A requirement of any successful inbound marketing strategy is a well-thought-out and optimized marketing funnel.
The marketing funnel is a visualization of the journey a customer takes from the first time they land on your website to their final purchase and beyond.
For small business owners who are not familiar with digital marketing, creating an inbound marketing funnel is perhaps an overlooked step when generating a marketing strategy. Business owners tend to focus on the end result instead of the means of getting to the end result.
Without a marketing funnel, you will struggle to identify your best sources of converting traffic, and optimization for lead generation will more difficult.
In this blog article, we will discuss the importance of the inbound marketing funnel in the inbound marketing methodology and how you can implement a simple funnel for your business today.
What is Inbound Marketing Funnel?
The marketing funnel is an important component of the inbound marketing methodology. A marketing funnel is a diagram or model that demonstrates the different channels and processes related to marketing a potential customer goes through before they convert or purchase your product.
The marketing funnel can be visualized as the shape of a triangle. The top portion of the funnel is larger than the bottom portion. The top portion of the funnel is large because it represents the broadness of your target audience that is eligible to become a lead.
Once you begin to narrow down the marketing techniques you want to use for lead acquisition, the amount of people eligible to continue through your funnel begins to decrease. For example, if you want to target people only using Facebook, you must subtract the number of people currently on Facebook from your potential target audience.
As you go further down the funnel, the number of people that are visiting your website gets narrowed down even more by those who give up their contact information and become leads.
From there, the funnel gets even narrower because out of the leads you’ve acquired – only a select few will make it to purchase your product or service.
How do Inbound Marketing Funnels work?
There are three components of a marketing funnel. Top of the Funnel (TOFU), Middle Funnel (MOFU), and Bottom Funnel (BOFU). Each part of the funnel represents a different part of the customer journey.
Top of the Funnel (Awareness Stage)
The top of the funnel portion is also known as the awareness stage of the inbound marketing methodology. In this stage, the customer is not familiar with your brand but only comes armed with a problem that needs solving. Generally, your business or service is a solution to their problem.
This customer might use online resources to find a solution to their problem. They might do a quick search engine query or get referred to a solution on social media, or they might even hear a radio ad or see a commercial on tv. Whichever method they use, they enter your funnel when they stumble on your website or landing page.
Typically, customers are attracted to your website through education or to gain more information. Mediums like blog articles, free downloads, or courses that help educate the person visiting your website.
In exchange for this free education or information, you will ask them for their contact details like their first name, last name, and email address. This is usually accomplished through a sign-up form established on the webpage or pop-up. Once you have this information, the lead then enters the consideration stage.
Middle of the Funnel (Consideration Stage)
Once a potential customer becomes interested in your brand, product, or service and identifies it as a possible solution to their problem, they have just entered the consideration stage. The consideration stage occurs in the middle of the marketing funnel.
The major requirement for the consideration stage is the acquisition of an email address. Email marketing is a huge component of the consideration stage. The middle of the funnel relies on the marketer to craft messages to allow the potential customer to become more aware of the brand and how it can solve their problem. You want to keep the lead engaged to avoid them checking out possible solutions by your competitors.
With email marketing, you can personalize messaging and reach the potential customer in their inbox. It’s also great to use because you can automate an entire email workflow if needed. It doesn’t make sense to individually craft separate messages for each customer. You’ll need to segment based on product interest or lead behavior and adjust your message accordingly.
Bottom of The Funnel (Decisions Stage)
The bottom of the funnel, also known as the decision stage is generally the final step before a customer makes a purchase. The customer is very much familiar with your brand, product, or service and by your standards might be ready to convert.
A generally accepted marketing best practice is to spend at least a month nurturing a lead before an attempt of converting them. However, you can decide how quickly you want or how long you want to wait before you have your sales team try reaching out to them.
The decision stage usually ends with a reach out from the companies’ sales team or using a call to action that brings the lead to a sales page for purchase. At the bottom of the funnel, you are actively trying to make the lead convert on a sale. You might use compelling offers like product demos or free trials to entice the lead to convert.
An important tool to use for the decision stage is lead scoring. Instead of setting a fixed number of triggers like the number of emails a lead opened before getting a contact from the sales team, you can assign points for certain actions by the lead which total to a score you deemed enough for a sales call.
For example, you assign a lead score of 5 points if a customer opens an email, 3 points if they click a call to action, or 25 points if they visit a product page. You can set the total number of points a lead needs to be sales qualified to 50 points. So if a lead opens 5 emails and visits a product page, they will be eligible to receive a phone call from your sales team.
Why Are Inbound Marketing Funnels Important?
The funnel is important for inbound marketers because it allows you to see all the avenues a lead or customer uses to make a purchase. Sometimes marketing strategies can get so large and complex that it becomes difficult to analyze where your best traffic is coming from.
Using the marketing funnel, you can see where leads are dropping off or what part of the journey is not doing as well as you hoped performance-wise. For example, if you take a look at your marketing funnel and see that 90% of all leads generated are dropping off at the nurturing stage, you might want to take any action to improve that part of the customer journey.
You may want to decrease the number of emails you’ve been sending or adjust the copy to make the emails more appealing. You may even want to take a look at your awareness stage. Are you delivering on your promise to the lead when they first signed up for your email newsletter? These are questions you may ask yourself to address a leaking marketing funnel.
The marketing funnel makes the marketer’s life easier instead of guessing where to optimize. You can easily allocate more time and money to lead acquisition or lead nurturing strategies that are working or cut back on methods that aren’t working.
How to Create a Inbound Marketing Funnel?
Step 1 – Analyze Your Current Sources of Traffic Acquisition
The first thing you need to do in creating an inbound marketing funnel is analyzing where most of your current traffic is coming from. You can use Google Analytics for this. In Google Analytics, if you take a look at your acquisition report you’ll be able to view a breakdown of where all your traffic is coming from.
If you have set goals or connected Google Analytics to your web store, that is great! You should also see where the majority of your conversions came from as well.
The majority of the time, you can set organic traffic and paid media as your two focal points for your marketing funnel.
Step 2 – Use a template online or create your marketing funnel diagram
You can use a marketing funnel template found online or create one from scratch. All you need is a tool like word or excel that allows you to create shapes and put text in them or along the side.
All you need to do is draw two trapezoids and a triangle. Make your first trapezoid larger than the second one. Also, make your triangle smaller than your final trapezoid. Name these shapes from top to bottom, TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU. You now have the outline of your marketing funnel complete.
Step 3 – Build Out Your Awareness Stage (TOFU)
For the first trapezoid, jot down the methods you use to acquire leads.
At the top of the funnel or awareness stage, you will most likely be using organic search or paid media.
For organic search, this means you need to have a website that contains a blog that produces quality content to attract users to your website.
If you opt for paid media, you’ll need a media budget most likely greater than $3,000 per month to see results from Facebook or Google. Again, you’ll need a website or a landing page.
You’ll also need some form of sign-up on your website. Since you have visitors clicking on your content from organic search or clicking ads to your website from paid media, you’ll need a way to get users’ information and turn them into leads.
A great way to do this is by offering an email signup form on your website. People enter their names and email address. Most email tools have an email signup form that can be embedded onto your site and there are tons of plugins out there that can capture user information.
Step 4 – Build Out Your Consideration Stage (MOFU)
Your next step is to work on the middle of the funnel or consideration stage. In this portion of the diagram, you write down all the methods you use to nurture the leads.
You’ll most likely use email marketing for this stage. This will require you to build out emails using your email tool. The goal here isn’t to bombard your audience with messaging asking them to buy but rather educate them on their problem and gently communicate the idea that your product or service is their solution.
In the backend, you need to decide how long you want to wait before you make your first outreach in trying to get sale conversions.
My own best practice is to look at the price point of the product or service you’re trying to sell. If you asking for an investment that costs the customer thousands of dollars, I would use a longer nurturing cycle as the user will want to have the most information available to make the best-informed decision because it is a large investment.
If you are selling a product or service that costs less than $100 you might want to use a shorter nurturing cycle because there are most likely lots of competition around the same price point competing for your leads’ attention.
Step 5 – Build Out Your Decision Stage (BOFU)
The last portion of your diagram requires you to decide on how you will convert leads that are ready to purchase.
The bottom of the funnel requires you to collaborate with your sales team. You need to find how long leads take to convert to your products or services. You also need to find out what methods your sales team use to follow up with their customers. Do they just call? Do they send an email and then call? This is important information you need to set up the last portion of your email marketing automation.
Once you have the information you need, you need to setup up a triggering event in your automation. If you’re using lead scoring, once a lead accumulates “X” amount of points or if a lead takes the desired action – you want to set up a trigging event that notifies the sales team that the lead is ready to be contacted and the ball is in their court. Most email marketing software has an automatic trigger built-in but if you have to manually do it, you just need to select to send an internal email to yourself or the sales team.
Conclusion
The marketing funnel is very much an important part of the inbound marketing methodology. If you don’t have a well-oiled marketing funnel, you run the risk of losing track of your top converting sources of traffic and overall optimization can be difficult.
Building a marketing funnel is very simple. Just list out a source of traffic acquisition and means to capture lead information. Then create an email marketing automation flow to nurture leads and educate them on why your product or service is a solution to their problems. And finally, consult with your sales team and determine the appropriate time to call or message a marketing qualified lead to ultimately have them convert for your business.
