HOW MARKETING FUNNELS WORK

Want to find out how marketing funnels work?

In this post I’m talking about marketing process funnels.

The funnel concept has been the basis for marketing planning for decades… but has changed a lot since the rise of interactivity and changes to targeting offered via the internet. It’s a simple concept that equally applies to a giant global corporation or a small online store.

At the top of your marketing funnel is awareness.  During this stage, prospects that are strangers to your brand and company learn who you are. Focus on establishing yourself as a thought leader within your industry. This is your opportunity to start building a trust relationship with your prospects.

Once a subscriber graduates from the awareness stage of the marketing funnel, they enter the consideration stage. In the consideration stage, a subscriber is willing to consider your company and products. They are interested in learning more about you.

Since you know more about your subscriber in this stage than you did during the awareness stage, you can send them more targeted content that addresses their specific pain points. By doing this, you’re demonstrating that you provide the solution to your subscriber’s problems.

It has finally arrived: decision time. Once your subscriber knows the value of your product and you have educated them on the product itself through the use of case studies, webinars, blog posts and other educational content, they are ready to decide whether or not to purchase.

At this point in your marketing funnel, you can start talking about why your product and service is better than your competitors’ and why it’s perfect for your prospect. Focus on the benefits of your product/service rather than just explaining features.

Here are a few tactics you can use to convince your subscribers to purchase:

• Invite subscribers to a sales webinar where you show them your product/service and tell them the benefits.
• Create an automated email series with emails that each describe a different benefit of your product/service.
• Offer a free trial or give away samples so that prospects can see the benefits for themselves.
• Send subscribers a one-time broadcast email that offers a sale or discount for purchasing within a certain timeframe.

Once a prospect becomes a customer, you may be tempted to pat yourself on the back and move on to the next prospect. However, forgetting about your customers is a bad idea.

Unless you have a plan for developing customer loyalty, you’ll probably lose many of your customers, wasting a lot of your prior marketing efforts during the earlier stages of your funnel.

How marketing funnels work : Let’s say you have an online coffee store. You sell subscriptions to your coffee-of-the-month club, and you don’t want your coffee-of-the-month members to lose interest and cancel their subscription. Here are a few ideas for valuable content you could include in your emails to increase retention:

• A monthly 15-minute webinar that describes the coffee-of-the-month and gives coffee brewing best practices.
• A survey that asks customers how happy they are with the coffees they are receiving and what other kinds of coffee they’d like to get.
• An ebook about the history of coffee.
• A 20 percent discount to customers that purchase a yearly subscription of your coffee-of-the-month club.

Advocacy happens when your customers become something more than customers: they become fans. Not only have they purchased from you before, but they’ve probably purchased again or continue to pay for your services. And now they love you. They tell their friends about you and brag about you on social media.

Bringing subscribers to this stage of the marketing funnel is extremely valuable. Why? Because the most effective marketing is referral marketing. When your friend tells you a certain product is awesome, you are much more likely to purchase that product because you trust your friend.

What are some ways to use email to turn your customers into raving fans?

• Identify customers that love you and send them an email asking them to refer you to their friends.
• Include a survey in an email to learn how you could improve your product/service.
• Start an affiliate or loyalty program where customers get incentives for referring you.

You also want to collect feedback during this stage. Feedback = Funnel Fuel! The more you listen to your customers, the more you learn. You can constantly improve your content so it’s in line with their challenges, needs, and wants.

There are many ways to collect intel. You can create surveys to follow up with paying customers. Two tools we like: SurveyMonkey and SurveyGizmo. Inside AWeber’s platform, you can find survey templates, too. All you have to do is add your own content into the templates and send it to your customers.

Or, you can take it a step further and email or call your first 25 to 100 customers. Ask them for honest criticism. They can provide views of your product or service that’s unavailable to you on the inside. 

Here are some great resources on how marketing funnels work:

Mapping tools for funnels and consumer interactions: https://funnelytics.io/ https://autogrow.co/sales-funnel-tools/ https://www.clickfunnels.com Understanding how funnels work: Start watching at 2.00 sec: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3N0A… Click Funnels tool examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF8wE… Autogrow overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47xyJ… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T92o… Click Funnels for Drop-shipping or Shopify: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyECn…

With thanks to  https://blog.aweber.com