Digital Marketing Funnel: What is it and what is it for?
What is a digital marketing funnel?
A digital marketing funnel consists of a top and bottom part, narrowing down as you go deeper into the funnel. The top part of the funnel is wide and open, here is where people are coming in as masses. But as they move forward in the funnel of your digital marketing the number of people shrinks.
The goal of a digital marketing funnel is to generate traffic that will convert into a purchase, while not letting your customer down, the funnel also works as a way of looking at clients from a loyal perspective. You want them to become advocates of your services, products, and ultimately, of your brand.
That is why digital marketing funnels are important for your brand strategy and marketing campaign. If you don’t have a way in which your prospects become customers, you will be losing hundreds of leads.
What are the uses of a digital marketing funnel?
A digital marketing funnel is not just a path for your audience to become solely customers. Although that is what it is for, don’t get muddled into the idea of a simple sales strategy.
The uses of a digital marketing funnel are directed to what you can obtain from planning and delimiting a sales funnels:
- First, you get to know your target audience in a deeper way. Researching your target customers is a basic step on knowing how to appeal to them. Knowing their pain points, where they struggle and thinking of personalized solutions will get their attention.
- Second, with that research you can create content that brings value while remaining true to your unique audience. By tailoring your content, you can increase and improve the overall experience of your future customer. Getting to their core and shaking them a little bit without overwhelming them.
- Third, pointing more with the necessities of a business, a digital marketing funnel will help with your revenues because you are guiding your ideal customer into becoming a paying one, helping your return on investment (ROI).
How to structure a digital marketing funnel?
In order to have a successful digital marketing funnel you need to establish the model you are going to use, the objectives or structure of your funnel and what type of funnel you will use or even mix them up.
You may have seen it before, the AIDAA model for digital marketing funnels. It is widely known and emulated across business because it concentrates the core steps of your sales. Therefore the structure of it.
The AIDAA model refers to these five stages:
- Awareness
- Interest
- Desire
- Action
- Advocacy
We will talk more in depth later. The importance of this model is how you will structure your funnel into these seven goals (while focusing on each of the five stages mentioned above).
- Getting exposure.
- Being discovered.
- Make them consider you.
- Strike a transformation /conversion.
- Build up your customer relationship.
- Keeping your new customers.
- Having loyal customers.
Two types of digital marketing funnels
This is the traditional digital marketing funnel, it is as explained before, quite open in the top and more narrow in the bottom, because of the amount of people starting as possible sales end up with less people converting into purchases.
The traditional digital marketing funnel is not so different from the AIDAA model because they follow the same logic as explained in the previous paragraph. It is like a journey that just has started, a journey with your whole university class, they are all excited and looking forward to discovering what the journey will bring.
But as the time passes, the one remaining at your side are your long-lasting friends, the one you have accompanied through hardships and lovely times. The same is for your clients, if you managed to create a relationship with them.
In the traditional digital marketing funnel people come in and people go out as sales, while retaining is there, as a stage, you need to change the perspective on how to make them come back.
The next type of digital marketing funnel changes that last stage:
In this second marketing funnel, you are looking at a cycle where stages are connected as if they were those infinite Hot Wheels tracks that you played as a child, you were the force who tapped on the button to go faster and faster.
The speed of your car is like the customer’s journey with your product or service. The harder you push the faster it goes but sometimes if you go too fast, a crash can happen. We are not saying that you will jeopardize your customers’ smooth and safe road trip into your products or services. We want to focus on ensuring that each stage is managed in a way that the customer can go as fast as they can into the purchase stage without breaking a leg in the middle of it.
Knowing that, we can know more of the AIDAA model so you adapt it to your business.
Knowing your AIDAA for your digital marketing funnel
- Awareness
In order to attract customers’ awareness you need to prepare beforehand what your content will be and the structure those will be given. How? You ask yourself what will be the problems and solutions your ideal customer will be looking for in Google. Most of the time, questions start with:
- What is…?
- How can I…?
- Where can I find…?
Moreover, in terms of traffic you may want to differentiate between organic and paid. When it comes to a digital marketing funnel most brands combine both in order to gain more reach and, therefore, more traffic. Search engine optimization or SEO comes in handy when you are looking for topics for your content in order to rank higher whenever people are asking a question in Google or another search platform. On the other hand, paid ads such as Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Google ads can help you with segmentation of customers depending on demographic characteristics (location, gender, age, etc.).
In this stage, your market is all the people who don’t know you but are looking to solve a problem they have. So you probably can appear as the solution.
DiHunch marketing actions: pay-per-click ads (PPC), email marketing, and social media posts.
- Interest
In the interest stage of the digital marketing funnel you have people who already know who you are, and are more willing to click on your link in Instagram so they go to your website, or click on an ad you prepared specifically for them.
- Desire
The crucial part of this stage is showing information about your product or services, the advantages, how you are better than the competition, how good they can feel with your brand. Most of the time, testimonials or videos showing how to use your product can help your lead to become a purchase because they are creating a sense of trust with your brand.
Blogs are a must if you want to educate and bring value to your audience, they will feel that your brand is giving them all the solutions they were looking for.
- Action
In this stage of the digital marketing funnel your objective is to finally have a direct interaction with your lead to convert them into a purchase. Whether you are a service business that wants them to fill out a form, so you later send them emails with more services, or you are a product-based business that wants to sell. In the purchase area, it is advisable to show other products so your customer adds more products, even showing a “hot” product can inspire them to buy before you run out of that product and they will regret it later.
- Advocacy
So now that they have made a purchase and the money has changed hands, what’s next? Leaving them to their own luck? NO! The process of brand loyalty has started since they have become aware of your business, so now you need to nurture even more your relationship with your customer if you want them to come back. The goal here is to create brand advocates, people who will recommend your product/service to their friends, family, posting a story on Instagram, etc.
The 3 main components of a digital marketing funnel
- Foundation
As we said before, knowing what you want with your digital marketing strategy is key to knowing how your funnel will work. Are you trying to get more leads? More traffic? Are you holding a webinar so you want to spread the word? Is a new launch of a product coming in a few weeks? A new store is open so you want to high-up that date and prepare momentum so people are eager to go?
It will all depend on the goal, so you define where your traffic will come from.
- Floodgates
After knowing your objectives, you will need to decide how to attract people. You can use social media marketing, SEO, paid advertising, marketing events as webinars, email marketing, newsletters, a free consultation, talking with a sales person, etc.
- Sales Funnel
The final component of your digital marketing funnel is the actual sales funnel. As you know, AIDAA model is the most widely used.
Now that you have your strategy, your goals and your content planned, the next step is ensuring that the lead has a smooth and well-rested journey with your brand. In this case, the movement of the traffic from the top to the bottom is essential.
Customer’s Journey in a digital marketing funnel
Let’s name our ideal customer Susan. Susan is a middle-aged woman with two children, both boys. She is looking for a jumping bed for their son’s birthday because, guess what, they are twins.
But you are not selling jumping beds, you are a business dedicated to making huge birthday parties for children. How on earth will Susan know about you? She is in the stage of awareness, she has a problem and she is going to look at Google: “where do I find a jumping bed in…?
Now, if you have been using SEO for organic research you may have a blog on jumping beds with safety measures and how to find a good provider for that product. Or you have paid Google to appear at the front of that keyword, “jumping beds”. Whatever your strategy, you are now there in the eye of the hurricane.
Luckily, she found your blog because as a mother, safety comes first, she is reading through your blog and then a banner shows up with your service of making children parties with all the safety measures a parent wants.
She might not go and pay for it, but you are there, in her mind. She continues to look for vendors of jumping beds.
A few days passed, Susan is still busy with the kids, school, being a great mother, etc. But anyone can forget a thing or two, so you pop up in her mind.
She comes to your website and you have another banner on “last minute services” for a birthday party. You offer a pack with the essentials and because it is her first time she can personalize it to a maximum number of items.
She has already passed the interest and desire stage, now she is in the action stage because you are solving a problem for her. You may not sell your whole package for huge birthday parties but you have already made a connection with her.
You ask for personal information so they know the date, where and the name of the kids. The service goes smooth, all with safety, etc.
After a few days you send via email a questionnaire on “How was your service?”, you can even offer a discount if she pays for the whole package. Even more, now that she is in your database and you know the birthdays of Susan and her children you can plan ahead a personalized birthday package just for her. This is how you prepare the terrain for a new advocate of your brand.
Ultimate advise on digital marketing funnels
You may have looked at all these blogs with how to make digital marketing funnels successful and yet, you still struggle because you don’t know at which stage your customers are not landing into your page, or into sales.
At DiHunch, we know the struggle of our clients with knowing how to have a good-structured funnel. So, if you want to have experts on the subject of creating a digital marketing funnel and the strategy for your brand to flourish.
Don’t hesitate to contact us. We are one hunch away!
