To understand what an online marketing funnel is, it is more useful to start with the following question; What is a marketing funnel? A marketing Sale funnel is all the activities that you perform between the first contact moment and a purchase. Nowadays you have to perform more and more activities before you realize a sale. For example, only 2% of purchases take place at the first contact moment and only 10% at the first 4 contact moments.
Nowadays, an average customer needs 5 to 8 contact moments to make a purchase. It is important to communicate clearly and effectively about your product or service during these contact moments. The way you do this is your marketing sale funnel. This has the shape of a kind of funnel, which is why it is also called a marketing funnel. If you map this well, you can promote your product or service to your target group at every stage of the buying process.
The different phases of the online buying process
A lot of models have been written to visualize your online marketing funnel, but to make it easy we use Google’s ‘See, think, do, care’ model. Each step describes the phase the customer is in in the buying process. If you have mapped this out well, you can focus your marketing specifically on each phase in the model.
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See think do care; The easiest funnel?
The See Think Do Care model is the online marketing funnel model recommended by Google, but how does it work exactly? As described in the previous heading, it describes the phase the customer is in. For example, the customer has a different information need and intention at every point. Since it is so short and sweet, it is one of the easiest marketing funnel models. Below is a description of what to do at which point.
See :
Is the way you first grab the attention of your customer and how you introduce the customer to your company. This is also known as your brand awareness. For example, advertising on Google or on Social media.
think:
Describes how you get your customer interested in what you have to offer. You do this by emphasizing certain plus points that the customer finds important. You do this by, for example, giving a free email marketing course or a free trial.
Do :
With this part, the customer is sure that they want the product you offer. The consumer is now aware of your product or service and what it solves and has the idea that this can also solve his problem. In this step you convince the customer that you have the best solution for their problem.
Care:
In this phase you ensure that your customer continues to buy from you in the long term. They have already bought something, but you want them to buy something from you again later. You can do this by, for example, loyalty programs in a newsletter or by encouraging them to download your app.
Marketing funnel content; Which content fits which phase?
So now we know the buying process and what the online marketing funnel actually is. In this section we will discuss which content fits which phase. Content is an important part of your online presence and can help you get more and more customers.
See :
In this phase it is important to contact your customer easily. You can do this through, for example: blogs, social media posts, infographics, comics, videos and podcasts .
Think :
To create interest, the customer will have to learn more about your product. This is also a good stage to collect contact information. You can do this with, for example:
E-books and whitepapers, Reports, Checklists, Tutorials, Case studies, Templates and toolkits, E-mail courses, A quiz, Webinars or Other necessities
Do :
If you want to completely convince the customer you will have to distinguish yourself from the rest. You can do this through:
Comparisons with other products or services, Detailed specifications with pluses, Stories from existing customers, Recommendations (if you offer multiple products), Demos, Discount codes or a free trial version
Care :
In the last phase, the customer is already persuaded to buy the 1st time, but to make sure they keep buying from you you can use: Videos, Emails, Retargeting campaigns, blogs, loyalty programs and newsletters.
If you want to get a better look at the marketing funnel content per phase, you can do so in the infographic below. This is the infographic that we also use to determine what content we need.
What are Marketing funnel KPIs and what can you do with them?
KPI stands for key performance indicator, in other words it is a measure to measure how well your funnel is working. Each phase in the buying process has its own KPIs. This will be different for every Marketing company. For example, a KPI for your company could be the number of new visitors to the website. When there are more new visitors, you know that your marketing is having an effect.
How do you measure funnel conversion rates?
We now know what KPIs are. These measures therefore contribute to the number of sales. The number of sales compared to everyone in your funnel is also an important metric. These are also known as marketing funnel conversion rates. This sounds difficult, but it’s easy.
An average webshop has a conversion rate of 4 to 5 percent. This means that for every 100 visitors they sell a product or service 4 or 5 times. A conversion doesn’t have to be just a sale, it’s any valuable action the customer takes on your site. Measuring your conversions can seem difficult, so we’re happy to explain this. In practice this is not that difficult. We do this with Google analytics, but this is also possible with other software.
1 . Determine what counts as a conversion for your business, usually this is a sale
2 . Look in your administration to see how many sales or other conversions you have achieved.
3 . View the total number of unique visitors to your website in Analytics (Don’t know how to do this? You can ask your web developer.)
4 . Divide the total number of sales from your administration by the number of unique visitors times a hundred.
This is how you do it yourself
So suppose we have a fictitious bicycle tire webshop, you could calculate it this way.
1 . An order placed at my bicycle tire webshop counts as a conversion. It does not matter whether I sell several bicycle tires to one customer.
2 . My accounts show that I had 15 orders this month.
3 . I ask my website builder how many unique visitors I have had on my website this month. He says there were 300 of them.
4 . I divide 15 by 200. Then I get 0.06. If I multiply this amount by a hundred, I arrive at a conversion rate of 6%.
Online marketing funnel example
We just used the See Think Do Care model, but this is just a rough description of your marketing funnel. It’s more of a model than a full funnel. For example, for a small e-mail course, which is a small part of the ‘Think’ section, you can design your own funnel. You do this via an email marketing tool, such as ActiveCampaign. If you want to map your entire funnel you can use a tool like funnelytics. This is an easy tool to map, expand and adjust your funnel. Below you can see the funnel of this article. This is a simple example, but you can extend this as much as you want.
FAQ over de marketing funnel
Marketing funnel vs customer journey
The customer journey describes the process of discovering until the customer is really sure that they want your product. It is actually a comprehensive description of all contact moments with your company from the eyes of the customer. A marketing funnel describes all activities that you perform to influence the customer in his customer journey.
Marketing funnel vs sales funnel
Just like a marketing funnel, the sales funnel is a kind of funnel through which the customer goes. The sales funnel continues where the marketing funnel stops. The marketing funnel describes all the activities you perform to convince the customer that they want your product. The sales funnel describes all the activities you perform to actually persuade the customer to buy something from you.