The marketing funnel is one of the most important concepts in the industry. It outlines the necessary steps to drive a sale from someone who has no knowledge of you or your product to someone willing to purchase. 

Each stage of the funnel requires attention to effectively raise awareness and build an audience, drive them to consider your offerings, make a decision to engage with your company, and ultimately purchase your product or service. 

All four stages matter and must be activated to make a complete and functional marketing plan.

Let’s break down our four stages:

1) Awareness

People must first be aware of who you are and what you do before they could ever consider buying from you. In this stage, we focus on building foundational knowledge of your company’s brand and what desire you fill. 

We can raise awareness through the following tactics: 

• Broadcast and Online Video Commercials 

• Radio and Digital Audio Commercials 

• Outdoor and Digital Display Ads 

• Print Ads 

• Social Media 

In this stage, not only do we need to focus on building your company’s brand, but also raising awareness of the need that would lead our prospective customers to your front door. 

2) Interest 

Once a person becomes aware of your brand, they can build interest in your offerings. We begin selling your product or service in this stage rather than “building the foundational awareness,” stage one. 

It is vital to acknowledge not all prospective customers come to the table with the same knowledge. 

Your advertisements can lead with either who you are and what you offer or their need. Both pieces are critical! 

Prospective Customer A - If your prospect knows who you are but are unaware of their need for your product - build your advertisement to lead with your brand to capture their attention and intensify any pain point in their life help them understand their need for your product. 

Prospective Customer B - On the other hand, if your prospect acknowledges their need but doesn't know who you are - capture their attention and interest by leading with and intensifying their need, then connect the need with your brand.  

Likely Customer - The best case is if prospective customers know your brand and their need. Messaging at this point comes down to how you are better than the competition and/or financial incentives to pull them in. 

Distant Prospect - The worse type of prospective customer is someone who doesn't know you or their need for what you offer. These distance prospects will take time and require more time in phase one of our marketing funnel, awareness. 

Prospective customers can fall into four categories: 

We can judge interest through the following data: 

• Video and Audio Ad View Rates 

• Click-Through Rates on Digital Display Ads 

• Engagement on Social Media

• Website Visits 

• Unique Promotional Landing Page Visits

3) Decision 

Once your prospective customer has become aware of your company’s brand and how you can fulfill their needs, they make the decision - the decision to move forward in the buying process or not.

We track the decision phase of our marketing funnel through trackable actions. Traditional and digital marketing processes do not perfectly record all instances where an action occurs based on an ad, as customers can go directly to the store and not click on an ad nor mention they heard about it on the radio. Regardless, significant advancements have been made to effectively track the performance of advertisements. 

We can track decisions through the following data/actions: 

• Phone Calls 

• Website Form Entries

• Store Visits 

• Facebook Form Entries or Messenger Conversations 

• How Did You Hear Of Us Surveys

4) Purchase 

After all the hard work of raising awareness, building interest, and working with customers who decide to engage with you, we have our opportunity to make a sale! 

To achieve a purchase, customers MUST walk through these four stages. SI EQ’s team understands this and actively works to make sales today and tomorrow. 

5) Repeat 

Many marketers stop at the purchase - AND THEY ARE WRONG! We must think past the purchase and about building our customers’ brand loyalty, turning them into repeat customers, and using their testimony to build interest in a new line of prospects. Stay tuned for an article about this very topic!