On television shows, we often see business teams planning for their operations. One of the most distinctive images whenever these are aired, apart from all the suits, are the graphic representations being shown through a projector. This is very much like real-world business planning meetings. Planning illustrations are often made to create a wider understanding of the plan being presented. A marketing funnel is a type of graphic representation of business plans.
What is a Marketing Funnel?
A marketing team is tasked with planning throughout the whole customer part of the supply chain. This means that sales are not the only thing they would be concerned about. They have to be committed to customer satisfaction from the point of sale to the point where customer satisfaction is given. This way, they would be able to predict the decline of the product in the market over time. A marketing funnel is a funnel diagram depicting the story of the customer with the company. The shape of a marketing funnel is literally funnel-shaped, indicating that the process of attracting customers gets more difficult as the story goes to the bottom. A funnel has a bottle-neck representation at the bottom. This part is usually occupied by the part involving the commitment of the customer to the company. In much simpler terms, the marketing funnel generally recognizes that luring customers is the easiest part of the story, with locking in customers as the most difficult part.
How the Marketing Funnel Works
The marketing funnel basically sums up the story of how the customer ultimately purchases the firm’s products or services. In essence, it serves as a guide to help the company determine the necessary actions to take. From top to bottom, the first stage is awareness. Letting the population know about the product is by far the easiest thing to do for marketing. It would only involve several knowledge streams like the internet, fliers, or TV ads. The next stage is interesting, where they aim to get the “X-factor” for the customer. The third phase is a consideration, where the upper wide head of the funnel ends, with intent, evaluation, and purchase would go in order for the bottle-neck. It would be inferred from the figure that in marketing, the difficulty would start with consideration, as other factors like alternative products, costs, and the commitments required for the product to be purchased would be analyzed by consumers. The most difficult parts include the intent, evaluation, and purchase. These parts of the marketing story often involve one common denominator, which is the decision. To summarize, the intent involves the desire of the customer to purchase, the evaluation involves the final look at the product, and the purchase would speak for itself.
Conclusion
At first look, one may think that the marketing funnel would only be about the analogy. However, this outline is mostly used by the company to divide the tasks necessary to guide the customer towards the purchase stage. From the moment of awareness to purchase, they could analyze consumer behavior based on the level within the marketing funnel and choose moves which would increase the likelihood of reaching the purchase level.