A Marketing Funnel is a term used to describe the journey you take with your customer.
The main journey customers take is:
- Awareness – Seeing adverts/posts about a certain activity or product.
- Interest – This could be researching the product or activity. It could be engaging with the site/company by following them on social media, liking a post, or looking at their site.
- Consideration – This rates to looking at similar sites/products and seeing which one suits your needs and commitments the best.
- Intent – After considering your choices you then decide on what you would like. A customer’s intent is when they go to that site/product/company to purchase.
- Evaluation – This is the final decision a customer must make. It could be whether they want a big or small version of the product, or do they want the all-inclusive package or not. Any little decisions about your purchase at the very end.
- Purchase – This is when the customer has decided what they would like to purchase and goes through with it.
The best scenario for a company is to have a customer go through all these steps resulting in a sale. However, that is not always the case. Some customers just stay at the awareness step and just want to look and see the possible options, while other customers are just about the action and only come on the site to purchase.
Every customer is different, but this is the generic journey most customers go through, and it is the steps you should consider when marketing and designing the layout of your site.
To give a more in-depth example let’s look at someone wanting to go on a cruise.
These are the steps a customer may take when booking a cruise:
- Awareness – Seeing Cruise adverts in your Social Feed,
- Interest – Googling what cruises are available,
- Consideration – Comparing Cruise Companies available and cruises for your time period,
- Intent – Going to a cruise company website to book,
- Evaluation – Considering different cabin options / packages / comparing prices,
- Purchase – Booking the cruise
What is a leaky funnel?
Many people in the marketing career debate whether a funnel is the correct term to use in this example. If you think of a funnel, it is a cylinder shape that helps you pour liquid from one place to another without spilling. However, when it comes to marketing a lot of people ‘spill’ out of the funnel.
It is very difficult to keep a customer and have them go through all the steps and stay at your site/product. I can’t be the only one to look at a site and know exactly what I want and then go to amazon and find it cheaper so buy it there instead, rather than the site I just spent an hour on.
If we were to look more generically at leaky funnels, it is the concept of reaching out to lots of people and ending with those in your target audience. As much as companies hate to lose customers if the result is a number the company likes then it is less of a big deal that they lost those customers along the way.
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If we take the shape of a funnel, it is bigger at the top. This can represent lots of people. A company can reach out to everyone and see who likes what they see. As you work your way down, more people realise it’s not for them, or too expensive. Or dates don’t work for them, any little reason why your site was not right for them. Then in the end you are left with those that stayed and did like the product and made a purchase.
While a site aims to keep and bring in lots of customers, it can not be the worst to lose those few that don’t like the product. If it allows them to reach those who will love it and return time and time to your site.