Marketing Funnels Beginner’s Guide: Everything You Should Know About Marketing Funnels

Marketing Funnels Beginner’s Guide

If you've ever launched marketing campaigns, you've probably come across the term marketing funnels - visual representations of the customer journey.

As marketers get more and more interested in it - and for good reasons which I'll explain in more detail below - we've found the informational chaos around this topic disheartening, to say the least. one could say.

That's why, in this article, we've decided to bring it all together:

• definition of the marketing funnel and different types of funnel
• use cases on the people to whom it is most useful
• tips and best practices for creating high converting funnels

Finally, we'll provide you with a step-by-step guide to help you create a marketing funnel that will work for your business.

To show you how easy this process can be, we'll be using GetResponse conversion funnels, which you can read more about on this blog.

With that out of the way, let's start by defining the marketing funnel guide.

Russel Brunson looking for 100 highly-motivated people (who haven’t made a sale with a funnel yet) who want his team to help them build and launch their first funnel. You can take a look at everything that’s in the GIANT $8,745 “Your First Funnel” gift that you get when you sign up for the LIVE Coaching

Marketing Beginer's Guide: TABLE OF CONTENT

• What is a marketing funnel?
• Types of funnels
• The benefits of marketing funnels
• What types of businesses can benefit the most?
• Marketing funnel strategies
• How to create a marketing funnel - best practices
• Create your funnel today

What is a marketing funnel?

The marketing funnel is a system that helps you attract consumers, turn them into leads or prospects, and finally convert them into paying customers.

Marketing funnels are often referred to as “sales funnels”, “lead funnels”, “buying funnels”, “conversion funnels” and other similar terms.

And why is it called a funnel?

Because when you think about the size of your audience at each step, it looks a bit like it.

Visual representation of a marketing funnel.

Let's say you sell an online writing course:

1. At first, your audience is large. By using Facebook ads and other promotional tactics, you are trying to reach as many potential students as possible. This is the top of your funnel, which is its widest part.
2. You were successful in showing your ads to a lot of people, but only a few of them decided to click on the ad and go to your landing page. Your audience size has shrunk, as would the funnel itself.
3. On your landing page, you offered a free resource, like an eBook on 10 Writing Tactics For Social Media Specialists. Some of your website visitors got interested and decided to download the eBook and provide you with their email address. Again some people fell and your funnel got a little thinner at this point.
4. Then you sent a series of emails to everyone who downloaded your eBook. The last email invited them to join the paid version of your course.
5. Some of your recipients dropped out and some ended up signing up for the course. And that usually marks the end of the funnel.

What about other scenarios where the conversion does not happen online or requires contact with a sales agent? These are also called funnels.

Whether you buy a coffee from a large coffee shop chain or buy a house from a real estate agent, the way these businesses sell is also done through marketing funnels.

Types of Funnels

While marketing funnels are the broader term that covers various use cases, there are several types of funnels you might like to come across:

• Lead magnet funnels
• List building funnels
• Webinar funnels
• Social media marketing funnels
• Video sales funnels
• Email funnels

As you can see, besides the marketing channel that your funnel is based on, your funnels can also have different purposes, for example:

• sell a product or service
• build a contact list
• promote an event

Naturally, you can just as easily use funnels to collect survey responses or ask people to sign up for a live demo of your platform.

The benefits of marketing funnels

As you can see in the following Google Trends report, interest in marketing funnels has grown steadily over the past five years.

And we can see where it's coming from.

While almost all advertising campaigns are aimed at generating sales - in one way or another - not all are designed to do so directly.

Using a funnel and the AIDA model helps marketers visualize the steps and tasks that advertising campaigns need to accomplish before the consumer makes the decision to purchase a particular product or service. If you're not convinced, take this sales funnel template as an example.

In other words, the marketing and sales funnels will help you organize your campaigns and drive your target audience strategically to action.

Find out how Alex Terrier, a jazz musician and music teacher selling online lessons, achieved a 19% email sign-up rate and attracted 253 new contacts in 30 days through the GetResponse funnel.

Funnel software tools, like GetResponse Conversion Funnel, also help you choose the best steps to include in your funnel. Both pre-designed models and funnel scenarios successfully eliminate the guesswork.

For each stage of this so-called customer journey, marketers can choose different marketing tools and tactics to help their consumers move up the funnel and make the buying decision.

This visual showcases some of the most popular tactics used at each stage of the marketing funnel:

AIDA model with marketing tactics appropriate for each stage.

At the same time, for each of the stages, marketers will use different KPIs and KPIs to report on the progress of their campaign.

To give you a better overview, here are some examples of metrics you would likely report on in the three key areas of your funnel - Top of Funnel (TOFU), Middle of Funnel (MOFU), Bottom of Funnel ( BOFU).

Metrics marketers use for different funnel stages

OK, this all explains why using marketing funnels is good for your business, but it doesn't explain why their popularity has increased over the past five years. After all, the AIDA and funnel models have been used by advertisers for over 100 years.

The main reason is technology.

In the past, you had to separately develop all the elements of your marketing funnel and then link them together.

To be clearer, here's what you normally should have done individually:

• disseminate advertisements on social networks,
• create landing pages,
• set up e-mail sequences with automatic answering machine,
• set up exit intent forms,
• offer incentive or cart abandonment offers,
• etc.

Nowadays, you can connect each of these through an API or out-of-the-box integrations and plugins.

Or better yet, you can use the GetResponse conversion funnel, which offers all of said elements within one platform.

What are the advantages of this approach?

1. You don't have to spend time integrating all the different tools to create your own marketing funnel - it's done for you, automatically.
2. Plus, you don't need to pay for separate tools like Landing Page Builder, Email Marketing, Email Auto Responder, Social Media Ad Builder, Webinar Platform, etc., everything is integrated with your GetResponse account.
3. Finally, with built-in payment processing and tracking features, you can both sell and measure your sales results right from a dashboard.

What types of businesses can benefit the most?

All types of businesses, of course! Marketing funnels help you turn prospects into customers, and that's what every business is for, right? Now take a look at some examples of businesses that could benefit from using marketing funnels and how they would do it.

1. Local business

Suppose you run a local business that offers a wedding planning service:

1. At the top of your marketing funnel, you'll probably want to focus on driving traffic to a specific landing page, such as through Facebook ads.
2. There, you'll want to turn those visitors into prospects, for example, by offering them the option to sign up for your wedding planning advice newsletter.
3. Once they sign up, they immediately go into an email sequence consisting of several messages with tips for a stress-free marriage. This is the middle of the funnel.
4. After reading your tips, your followers might find that putting on a spectacular wedding takes a lot of time and effort (and stress!), And they might not want to do it all on their own.
5. That's why at some point in the sequence (when you know they're approaching the bottom of the funnel), you can pitch your upsell offer - your services that will make your customers feel like guests at their own marriage.
6. Anyone who is interested can contact you directly or purchase any of your wedding planning packages directly from the site.

And There you go.

Want to use this funnel idea? Go ahead. It's done for you with a full set of landing pages and autoresponder templates in GetResponse Conversion Funnel (fka Autofunnel).

Example of a funnel template for local service available in GetResponse

Use this funnel template

2. E-commerce business

Suppose you have a store that sells sweets, chocolates, and candies.

How can you generate more sales using funnels?

Here is one way to do it.

1. You set up a funnel that starts with a landing page and a lead magnet. The lead magnet? A cookbook or collection of recipes for healthy snacks.
2. After you generate traffic to the page from social media ads and emails, you can feed those who filled out the form.
3. Simply set up an auto responder sequence with a series of tips and cooking recipes.
4. After several such emails, you are ready to showcase your real products.
5. Drive your email subscribers to the sales page where they will happily convert into paying customers.

And for those who didn't convert right away, try again, send them another offer several days later, and amplify the reach of your campaign with social media ads.

Example of a funnel template for online store available in GetResponse

Use this funnel template

What if you are an ecommerce business that sells digital products? It will work just as well.

In this video below, Leslie Samuel explains how to sell online courses with funnels.

3. Coaching business

Do you run a coaching business?

As an expert in the field, you want to sell an online course or membership program to new audiences.

1. To do that, at the top of your funnel you can set up a landing page with a lead magnet, for example, an ebook on how to land your first customer.
2. To drive traffic, you’d set up a social media ad campaign to reach an audience that looks similar to your existing clients.
3. After a user fills out the form, they receive an ebook along with a series of autoresponder emails with additional tips on how they can win more customers and improve their business.
4. After several emails, it’s time to present your upsell offer, the membership program, or a paid course.
5. That’s when you drive traffic from your emails to your sales page.
6. To increase your conversion rate, you’d typically include an exit intent form and also track which users filled out the form and completed the order.
7. Then, you could retarget those who haven’t committed – maybe they abandoned the page or haven’t clicked through to the sales page.

And that's all.

Of course, you can extend this process and, for example, A / B test your landing pages to optimize them for conversion.

Example of a funnel template for coaching business available in GetResponse

Use this funnel template

In this video below, Sean Smith shows you how to sell your coaching course online using a sales funnel.

Marketing funnel strategies

I'm sure you already know this:

No email can meet all of your subscribers' needs.

Which brings us to one of the main advantages of the funnel marketing approach:

Funnels “force” you to remember the customer journey, the different stages of the lifecycle, and the changing needs of your subscribers.

This is what makes this framework useful - and effective too.

To help guide your subscribers through your funnel, we've developed this Email Marketing Funnel infographic.

Below, I've summarized its main points, but feel free to bookmark it and save it for later.

This will come in handy when you start to develop or optimize your existing marketing funnels.

Consciousness

Your audience is not yet aware of your brand and the products and services you offer. You need to change that as effectively as possible.

To do this, focus on lead generation.

Create a landing page, create a main magnet, and drive traffic to your page.

There are many ways to generate traffic effectively.

Use Facebook ads, Google search ads, graphic ads, add banners to your pages, email your existing mailing list, sponsor a podcast, or partner with another business.

Make sure that you don't just attract just any audience - it should be a target email list of people that you could potentially convert later.

Remember to choose the right primary magnet for your audience. Not everyone will be interested in an eBook or a checklist.

And don't forget to retarget those who have interacted with your ads. This will help you get more for your money.

Read more on this:

1. How to create Google Search Ads in GetResponse

2. How to design Facebook Ads in GetResponse

3. Lead generation guide for beginners

Consideration

So you've managed to turn some of your landing page visitors into email subscribers.

Good work!

Now is the time to help them realize that what you are offering is the right solution to their problem.

To do this, create an auto responder email cycle that will discuss different aspects of the topic that interests your subscriber. In doing so, be sure to highlight the strengths of your offering and why your brand should appear naturally when they think about it. from subject.

During this process, you'll want your prospects to engage with your brand and products.

• If this is a video course that you are selling, let them watch some of the course materials, answer a few quiz questions, and download additional materials.
• If it's an ebook, give them a free sample that includes the first few chapters.
• If it's a physical product like a t-shirt, show your followers how it can be worn on different occasions to suit their mood and style.

You know where I'm going with this.

To improve your game, try email automation. Send them in response to the actions of your subscribers and users.

You will soon see why triggered emails outperform regular emails over and over again.

Here you can learn more about what email automation is and how you can use it for your business.

action

It's time to convert your email subscribers into paying customers.

At this point, your email communication should motivate your audience to take action and engage.

Emphasize why they shouldn't waste any more time. Overcome hesitation using testimonials, customer reviews and case studies. Use the language that works for your audience.

If your product is going to help them save money or advance their careers, show them the numbers! If you are selling a physical item with limited inventory, now is the time to clarify. And whether you offer a money back guarantee, easy or free returns, a free trial period - all of that should be highlighted in your email sequence.

Eliminating Friction in the Funnel

Take this free guide and learn the main findings of our groundbreaking study with Demand Metric.

Download the guide

How to create a marketing funnel - best practices

Creating a marketing funnel doesn't have to be rocket science, it just takes a little time.

But creating an effective marketing funnel takes both time and practice.

That's why we've put together the best practices that will help you get started at an already high level, which you can then improve on your own.

1. Effectively generate traffic

As I mentioned before, it's not about driving traffic to your landing page or squeeze page. It's about driving the right traffic.

Focus your efforts on identifying the audience that is likely to convert.

This means reducing your segmentation when setting up social media ads, using lookalike audiences, and observing which users take the desired action.

If you find that certain groups, in particular, are visiting your site without converting, it is probably best to remove them from your target group or adjust your ads to better meet their needs.

To learn more about driving traffic to your landing pages, read our guide.

2. Choose the right lead magnet

Take a look at this list of lead magnet ideas and the study we conducted with 790 marketers.

After considering these, you should understand that the same main magnet will not work for everyone. This is why you need to understand who you are targeting and then test your instincts.

Maybe a checklist will win an ebook? Or a file by e-mail during an individual consultation? Rate each major magnet, but don't just focus on the money.

Sometimes it's about how quickly your audience can benefit from the main magnet, not how big it is. Have you ever downloaded an ebook that you never read because it was too big? That's what I mean.

3. Optimize your communication for all devices

Now it shouldn't be repeated, but I will. Your website, landing pages, and emails should be optimized for all types of devices.

At the same time, if for some reason the mobile experience of any of these doesn't work, ask yourself if you really want to target mobile users?

See if mobile users are converting, and if not, make a strategic decision if you want to include them in your targeting.

To learn more about mobile optimization, be sure to read our responsive landing page design guide and email design guide.

4. Correctly define your goals and parameters

This is something that we marketers often get confused about. What we're looking for are vanity metrics. But what interests us are actionable metrics.

Are you really interested in how many people have visited your page or how many of them have converted? Are you interested in how many people opened your email or how many clicked on your incentive?

Write down your goals, then make sure you focus on the right metrics - the ones you have an influence on that bring you closer to growing your business.

The funnel visual highlighting funnel metrics commonly used by marketers should get you started.

5. Nurture your leads

The idea behind marketing funnels is to target customers with the right kind of content at the right time. Don't ask for a pledge right away.

You include the address on your order form for those who have already arrived with the "I'm ready to buy" mindset. For the others, you will have to feed them first.

6. Experiment and increase your conversion rates

Even if you know your target audience very well, chances are you have more than one idea on how best to approach them.

Rather than following your gut, you can evaluate your ideas by running A / B tests. What can you test? For example, your squeeze pages or your follow-up email sequences

In doing so, don't just focus on changing the color of your CTA buttons - these things may not have a major impact on your conversion rates.

Different copy, location of your signup form, location or type of social proof, videos, etc. these can help you improve your conversion rates and grow your business.

These resources will help you optimize your funnels for more conversions:

1. How to lower your Facebook ad costs & improve ROI

2. How to make a squeeze page that converts

3. Guide to effective email drip campaigns

4. How to make a sales page that works

Create your funnel today

Now that we've covered the basics, you're ready to start building your marketing funnels.

The good news is that with the funnel templates out of the box, this process shouldn't take you too long. So now the question is ...

How are you going to use this knowledge?

Let me know by leaving a comment below ??

And if you want to see the entire process of building a sales funnel from scratch, here it is:

Ready to build your first marketing or sales funnel? Take a tour of GetResponse conversion funnels and see how easy the funnel building process can be.