As business owners, it is unfortunate that loyal life-long customers do not just appear from thin air. Instead, a customer of this status goes through a long process before fully trusting and committing to the company they might be interested in. This process is known as a marketing funnel. A marketing funnel has to do with the sequence or series of stages to guide prospects through the customer journey. 

By understanding the stages of the marketing funnel, you can help optimize and guide your customer in the right direction toward your overall desired end goal. A simple, but effective marketing funnel includes the process of awareness, engagement, conversion, and advocacy. By understanding and utilizing these steps correctly, you’ll be on your way to creating loyal and lifelong relationships with your customers!

Awareness

The sad truth is, if a potential customer isn’t aware of your business, they won’t try and find it. People grow accustomed to familiar brands and businesses they are used to, and if they don’t know the benefits of your company they won’t look into it. With that being said, there are better ways than ever before to make a potential customer aware of your business through SEO, content marketing, digital advertising, and more. 

Thanks to social media advertising, you can strategically tailor your marketing content to a specific niche of people that you feel would benefit from your business. This means that you don’t need to waste your budget on people that have no need or interest in your business. Social media marketing on big platforms is generally very user-friendly, meaning it’s easy to create an advertisement and see the metrics to know if the advertisement is effective. Through the process of researching your ideal customer, you’ll be able to find the best place to advertise your brand while getting the most traction because of it.

Engagement

After making your potential customers aware of your business, they must engage with your content. Increased engagement will come from your business adding some sort of value to the viewer. This value can be through the form of content creation such as videos, blogs, social media posts, or anything else that helps your audience. By doing something different than a competing company, a viewer might find more use in your business and start to familiarize themselves with what you have to offer. If what you are offering is in their best interest, they will want to know more. 

Conversion 

Instead of blindly trying to sell your product to an audience who has no need or desire for your business, you can now confidently convert your engaged users into buyers. You will have a higher conversion rate from people who are interested in your business than people who are not and now that you have found the people who are engaged in your business you can convert them through email marketing, retargeting ads, and through your website. 

Advocacy 

To create a successful business, you must turn your customers into brand advocates. These are customers who market your company for free, out of love for your company. Brand advocates will market your business because you’ve influenced or helped them in some way, and in return they will tell people about it. To sustain these advocates, you must nurture your relationship with these customers and potentially incentivize them so you can keep their trust. This step of the marketing funnel can not be overlooked because it’s the most important when trying to grow a strong relationship with your customers who will follow your brand no matter what. 

A marketing funnel is an excellent way to grow your brand and gain customers who love your business. Though you might understand the marketing funnel now, many different tactics help execute the marketing funnel in the most effective way possible, making sure you get the most out of the content you are creating. The more tactics you try, you will find what works best for your company and take advantage of it to create the best strategy that works for you. 

Marketing takes a lot of trial and error and can be difficult to understand for someone who is learning for the first time. Need additional help with your social media marketing? We’d love to chat with you. Feel free to book a free strategy call with us now!