Explains The Marketing Funnel

Even before Larby Amirouche entered the digital marketing industry, the marketing funnel already existed. He understood the reasons behind why most possible drop out in the middle of their journey to purchase.

Beginners often get confused with understanding the concept behind the marketing funnels. They get overwhelmed just seeing a diagram of a funnel with lots of arrows joined by several conditions.

For those who are new in the marketing field, this can definitely be a complicated concept but Larby Amirouche decided to give a simpler explanation for you to better understand the concept.

What Is Marketing Funnel?

A marketing funnel is a system designed to attract customers and eventually make them buy from your business.

This is a marketing strategy often used by experts because it requires the use of other strategies depending on where a person is in their buyer’s journey. This system shows that each customer goes through certain steps before finally making a purchase.

Marketers target people at different stages with different tactics to make them continue on their buyer’s journey until they actually make a purchase.

It is called a funnel because as you move along the stages, you lose customers.

Importance of Marketing Funnel

Marketing funnels maps out a person’s journey making it easier for companies to follow. It also allows the company or a particular business to keep an eye on the decision process. With this information, they can plan the steps on how to make these possible buyers to actually buy.

A marketing funnel applies to almost all practices that lead to sales. Whether you’re looking for online sales, generating traffic for your small business or collecting clicks as an affiliate, you need a marketing funnel.

In relation to tracking, a marketing funnel shows you where you’re losing customers. This will give you an idea of where to focus and what measures to follow. For instance, if your potential customer already left the funnel even before they get into the second stage, this implies that you need to amplify your brand awareness efforts.

Stages of a Marketing Funnel

Most marketers categorize the stages of a marketing funnel based on the popular AIDA model. However, marketing funnels can be customized. Some marketers add loyalty and advocacy after the last stage of the AIDA model.

Well, there is an acceptable reason behind it: businesses actually lose money when customers leave them, might as well extend tracking your customer’s journey.

Other marketers keep it simple with just three distinct stages — top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, and bottom of the funnel. Meanwhile, others specify the stages with lead generation, nurturing, and conversion.

Here, Larby Amirouche set the AIDA Model as the basis of his explanation.

Awareness

The main goal of the awareness stage is to introduce your products and services to your intended audience. Here, all of your marketing efforts should focus on attracting attention and reaching out to as many people as possible.

Spreading brand awareness and attracting audience attention define this stage of the marketing funnel. And, the success at this stage pertains to the number of leads you can direct down the tunnel to the next stage.

Creating brand awareness can be done in several ways. You can create blog posts or ask a journalist to write something about you. You can also tap podcast and video content creators to promote your products.

Some potential customers might see your ads on Facebook or they see your site on the top page of Google.

There are endless possibilities at this stage so make sure you maximize them.

Interest

After you make people aware of your existence in the market, you must now engage them with your brand. Here, they start to consider your product, as well as other brands. Potential customers start learning about your offerings.

As a marketer, your goal at this stage should be to inform them about your product’s features, benefits, and how it is better than other products. This set of information will make your product more attractive.

If you have a service company, your goal would be to convey how your brand differs from others and is a better fit for the prospective customer.

Desire

This is a crucial stage for you as a marketer or a business owner. This is the stage in a buyer’s journey where they actually start wanting your product or service and have a high purchase intent. This is where they decide from “I like it” to “I want it.”

In this stage, marketers must ensure that you provide that they nudge and convert these high-intent leads into customers. You need to interact with your prospective customers in a way that increases the desirability of your product.

Also, more often than not, the Interest and Desire stages go hand-in-hand and happen almost simultaneously or in close succession. The key goals within these stages are to engage consumers and make them want your product over others.

Action

Lastly, this is the stage where your consumer takes the desired action and avails your products or services. Any marketing materials targeted at customers at the bottom of the funnel should convey a sense of urgency to take action.

Moreover, you must make the customers feel that they made a great decision of choosing your product over other brands.

Final Thoughts

Larby Amirouche believes that the customer’s journey does not end after they avail of your products. Marketers must now make these customers buy again.

Larby Amirouche thinks that one purchase is not enough to make a business grow. It must be continuous. Thus, loyalty is added to the funnel.

In the “loyalty” stage, you can use regular discounts, email interactions, and engaging social media content to keep your customers. This can also make them spread the news to their network, giving you more possibilities for a successful purchase.

Originally Posted: https://medium.com/larby-amirouche/larby-amirouche-explains-the-marketing-funnel-ac2d1b44baa4