How many touchpoints does it take to deliver a qualified sales lead? Depending on the sector, you’ll see numbers ranging from five to 20+ cited as reasonable benchmarks. Whatever the baseline, customers need to be led on a journey toward a purchase, which calls for a digital marketing funnel. Intertwined with marketing and sales, the funnel turns leads into customers and browsers into buyers. Numbers will decrease the deeper that leads descend into the funnel — from TOFU (top of the funnel) through MOFU (middle of the funnel) to BOFU (bottom of the funnel) — that’s the nature of lead nurturing. The goal, however, is to deliver engaged, empowered customers at checkout who will become advocates for your brand. Here’s how.
Why the Digital Marketing Funnel Matters
Your marketing budget goes further when you refine your target audience, nurture their interest, and learn about them with each interaction. There’s a sequence to that journey, and it’s best practice for digital marketers to follow it. No customer is ever won easily. After all, 79% of marketing leads never convert. With a clearly defined digital marketing funnel, at least sales and marketing teams can take ownership of the journey and mitigate losses from lead to loyalty.
What Are the Various Stages?
Different models apply, but most are minor variations on the same theme. Typically, the digital marketing funnel has three distinct phases:
TOFU — Top of Funnel
The purpose here is to capture leads in the awareness stage when a customer has a problem or need but has yet to identify a solution. From the eCommerce-store perspective, these prospects may be a perfect match for the buyer persona or a poor fit for the products or services on offer. It’s also useful to explore a heyflow alternative to ensure your funnel aligns with your strategic goals. The priority for now, however, is just to get them in the door in order to find out more.
Do: Stand out from the crowd. Entertain and engage.
Don’t: Sell. It’s way too early.
MOFU — Middle of Funnel
This stage nurtures and qualifies leads through the interest and consideration phase. The customer knows the brand or solution and is ready to learn more. Here is the opportunity for marketing teams to segment leads and tailor messaging or offers accordingly so sales teams can close the deal more efficiently.
Do: Keep engaging your customers actively. Encourage them to click and interact.
Don’t forget to keep listening and learning about your customers, even though diving into the sales pitch is tempting.
BOFU — Bottom of Funnel
It’s closing time. In the final (more on that later) phase, the customer actively evaluates the options, compares them, and looks for testimonials before making a decision. This isn’t the only phase in which sales teams need to be actively involved, but it’s where their skills are most effective.
Do: Ask for the sale! Make a time-sensitive offer with a clear call to action.
Don’t Second-guess your offer. If the funnel has done its job and delivered accurate behavioral insight, your sales team should know what the customer needs. Don’t distract and paralyze your buyer at the last hurdle with an increasing range of options.
Which Channels Are Best Suited for Each Stage?
Again, there may be some crossover between stages, but specific channels and content work most challenging when they are introduced to a particular moment:
Awareness Channels
A coherent content marketing strategy will match the most relevant content to each step of the customer journey, targeting the most effective channels at each touchpoint. With an inbound approach, brands lure customers with engaging content that triggers interest.
Awareness nurturing often starts with a lead magnet, such as a free eBook, in exchange for the customer’s email address. Presenting a value exchange at the top of the funnel primes the customer for conversion at the bottom and allows for greater control over subsequent content delivery. That can make the budget go further compared to spending on ads alone, and it’s why (according to HubSpot) 60% of marketers identify content as essential to their overall strategy.
The holy grail is viral content marketing, whether a short video clip or a thumb-stopping social media post. When the audience distributes content, advertising is free and comes with the extra allure of social proof.
Digital marketers can also support their content marketing efforts with pay-per-click campaigns on social media or Google that target vital audiences rather than unengaged passersby. However, not all ad formats are created equal, and knowing which ones work best to build brand awareness is essential.
Over half of marketers cite webinars as a leading source of the highest-quality top-of-funnel leads. Customers who try to sign up for and follow webinars are invested in finding solutions.
For those who aren’t ready to commit to a webinar, however, marketers will have to put some severe ad spend behind creative paid campaigns that get noticed.
Nurture and Consideration Channels
As soon as a prospect engages, the priority must be to guide them through the funnel and serve them increasingly focused content according to their needs. Email marketing is outstanding in this respect; you’ve likely seen that email marketing’s ROI is $42 for every $1 spent.
The ideal channels during this stage feel like a personalized conversation (and build trust in the process). Drip-feed a steady diet of educational and entertaining content that fills in the customer’s knowledge gaps. That means video content, tool kits, checklists, how-to tutorials, and infographics. Toward the latter stage, where leads are qualified, spur consideration with case studies, free demos, and longer-form ebooks. Your website is the hardest-working channel during consideration, and it should allow customers to serve themselves all the content they need.
Evaluation and Purchase Channels
Let your sales teams jump in with personalized offers that invite a decision. Email, Messenger, and SMS are direct and personal, as are one-to-one consultation calls and demos. Marketing teams can support their efforts with last-minute deal-clinchers, such as testimonials, product sheets, and white papers.
Postpurchase Channels
So far, we’ve limited discussion on purchasing as the ultimate goal, but the funnel goes beyond that. Recently converted customers can become powerful advocates for your brand, so encourage them to leave testimonials, subscribe, provide referrals, and make repeat purchases with retargeting and postpurchase flows on email, SMS, and Messenger.
What KPIs Should You Track at Each Stage?
Tracking KPIs keeps the campaign on budget and supports the constant testing and tweaking you should do at each stage.
Awareness KPIs
Who’s paying attention? You’ll find the answers on your Google Analytics dashboard through new visitors, traffic sources, and organic impressions. That’s because 49% of consumers start their search with Google, which is why SEO is important across all search engines. Look also at your click-through rate, bounce rate, and even cost-per-click to manage your budget prudently and measure brand awareness.
Engagement KPIs
Your shares, likes, and comments on social media will indicate whether customers are engaged. Still, metrics such as time on site and returning-visitor numbers will show whether your content is hitting the mark — as will email open rates.
Conversion KPIs
It’s tempting to look at no-nonsense metrics like downloads, consultations booked, and sales, but to fine-tune your funnel, consider the cost of customer acquisition, return on ad spend, and cart abandonment rate.
The Difference Between B2B and B2C
Is there a separate funnel for business-to-business marketing? Not exactly. B2B and B2C are often similar at the awareness stage in that prospects for both are simply looking for information to solve a problem. During the information-gathering stage, B2C buyers typically have broader options, whereas B2B prospects will narrow their search faster. When it comes to weighing the options, B2C consumers will check customer reviews and ratings — in fact, almost 90% of customers do so before making a purchase. B2B customers, on the other hand, are more likely to require objective technical research, spec sheets, and case studies.
There’s a notable difference at the purchase stage. Whereas B2C buyers will interact independently with the store, the procurement process for B2B means more stakeholders are involved. As a result, there’s a closer interaction with sales teams and a longer sales process that incorporates demos, purchase orders, and invoicing.
Other Variations on the Funnel
In our omnichannel digital world, some argue that a linear TOFU-to-BOFU funnel no longer applies. They point out that 81% of digitally empowered customers will do their own research online first or might enter the ” warm ” funnel from a referral.
Others, like McKinsey, argue there is no slow seduction process between prospect and brand through the funnel. Instead, customers keep a fully stocked shortlist of options up to decision time, meaning marketers must work equally challenging post-purchase to retain them. Under this view, customers are not brand-obsessed or even particularly loyal, and success in one stage of the funnel does not guarantee success in the next.
An alternative funnel tracks the journey from customer to post-purchase advocate. This is the customer experience funnel, the cornerstone of retention rather than conversion marketing. Given that a brand’s most expensive customer will acquire a new one (it’s five times more costly to develop a new customer than retain one), brands should not underestimate the value of investing in existing customers and drilling down on customer lifetime value through loyalty rewards and subscriptions.
Keep an Eye on Micro-Conversions
One final thought concerns micro-conversions, the small and incremental steps leading to a conversion. Even once a customer reaches a landing page, there could be 10 micro-conversions before purchase — selecting size or color, entering card details, choosing a payment method, etc.
Each is an opportunity for them to abandon, which is why conversion rate optimization is so important. Google Analytics and heat-map tools will show where customers are getting stuck or hesitating, which is your cue to remove, rename, or reposition the elements causing friction. Every sales funnel has a rough spot, whether the shopping checkout experience, product descriptions, or shipping fees. Each micro-conversion should be tested relentlessly to maximize user experience and conversions.
And there, like a well-crafted digital marketing funnel, we’ve delivered you successfully from introduction to conclusion. Now, it’s time to get started. Find out more about the essential services to power up your digital marketing and extract the most value from your funnel with a free consultation.
Sources
HubSpot — How to Create Content for Every Stage of the Buyer’s Journey
McKinsey— The Consumer Decision Journey
Search Engine Journal — Content KPIs to Define Success at Every Stage of the Funnel
HotJar — What Are Micro Conversions? Definition & 10 Examples
HubSpot — 2021 Marketing Statistics, Trends & Data — The Ultimate List of Digital Marketing Stats
Terakeet — What The Heck is TOFU, MOFU, BOFU and Why It Matters in SEO
Brilliant Insights — Define Effective Digital Marketing KPIs to Achieve Your Goals