One of the major components of running an online business is a digital marketing sales funnel. The purpose of a marketing sales funnel is to guide a potential customer from being aware of a product or a service, to considering it and finally making a purchase or subscribing to a service.
To achieve a high performing online conversions, a digital marketing funnel must have an easy-to-follow path that guides or nurtures the customer all the way through. Each step in the funnel should provide valuable content or incentives that will help the customer in making a decision as they progress on each step.
Econsultancy have reported that 50% of companies say conversion rate optimisation is a crucial part of their digital marketing strategy hence creating digital marketing funnels is significantly important for any business.
According to Wordstream, the average conversion rate in Google Ads for businesses that fall under the Business and Industrial category is at 3.71% while Retailers and General category stores are at 4.23%.
If your current conversion rates fall below the above benchmarks, you may want to consider optimising your conversion rates by creating your marketing conversion funnels. This article provides ideas on how you can build your own.
B2B Digital Marketing Funnel for lead nurturing
The main purpose of designing an online B2B marketing funnel is to convert your leads into paying customers. This is done by creating content to nurture the leads.
The first step of creating your B2B marketing conversion funnel is to define your marketing funnel steps.
The journey should start with a potential customer being aware of a product or service you are offering. The top cutout is called TOFU or Top of the Funnel step.
The second step is to nurture these potential customers or leads by using highly personalized content to keep them engaged and eventually convert them from a cold lead into a warm lead. This is called the MOFU or Middle of the Funnel step.
The bottom cutout is when you convert your leads into a paying customer. In most cases, this is when companies provide content with promotions or discounts to trigger the customer to buy or subscribe.
Once you have created your marketing funnel steps, you have to create or develop online assets or contents designed for each step in the funnel.
TOFU stage is when you create awareness articles that explain in general why your customers need your products.
MOFU stage is when you create contents that position your company as the best provider in the industry. This is done by showcasing your current customers testimonials, success stories or even awards and recognitions your company has received.
BOFU is when you create a landing page designed to convert your leads into a buying customer. This is when you provide content such as case studies, product demo or consultations.
How to track and build a digital marketing funnel?
Since you are using online assets such as a website or landing pages, you can track performance of your funnel using analytics tools such as Adobe Analytics or Google Analytics.
First, define your metric that you will use for the funnel. You can use Unique Page Views or Page Views as a metric to see if your customers are moving from TOFU, MOFU to BOFU.
Second, map your content based on each step/stage.
Finally, create or design a funnel using tools like excel or Tableau.
image from smartinsights
Actionability
Aside from using conventional lead scoring tools, the marketing funnel approach enables you to create triggers whenever your leads reach the BOFU stage.
Example, if a customer triggers a page view on a BOFU content landing page, you can flag that customer as a very warm lead and start making an action by calling them or sending them a personalized email.
B2C Digital Marketing Funnel for Ecommerce
Compared to B2B, B2C funnel for eCommerce is very straightforward. The objective of building a marketing funnel for B2C eCommerce is to achieve high conversion rates on direct purchase.
For eCommerce websites, the first step is to identify the series of steps the potential customers have to go through to complete a purchase.
From plan selection stage, to add-ons stage, input personal details, submitting your payment details, purchase stage and thank you stage.
How to track and build a digital marketing funnel?
Once you identify your eCommerce buying stages, you can create triggers for each stage and send those data in analytics tools such as Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics. You can use metrics such as unique page views or page views to track each step/stage.
Finally, similar to the B2B marketing funnel, you can create your reports or dashboard using tools like excel or Tableau.
Actionability
The dashboard must have the capability to filter the funnel based on acquisition channels. E.g., it must have the ability to split the funnel performance based on organic, social, performance media or EDM channels.
From there, you can identify which channels have the most drop off per steps/stages. This will explain clearly why some channels have high conversion rates compared to others.
E.g If organic channels have a better conversion funnel cone shape, for example, more fat at the bottom stage compared to paid channels, it means that organic channels attract high quality or high intent customers compared to paid channels.
You may want to consider optimising paid channels by understanding what kind of keywords your SEO team uses for organic channels and create similar variations for SEM campaigns.
You can also create funnels for Desktop and Mobile users to compare which device your customers converts better.
To summarise, a successful digital marketing funnel should have plenty of traffic coming in at the top of the funnel, with more conversion opportunities for each traffic source down at the bottom.
Each step in the process should offer an incentive for them to move forward and provide valuable content that leads to conversion.