Marketing sales funnels are often used in conjunction with content marketing to increase conversion rates. What exactly is a marketing sales funnel? How does it work? Where can you find them? What’s the difference between a landing page, lead capture form, an opt-in page?

Marketing sales funnel stages are the key to generating more leads, increasing conversions, and driving revenues. In this article, we’ll look at how they work and how to create yours.

What Are Marketing Funnels?

Neil Patel’s article is a great introduction to how marketers use them in real life and some of the most common mistakes. In the marketing funnel, you begin with awareness. Then comes consideration. After that, there is interest. Finally, at the end of the funnel is conversion. These steps each add value and create demand for your products and services.

Every single thing you do online should be related to one of these steps. Otherwise, you could be missing an opportunity to get to someone who may have already converted once before.

In real life, a business does not produce enough revenue to meet its target profit margin. To achieve this goal, you need to ensure you put your resources into selling additional units. The marketing funnel is a graphical diagram of how a company attracts new visitors to their website, builds awareness, persuades someone to take action, upsells them based on what they’ve already done or completed, and nurtures relationships with existing customers.

The process involves three primary parties: your customer, your product/service provider, and yourself. Of course, you’re the last person involved if you’re working within the B2C model. However, if you’re building a brand, you’re also responsible for engaging with influencers, journalists, bloggers, celebrities, and other thought leaders.

With the B2B model, the first two players remain the same, but your role changes slightly. Instead of having a direct conversation with your customer, you become the go-between instead. Your job is to convert prospects into paying clients.

Where Can You Use Marketing Funnels?

A lot of people think that all businesses operate with just one kind of funnel stage. This couldn’t be further from the truth. There are several ways you can use a sales funnel.

You need to know your goals and what your visitors expect from you before creating a funnel. Each customer journey stage should also include a funnel visualization to show where loyal customers are dropping off along the path. Customer journeys help you identify the points at which potential buyers lose interest or drop out. That information is especially useful when looking at how well your lead generation efforts convert visitors into sales.

What Makes Up a Successful Marketing Funnel?

Ever wonder what makes marketing sales funnels successful? It’s made up of three factors: fuel, foundation,, and follow-up. The three stages should be implemented in the following sequence: foundation, follow-up,, and fuel. You should implement the three stages in this order, but they do not necessarily need to be performed in that order.

It would help if you first lay down the bricks before building anything. Then, the foundation needs to be put into place before any other part of your project is built upon. Next, you need to figure out what makes things work, then make sure everything stays in place.

Fuel is needed to make things run. You guessed right!

Fuel

The main ingredient in this funnel is valuable content. You need a great copy that’s easy enough for anyone to read and contains a lot of value.

Foundation

To attract visitors to your site,, you need to have a strong foundation. That means having a solid domain name, website design, and hosting platform.

Follow-Up

Once you gain traffic, you need to get them to take action. Follow-Up emails are critical because most prospects won’t buy from you until after they’ve taken action.

What Are Phases of the Marketing Sales Funnels

We’ll start by explaining the very basic concept behind all marketing sales funnels stages. Then we’ll delve into more specific details about how the process works and what you need to do at each point. In the end, we’ll summarize some key points and offer a bonus tip or two.

Understanding the business model behind the purchasing decision process helps us create the marketing sales funnels. Knowing the importance of psychology in making decisions also allows us to design customer journeys that encourage purchase.

Phase 1: Awareness (TOFU)

Most websites enter the awareness stage when users first land on them. You want to create interesting and relevant content for your prospects’ pain points during the awareness phase. In addition, you need to engage them by offering value, but also be mindful of how you do so. This stage is the farthest from the purchase stage.

Your brand should be able to draw the attention of both prospective clients and current customers. It’s helpful to make sure customers know about your product or service before you talked to them. Likewise, potential customers should know what kind of problem your product or service solves.

Although you may be tempted to say it’s too early to sell anything, the truth is your product or service probably isn’t ready yet, but you still need to start reaching out to new clients to get some feedback and gather ideas about what you might want to change.

Marketing plans, including search engine optimization, social media, advertising content writing, and other forms of marketing help establish an online presence. This helps increase the trustworthiness of the website by increasing web traffic.

Ways to Capture Buyers at This Stage:

  • Influencer Marketing
  • Podcast Advertising
  • Traditional Advertising
  • Location-based Marketing

How do you know our competitors’ ads have been effective? First, you can search online for their keywords and learn what platforms they’ve used. You can then check Google Trends and see if there’s any evidence of high traffic coming from them or any increase in searches for their services.

Phase 2: Interest & Information Search (TOFU)

Before starting with phase 2, make sure that the phase 1 campaign includes a CTA that would lead them to the 2nd phase or other phases down the funnel. That being said, you should use marketing content sparingly and strategically. Use it to create trust, show thought leadership, and convey your company culture. You should focus your marketing efforts and sales pitch on the benefits of using your product or service. You want to get the prospect excited about what they gain by choosing your product or service.

In the interest stage, loyal customers are looking for information, comparing products, and deciding whether or not they want to buy. So you should create amazing content that benefits them but never pushes them into buying something that isn’t right for them.

The second phase is the most critical stage because this is the time when a consumer finds out about your product, brand,, or service. Unfortunately, consumers do not buy products, services,, or brands once they know them. Therefore, your goal is to develop awareness and interest among consumers.

Consumers could know you better as a brand. So you’re now sharing information on your website. In addition, consumers start to recognize what makes your product unique and valuable.

The primary goal should be to give prospects some sense of what’s in the offering and how it might help them. You’re an expert in your industry, but you’re offering something free and valuable to your target audience. Helping people solve problems is what makes you stand out.

Ways to Capture Interest at This Stage:

  • Create tailored landing pages
  • Perform webinars
  • Create how-tos and other educational videos
  • Introduce newsletters, and customer guides
  • Present testimonials and customer service training
  • Provide whitepapers
  • Write broader content using top of the funnel keywords

Focus on These Strategies:

  • Search Engine Optimization
  • Social Media Marketing

Phase 3: Consideration & Evaluation (MOFU)

This is the middle part of your funnel and is often regarded as the ‘desire stage”. Consumers decide to buy products at this stage, so companies should develop a true need to buy. Businesses should also begin nurturing leads before they are more engaged.

Your customers now know that there is a solution to their problem. But your challenge is to convince them that you’re the best provider of that solution. To do this, identify what makes your product/service better than any other option available.

People aren’t actively looking for solutions anymore. They’re actively deciding whether or not to buy a solution. Your advantage here is this stage is the cheapest phase for optimization to reach a high-quality audience. So don’t waste any time here.

Shell out as much money as required to make the best of this strategy. This may be the final chance to hone in on your message. Start by optimizing the purchase funnel until conversion rates improve, then move to your next most optimized page.

The evaluation phase is always the longest in a funnel because customers need time to consider their options. The marketer must consistently reinforce their relationships and provide the information needed to make the final decision.

In this stage of your marketing sales funnels process, you’ll want to focus on getting more and more prospective customers to sign up and take action. There are many different ways to do this, but the most effective ones center around getting reviews and testimonials from happy customers. These are some of the most powerful marketing tools that you have available to you.

People don’t buy things without first checking out other customers’ experiences. A review or testimonial can be hugely convincing. And if you run across some great ones while writing your content, then, by all means, add them in.

You can always follow Cialdini’s Six Principles of Persuasion

Ways to Get Leads to Decide on Buying at This Stage:

  • Include retargeted Facebook and Google Ads
  • Add testimonials and reviews
  • Provide more product information
  • Provide exclusive offers
  • Offer freebies
  • Offer case studies
  • Optimized pricing pages
  • Send out surveys

Focus on These Strategies:

  • Lead Generation
  • Social Media Marketing

Phase 4: Intent & Commitment (MOFU)

Your lead becomes almost your customer. People who want to purchase a product or service are referred to as “interested buyers.” This is the time to put your best offer forward.

Marketing professionals should understand that at this early stage of the buying process, leads have strong intent to purchase but may be open to alternative options due to their current preferences and experiences. Your sales team must present these leads with compelling reasons to choose your brand and products instead of alternatives. Perform more research on competitors or get feedback from customers before deciding what makes your offer better than others.

Sales and marketing should work hand-in-hand in developing plans to persuade buyers into buying your product or service. They need to collaborate to ensure that someone makes the final call about purchasing your product or service.

Ways to Get Leads to Decide on Commit at This Stage:

  • Offer free trials and a product demo
  • Provide free consultations
  • Reach out to leads with products left in the cart
  • Offer time-based guarantees
  • Add support chat

Phase 5: Conversion & Purchase (BOFU)

The customer has experienced all the phases, being aware they need help and deciding you provide the answer. In this phase, the control of the marketing and sales process is in the buyer’s hands. First, however, you must guide the customer towards making a purchase decision using marketing techniques such as ads, calls, or emails.

Your customers must be motivated to take action before the end of this phase. Therefore, you’ll want to focus on moving your potential clients through each step until they reach the action you need them to take.

Your customers act when they become active participants within your ecosystem. Their behavior changes as they see more value in participating. However, there’s a point at which they stop acting because they’re already locked into your brand.

Marketing experts know the conversion rate and the value of each stage in the funnel, but they also know how to scale their offers out to maximize the results. By scaling out their offers, they can get more conversions at a lower cost per acquisition.

Although consumers reach the bottom of the funnel and become aware of your brand or product, you still need to take action. First, you should ask yourself what more could be done to move them throughout the rest of the funnel.

Phase 6: Loyalty & Advocacy (BOFU)

A true positive customer experience is an important part of moving customers along the funnel. Of course, buyers can always get back to you if they buy your product, but a positive experience here is one in which you’ve moved them to the point of advocacy and loyalty.

To retain customers once they become loyal advocates of your brand, you must be willing to demonstrate loyalty back to them.

AIDA: Another Representation of the Marketing Funnel

The traditional funnel stages are called Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action. The acronym AIDA stands for Attention, Intention, Decision, Action. Even though the results are the same, some marketers prefer one method over the other.

Each stage of the marketing funnel consists of three steps: Awareness, Interest, Action/Purchase. At the end of each step, you’ll get data about how many visitors went through each step. You could then use this information to create your next campaign, using some combination of digital advertising, social media, events, direct mail, etc.

Most people begin their sales funnels at the top, but some may begin at various other points along the way. Regardless of which point they start, the process remains the same as you move down the funnel.

Digital Marketing Sales Funnel Tools

Sales should be responsible for finding new customers and converting them into paying customers. Marketing should focus on providing value to prospects before they become customers. Then, both groups should work together to provide excellent customer service.

  • Cross-sell is very useful for any business as it enables to reach more audience by selling other products alongside the initial sale. This is great at every step of the funnel.
  • Upselling is great for increasing revenue while growing your customer base. Similarly, this is helpful at any phase.
  • Digital marketing can be a strong part of your overall marketing strategy. But you need to use it correctly across the entire marketing funnel if you want to get the most from your digital efforts.
  • Social media helps you reach your target audience and build brand awareness while you are still at the top of the funnel
  • Content marketing creates value and builds trust if done correctly in the middle of the funnel
  • Customer relationships allow companies to deliver real product or service benefits at the bottom of the funnel
  • Email marketing can be done at every stage but performs best in the last phase of the funnel.
  • User reviews are highly effective in the decision phase of the marketing sales funnel
  • Website optimization and SEO are great in the awareness phase
  • A lead magnet should be attractive enough to get your customers to sign up for your newsletter or opt-in page.

Difference of B2B Marketing Sales Funnel and B2C Marketing Sales Funnel

For B2C organizations, customers are more likely to purchase products via online channels than offline channels. Conversely, for B2B companies, customers are most likely to buy products from an offline channel. In addition, B2C consumers are more likely to abandon or lose interest in shopping carts than B2B shoppers.

To improve conversions in either scenario, marketers should provide prospective customers with various options for contacting them. This allows them to choose how best to reach them.

Non-Linear Funnels: Get to Know Them Here

Experts argue that the marketing funnel isn’t as useful as it used to be because the buying process is now non-linear. Instead, buyers, today prefer to move up and down through various channels before making purchases.

Each lead has a different stage of interest. Some leads come directly into the funnel at the intent stage, while others get at interest or consideration. There is nothing wrong with jumping into any stage. But it does mean the conversion rate may be higher if you focus your efforts on the most likely prospects.

How do you get your leads to join you at your next level? First, it would help if you created opportunities for them to be exposed to the next step of the process.

Increasingly, consumers do their research and depend on digital content to guide them throughout the buying process. The idea of customer engagement is still relatively new, but the benefits of getting out there and engaging with your potential customers are enormous. By making your company more transparent and giving your customers more control over how they consume your product or service, you’ll be providing value long after your salesperson hangs up the phone.

An example of a non-linear marketing sales funnel is the McKinsey Consumer Decision Journey that shows that the buying process is circular.

The diagram shows a customer’s decision journey. Each circle embodies a different stage in the buying cycle, including awareness, consideration, purchase, and maintenance. A “pivot” represents a critical point along the path, such as a moment of truth. These moments may include: purchasing the product, making a purchase commitment, deciding whether to return the product, reporting a problem or defect, using the product regularly, or upgrading to the next level of service.

The customer decision journey and the sales funnel are not perfect models. As such, some marketers use them as placeholders until better methods exist.

Marketing funnels have been around since the 1950s, but the customer decision journey was introduced in 2001. However, there is no perfect model, so both models will continue to be used.

How Does the Sales Funnel Differ from the Marketing Funnel?

The sales funnel begins with qualified leads coming out of the marketing funnel. Next, they become interested in your brand and then move into the next step of the process. At this stage, your sales team will be trying to generate interest in your product or service. Once a lead is generated, they enter the sales funnel. There they begin interacting with various parts of your business, such as your website and social media accounts. Finally, after gaining interest in your brand, they start entering the sales funnel.

To End

Marketing and sales funnels are essential when you want to know more about your buyers and increase your customers. Are you in need of a local SEO strategist for your business? ITD Web Design is here to help. Give us a buzz, and our team can give your business an assessment.