Every marketing plan, whether it’s digital or not, starts with a visualization of the entire marketing funnel. It makes the whole marketing plan clearer and more focused.
In this article, we’re going to talk about Digital Marketing Funnel & how to create an effective one.
What is the Digital Marketing Funnel?
The Digital Marketing Funnel is essentially the marketing, sales and purchasing funnel. It is a strategic model that depicts the process flow of the entire buying journey, from the moment your prospects learn about your brand to the time when they are converted into customers.
The marketing funnel helps marketing experts to better visualize and understand in detail the prospect’s persona, line of thought, considerations, decision-making and buying behaviour. In return, they get to strategize and optimize their marketing offerings to cater to the prospects’ needs and guide them down from the top of the funnel (TOFU) to the bottom of the funnel (BOFU).
Before getting to know how to create one, business owners like you should get the gist of the different kinds of Digital Marketing funnels first. At the end of the day, choosing the right one could potentially increase your brand awareness as well as your sales conversion. And the wrong and unsuitable one would waste your marketing budget and efforts.
The types of Digital Marketing Funnel
1. AIDA Model
The AIDA model is the best-known model among all the classic marketing funnels. It is a traditional proven framework that has been used for decades. This model is built on the assumption of the buyers’ cognitive (thinking), emotive and behavioural stages in the purchasing journey.
AIDA stands for Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action.
Awareness: Your prospects become aware of your brand and products
Interest: Their attention has been captured, and they are curious and interested to learn more about it. This is also the stage for discovering and researching
Desire: They have generated a favourable impression of your brand. This is when they are imagining a desirable situation or solution after using your products which bring about feelings of liking and wanting
Action: They are convinced and ready to take action in engaging and interacting with your brand. Thus, they actively visit your shop, download a brochure or make a phone call.
2. Hourglass Model
The modern Digital Marketing Funnel takes on the approach of an hourglass shape instead of a funnel. It can be considered as a more detailed version of the AIDA Model that includes the post-purchase stages as well.
For the AIDA Model, the attention is focused on converting the new prospects into customers, hence, illustrating all the stages of the pre-sales. However, do you know that it is 7X easier to keep an existing customer than to convert new prospects? That’s why the Hourglass Model focuses on the retention of customers.
Similar to the AIDA Model, the Hourglass Model focuses on attracting, nurturing and converting prospects. However, it is an expanded detailed version of the AIDA Model by including more stages to accommodate various kinds of marketing strategies.
3. Looping Model
While the AIDA Model is linear and sequential, the Looping Model aka Closed Loop Marketing is less structured and non-linear. This model is full of twists and turns. The customers do not go from one stage to the next, instead, they could go back or forth, resulting in loops. In fact, unlike linear models, the Loop Model never ends and is unique to every customer’s journey.
Just like the AIDA and Hourglass Model, the Loop Model also focuses on Awareness, Consideration, Purchase and Post-purchase Experience.
4. Micro-moments Model
The last model is a concept developed by Google, called Micro-moments Model. It fundamentally focuses on the thoughts of consumers at various moments that drive them to behave in a certain way. According to Google, micro-moments can be defined as an intentional and particular moment when one would reach out to a device to act upon a need, whether it’s to know, to go or to buy something.
Upon knowing these moments, it is crucial for the business to be there, be helpful and be accountable to the consumers.
How to create an effective one?
1. Define your goals and target audience
The first step is pretty simple: to define a goal for your marketing actions. It can be to increase brand awareness, sales conversions or return on investment (ROI).
Then, do market research on your target audience’s demographic. For instance, their age, buying habits, locations, and the social platforms they commonly use. This step allows you to understand your potential customers and know where to reach them.
2. Visualize and structure the funnel
Next, pick and decide which model you are going for. If you are not satisfied with the ones we’ve mentioned, you could customise one that’s specifically for your business too. Draw it out, visualize and structure the funnel so it is clear and doable for your team.
3. Include measurable actions to achieve your goals
After having your marketing funnel structured out, insert measurable actions and strategies to achieve your goal. For example, email marketing, social media marketing or search engine optimization.
4. Know when and what you need to do at every stage
The last thing you need to do is know when and what you need to implement at every stage of your marketing funnel.
Here are some examples:
Awareness: To create, build and increase awareness of your brand and products to the general or target audience.
Interest: To grab the attention of your target audience and generate interest in your product. Ideally, they should be curious and start to research them.
Desire: To create a desirable situation or solution for your prospect. To give your products meaning, personality and functionality that make prospects like and want them.
Action: Encourage prospects to take action in engaging and interacting with your brand. This includes making phone calls, downloading brochures or visiting your shop. It can also refer to the Call-to-action (CTA), which can be to buy now, read more, or contact us.
Since every customer’s buying journey is different, it is more practical to optimize a number of marketing tools instead of focusing on one.
Some buying journeys may look like this:
Instagram Ads > Instagram Page > Instagram Shop > Direct Messaging > Conversion
And others might be these:
Facebook Ads > Landing Page > eCommerce Site (Shopee / Lazada) > Conversion
Cold Email > Blog Page > Email List > Promotional Email > eCommerce Site > Conversion
Influencer Social Post > Instagram Page > eCommerce Site > Conversion
Ultimately, no one business’s digital marketing funnel is the same. So, brainstorm and discuss with your team to decide on the marketing funnel. Most importantly, conduct test runs on the funnel and review it from time to time to perfect it.
