If you are someone who is interested in marketing analytics, you may have come across the term “funnel”. What exactly are marketing funnels and why are they important?
The marketing funnel is a useful tool to help you visualize the path customers take from first learning about your brand to conversion. They provide helpful insights into why some customers convert and some don’t.
Table of Contents
What is a marketing funnel?
A marketing funnel is a visual representation of the steps a visitor takes from first learning about a brand until they convert to a customer. The most popular marketing funnel with four steps:
- Attention: A potential customer sees your ad, social media post, or hears from a friend.
- Interest: Potential customers think you can solve their problem and want to learn more about the product/service.
- Desire: The prospect has finished researching and wants to convert.
- Action: Potential customers take an action – make a purchase, book an appointment, or take any other action you want them to take. Actions can vary depending on the customer and industry – maybe you want them to make a purchase, subscribe to a channel, or fill out a form.
Conversion trong Marketing Funnel
When someone has completed the action desired by the business or marketer, it is called a conversion. Visitors convert from skimming to taking action.
When shopping on Amazon, for example, there are several steps a visitor must go through before they can purchase a product. The steps are as follows:
- They visit Amazon.com.
- They view a product.
- They decide to add a product to the cart.
- They complete the purchase.
There are additional steps/actions that can be performed between each of these. However, some of them don’t matter in the marketing funnel unless they contribute to the final action. For example, a visitor looks at Amazon’s Careers page, but these traffic do not need to be counted because they are not necessary steps.
How Marketing Funnels Work
Why is the set of steps that lead to conversion called a “funnel”? Because a lot of people take the first step. As people move on and take the next steps, others will stop, and the scale will thin or shrink. (Furthermore during this process, the sales team will be involved to help close the deal.)
Losing customers sounds like a bad thing – but it’s not. The truth is that not everyone in the funnel will convert. The top of the funnel is where people go (visit a website or view a marketing campaign). Only the most interested people will move further down your funnel.
When you hear the word “expand the funnel,” it means the business wants to create a larger network. By advertising to new audiences, increase their brand awareness. Or increase inbound marketing to attract more people to their website, thereby expanding their funnel.
Types of Marketing Funnel
In this article, we’re focusing on the marketing funnel, starting with some sort of marketing campaign. It could be PPC ads, content marketing, white papers, video ads, social media ads or even IRL ads.
Other types of funnels you may hear about include:
- Sales funnels
- Webinar funnels
- Email funnels (Kênh email)
- Video marketing funnels
- Lead magnet funnels
- Home page funnels
Though they have different names, they’re all meant to track: the steps a potential customer takes to convert. (Sometimes they’re even called a conversion funnel.)
What can you use your marketing funnel for?
You are not limited in using marketing funnel to register and/or make a purchase. You can set the funnel as your entire site. From there see how visitors move through a particular site flow.
You may want to follow newsletter sign up (View newsletter signup form > Submit form > Email confirmation) or simple page switch (View subscription page > Submit subscription).
Find out what your goals are and what you want your visitors to do on your site. From there build a marketing funnel for it. Once there is enough data, it will be easier to spot where the barrier is. The next thing is to tweak to optimize your funnel. Continue reading to dig deeper into this.
Why is Funnel Marketing beneficial?
Marketing funnels provide access to data, known as marketing funnel reports. Lets you be able to know where are losing customers. This is sometimes called a “leaky” funnel because it allows the customers you want to keep to exit the funnel.
Take the SaaS (Software as a Service) business as an example. A funnel might look like this:
- Visit website
- Sign up for a trial
- Use the product
- Upgrade to paid
Do people really need to use the product before paying? They don’t, but you should monitor it to see if that’s a barrier.
For example, if you’re losing a lot of conversions after the trial period, you may need to make adjustments. Maybe update the referral process so people understand how to use it. Or even adjust the top of the funnel to not attract people outside of TA (target audience).
Examples of Marketing Funnel in Practice
Take a look at the process of a retail store and see the corresponding steps in an e-commerce store. We will track the purchase funnel.
| Funnel of Retail Stores | Funnel of E-commerce Stores |
| Customers enter the store | Customers enter the e-commerce site |
| Customers view products | Customers view product pages |
| Customer selects a product and puts it in the cart | Customer adds products to cart |
| Customers go to the checkout counter | Customer initiates the payment process |
| Customers make payment with store staff | Customer completes the payment process and clicks “Buy” |
It is easy to see that E-commerce stores have more advantages. Because they can track clicks, time on site, and other metrics. Their process should look something like this:
Just now we have understood what a Funnel is and why it is useful. Let’s look at a product that offers Funnel – Google Analytics.
Marketing Funnel of Google Analytics
Google Analytics provides funnels. This is a super simple way to track a lead’s path before they convert. Sign in, then go to Admin > Goals > + New Goal > Select Goals to create a Google Analytics goal.
Here are a few things you need to know when creating a funnel in Google Analytics:
- It’s a pretty basic funnel: If you don’t want to drill down into the data and optimize, you can do this.
- You cannot go back and retroactively view data: After creating the funnel, you will only be able to access the funnel once you have the data.
Overall, if you’re just getting started with the marketing funnel, then Google Analytics is a solid place to start.
Conclusion
We’ve covered everything you need to know about the marketing funnel. Here’s a quick recap of the main points:
- When someone on your website does something you want them to do (i.e. sign up, make a purchase, fill out a form, etc.), it’s called a conversion.
- A funnel tracks the steps that lead to that conversion. For example, e-commerce companies want people to buy products on their website. Their Funnel may have the following steps: Go to Website > View Products > Add Products to Cart > Purchase.
- The funnel report shows you where people are skipping in the lead to conversion so you can optimize your conversion path and increase revenue.
- Google Analytics offers funnels as part of the free Google Analytics software. It’s a simple and free way to get started with marketing channels.
By now, you must have understood more about Marketing Funnel. Have you created a Marketing Funnel in Google Analytics? If you have difficulty with Marketing Funnel, immediately contact TOS team for support as soon as possible. Wishing you success!
Source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/how-marketing-funnels-work/
