A digital marketing funnel is a system or framework used to generate website traffic and cultivate prospects until they become profit-driving customers.
Establishing and implementing a digital marketing funnel is a proven way to get targeted leads, nurture customers to provide an easier sales experience, as well as increase revenue.
Digital marketing funnels can be as simple or complex as you like, but for the sake of simplicity, we are going to break them down into three easy to understand stages.
- Awareness (Top of Funnel)
- Consideration (Middle of Funnel)
- Decision (Bottom of Funnel)
Awareness
The first stage of a digital marketing funnel is known as the awareness stage. As the name suggests, this is the part of the funnel where prospective customers first learn about you and your brand.
It serves as the top of your digital marketing funnel. At this point in the customer journey, your audience doesn’t yet know you and you need to make a strong but unobtrusive first impression.
During this time, you want to focus on attracting new prospects. That means creating content to address problems or questions your target audience is looking for solutions for.
Content such as long-form blog articles, YouTube videos, and podcast episodes are great for this stage. Choosing valuable keywords and creating content that ranks for those keywords is the best way to gain traction during the awareness phase.
Consideration
After the awareness stage comes to the consideration stage. Serving as the middle of the funnel, the consideration stage is when your target audience knows they have a problem or need but have not found a solution to that problem yet.
This is where you educate customers on how to choose the best solution and tell them what that solution is.
At this stage, prospects are not yet ready to make a purchase, but they are looking for reliable and trustworthy info about a product or service they are considering or have in mind.
Now is when you want to focus on creating good, informative, and helpful content that focuses on specific types of solutions and products.
As a hosting company, a good example of this type of content from InMotion Hosting could be What is Web Hosting? What Hosting Plan Do I Need?
Once you have created your consideration stage content, you will want to add links to it within your awareness stage content.
Writing and linking to good quality content that actually helps your audience allows you to educate them about a solution to their problem and direct potential customers to the next step of their purchasing journey.
Be sure to follow best practices when linking to content. Links should always be used where they fit and shouldn’t be forced into content just to get it in there.
Forcing links where they do not belong is a good way to push away your prospects and undo all your hard work.
Decision
The bottom of your digital marketing funnel is the decision stage. This is the part of the funnel where it is time to close the deal.
At this point, prospects are ready to become profit-driving customers. They have their credit cards in hand and are ready to make a purchase.
Reviews, comparisons, and aggregate type content is king here. Think things such as product roundups, head-to-head comparisons, and single-product reviews.
During the decision stage, it is all about conversion. That means you need to have strong CTAs (where they naturally fit) within your content and give your prospective customers multiple opportunities to make a purchase.
The goal of the decision stage is to show customers why your products or services are the best answer to their problem
If you can successfully do that, it should naturally lead to more conversions.
Building a digital marketing funnel is a great way to find leads, nurture them, and convert those leads into paying customers.
These funnels do not have to be complex in order to be successful. The most important aspect is to be sure there is continuity between the awareness, consideration, and decision stages.
Once you have created the content needed for each of the stages, use ads to promote your content, and you should begin to see your conversions increase.