Do you have good products or excellent services, but no one seems to be buying?
You are here for the right reason. You need to know about the Marketing Funnels!
What are marketing funnels?
Why do they matter? They are useful tools in explaining the path customers take from first seeing about your brand (products/ service) to closing sales.
In short, it can be split into 2 sections, a total of 4 stages. Upper funnel & lower funnel, consisting of awareness, interest, consideration and conversion.
Upper funnel
Upper funnel marketing refers to strategies to build brand awareness and increase purchase interest. For example, traditionally, big brands will use TV commercials, billboards at highways, LED screens in shopping malls, to build brand awareness, to showcase products to audiences who may not have a need now. In ecommerce context, a fitness enthusiast may see protein powder ads on social media platforms.
Lower funnel
Lower funnel focuses on strengthening consideration and making your product/ service stand out among similar players. For example, blog content and customer reviews will give confidence in your brand. Lastly, you will need to ensure customers buy your product/ service. Once close sales, you can consistently remind with great deals to create a loyal pool of customers.
Why are marketing funnels so important?
According to Amazon, there are four significant benefits of analysing and applying the marketing funnels compare to selling brand with guts as below:
- Reach more audience : More Customers, More Closing ! Up to 21% more than those advertisers without having a comprehensive understand of its brand.
- More consideration : a 2.5x more times a customers will take a look on products.
- Higher sales : incremental of 8% higher sales growth
- Strong loyalty : up to 1.9x more subscribe & return customers
Real life example of applying marketing funnels
| Funnels | Stages | Retail Store | Ecommerce |
| Upper | Awareness | Customer walks into a pharmacy store to hair bays for shampoo | Customers browse the ecommerce website and search for the keyword ‘Shampoo’. |
| Upper | Interest | Customers take a look at the products on hair bays that offer the needs. | Customers find out that your brand on the first few results and match the needs. |
| Mid/Lower | Consideration | Customers notice on the product tagline, that can solve the dandruff. | Customers browse for the product reviews by customers who bought it before |
| Lower | Conversion | Customers are attracted by the discount only available on weekends to purchase. | Customers are urged by the limited time deal for the product. |
If you don’t have a marketing funnel yet, it is worth your time to build one now. Begin with understanding your brand, on which demographic of customers you are focusing, then start building it and identifying opportunities for growth.
Always remember to follow up, and create brand relevance to customers. It would be helpful to build a deep, lifelong relationship with customers
REMEMBER:
Retaining customers
is more difficult than acquiring new customers