looking to create experiences that truly connect with your customers—experiences that drive growth—you need a new kind of funnel. A marketing automation funnel will help you deliver personalized experiences across channels so your customers know exactly what they need at every stage of their journey with your company.
You can't just throw out your old funnel (no matter how clunky) and replace it with a shiny new one—you need something that works seamlessly with the one already in place (and takes advantage of its strengths).
In the past, marketers were able to rely on a single tactic or ad campaign to drive revenue. But marketing today is more complex than ever before. To manage these complexities, we use funnels — a series of stages that guide prospects through the buyer journey and help us plan how best to attract, engage, and convert them.
The marketing funnel is a visual representation of the sales process that shows how leads move through different stages from awareness to consideration to purchase.
Marketing managers use it as a strategy map — a way to plan their efforts and track their success in moving prospects through various stages of the buying cycle.
Now, instead of investing resources in driving traffic to their websites and hoping for the best, brands have shifted their focus to nurturing relationships with customers who are already interested in what they have to offer.
This approach is called “inbound marketing” because it involves attracting people who are already looking for your product or service — not just anyone who happens across your website or social media page by chance.
Steps to your funnel:
- The first step in your funnel is to attract visitors who have never heard of your company.
- The second step is to convert these visitors into leads.
- The third step is to nurture these leads into buyers.
- The fourth step is to close those buyers into repeat customers.
- And finally, the fifth and final step is to turn them into advocates who will spread the word about your product or service.
This funnel is a simple way to visualize how marketing teams can drive growth in today’s market. It helps marketers plan and measure their efforts across every channel they use — from websites to email campaigns and social media ads — to attract potential customers, convert them into leads, nurture those leads into buyers and finally close them into repeat customers.
Here are some common misconceptions about marketing automation:
- It only works for B2B companies: Marketing automation isn’t just for B2B companies. It can be used to sell anything from consumer goods to services and everything in between. The key is knowing what data you want from your prospects and having an effective campaign strategy in place before you start automating anything.
- It takes too long to implement: Marketing automation software should not take more than two weeks to configure. We suggest platforms like HubSpot.
If you’re not using marketing automation, you’re missing out on some key benefits:
1) Improved efficiency: Automation allows you to plan out your year in advance and keep track of all your touchpoints with prospects and customers. This allows you to spend more time on high-value activities like writing content or reaching out directly to customers, instead of spending hours on repetitive tasks like updating lists manually or sending out emails one by one each day.
2) Better data: Marketing automation systems track everything that happens with leads and customers throughout their user journey through your sales funnel — from when they first visit your site all the way through closing a sale (and beyond). This rich data can help inform future marketing efforts and provide insights into how well they work — or don’.
Every business needs some kind of sales funnel because it’s a way for businesses to develop relationships with customers and nurture those relationships over time. Ultimately, the goal is to get people from just being potential clients all the way down to actually paying you money for your goods and services.
If you are not yet sure of what to do, try reaching out to us. We would be more than happy to talk about your project and work with you to make it a success.
At basemonkeys, we develop digital experiences that flaunt your brand's personality and equip it for success. We use our expertise to turn ideas into a beautiful user experience that conveys your marketing message. Combining design, development, and strategy across the full open channel of social media, Web, and mobile, we create unique experiences that help you connect with your customers.
