The Marketing Funnel, to some marketing theorists is the answer to costing. It is a model used to illustrate how a potential customer can be translated into becoming a client.
How effective is the marketing funnel?
As the name implies, this model is broad at the top and narrow at the bottom (thereby a funnel is used). Besides having several stages to it, it will give you more insights into what marketing effort can be used in every part of the funnel.
Stages of the marketing funnel
There are several representations of the marketing funnel. Generally, they are divided into:
- Traffic (top of the funnel)
- Leads
- Marketing Qualified Leads
- Sales Qualified leads
- Opportunities
- Customers
Top of the funnel
This refers to the traffic and leads of the marketing campaign. What you want to do here is to have efforts and initiatives that will draw potential customers to you. When you do this, you will get involved with activities like:
- Search engine optimization and search engine marketing
- linking from other websites to you
- Social media links
Middle of the Funnel
This refers to the Marketing Qualified Leads and Sales Qualified leads sections. What you are looking for here is to find that someone who will be able to contribute greatly to your marketing and sales campaigns. These are those who fit your criteria and knows your industry inside out.
Meanwhile, the Sales Qualified lead is someone who can take appropriate actions to ensure your sales processes are effective and implemented accordingly. What you need to look for is the experts in these areas with good knowledge of sales processes.
Bottom of the Funnel
At the bottom of the funnel are opportunities and customers. This is where the sales qualified lead has used all the resources to create new or more opportunities for your business. And when the opportunity is converted into a customer or a client, you have them in your business.
What does it all mean
What it means here is that you can now put your marketing efforts into specific classifications. You will know where your expertise is coming from and how you can go about providing funding and budget. For instance, you know that more money needs to be spent at the top of the funnel but as you channel them downwards, lesser funds will be spent because once a customer is on-board, you need not spend as much to keep them. It would then all be about profit.