What Is a Marketing Funnel?

In the marketing industry, there’s a lot of jargon floating around — we get it.

Some terms are more useful than others, and knowing what a marketing funnel is is essential to understanding how your customers think.

From first hearing about your business to purchasing a product or a service from your site — a marketing funnel outlines your customer’s journey with you.

How Does The Marketing Funnel Work?

A marketing funnel can illustrate customer behaviours like a map, describing the route to conversions. An in-depth analysis of your marketing funnel will highlight areas of what your company needs to do to influence consumers at specific stages.

Marketing funnels work to advertise a product or service, which gives your leads a reason to buy from you. This isn’t to be confused with the sales funnel, which targets the leads generated from the marketing funnel to entice them to make purchases.

Take a bit of time to evaluate your marketing funnel.

Why?

Understanding your market better can drive sales and brand awareness and increase loyalty and familiarity with your brand.

Marketing Funnel Examples

Did you know that 65% of people are visual learners? That’s why seeing visual representations helps it all sink in better.

The marketing funnel visualises the steps a site visitor takes from first hearing about your brand right up to the first conversion they make. Marketing funnels are a crucial marketing fundamental to curating the perfect content for your target audience.

So, what’s with the funnel analogy?

The way customers behave can be easily explained and represented in a funnel shape.

At the beginning of the process, there is a wide target audience of customers, but, by the end, only a proportion become actual customers.

Imagine it like this:

You’re a small, independent company specialising in delicious peanut butter and choc chip cookies.
You’ll want to target anyone who likes cookies or has a sweet tooth — a wide target audience.
But not everyone likes peanuts. Some people are allergic; others don’t like the flavour.
At the end of the day, only a small percentage of customers will buy your cookies.

Now you’ve got the basic idea, we’ll go into a little more detail.

The most basic marketing funnel is divided into three types of customers:

TOFU
MOFU
and BOFU.

I know what you’re thinking. Tofu? Isn’t that condensed blocks of soy milk that vegans love so much?

Not in this case.

TOFU, MOFU and BOFU refer to the three types of customers at varying stages of the funnel (top, middle and bottom). These acronyms make each part of the marketing funnel easier to remember.

Top of Funnel (TOFU)

The top of the funnel is where most consumers will be. They might have seen one of your ads on social media, or perhaps a poster at a train station has caught their eye — whatever it is, this is the stage consumers are introduced to your business.

First impressions matter!

Content targeted at these consumers should be geared at raising awareness about your product or service.

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Middle of Funnel (MOFU)

Customers in the middle of the funnel know your business a bit better. They’re likely to have visited your website before and might be comparing you with your competitors.

This is the stage where consumers are assessing their options.

Use this opportunity to guide your target audience into choosing a solution to their problem. Conveniently, it’ll be the one you offer!

Below is an example of a questionnaire from The Ordinary skincare brand on their site that can guide middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU) customers to purchase. Interested customers answer simple questions about their skin to receive personalised, recommended skincare products.

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Bottom of Funnel (BOFU)

At the bottom of the funnel, you’ll find the consumers on the cusp of converting. They’re almost there; they just need a little push!

All the content created at this stage needs to encourage conversions as much as possible. Offering free trials and demos or sharing glowing customer reviews can all help customers make that all-important purchase.

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The above example shows what happens after you complete The Ordinary’s “regimen builder”. It’s incredibly easy to add your personalised selection of skincare products straight to your basket or have it emailed to you to view or purchase later.

For those on the fence at the bottom of the funnel, the convenient option to buy curated moisturiser, serum and cleanser all in one place is an instant winner.

AIDA Marketing Funnel Templates

The TOFU-MOFU-BOFU model isn’t the only type of marketing funnel template out there.

The AIDA model is a popular way of exploring a customer’s relationship with a business.

American advertising advocate, Elias St. Elmo Lewis, dreamed up the AIDA model at the end of the 19th Century to help marketers understand how customers interacted with their brand.

Instead of just three stages, the AIDA model comprises four different funnel stages:

Attention

At this stage, consumers are new to your brand. You’ve established your target audience, so now you’ve got to communicate clearly and effectively what your offering is. The content you create should educate customers about your services or products or provide a solution to their problems.

Interest

The clue’s in the name. At this point, you’ve secured a curious customer who wants to know more. They need to know if your product is suitable for them, the cost and how it measures up to competitor products or services.

Desire

Consumers at the “desire” stage are ready to convert. They’ve got your products in their basket but haven’t taken the last step and made that purchase.

Action

Finally! This is the stage you’ve been waiting for: the customer makes a purchase. Make your online checkout as easy to complete as possible; you want to secure that conversion.

The basic AIDA model is made up of the above four stages.

At Thinkplus, we like to add another dimension: the retention stage.

It’s not technically included in the AIDA model, but we figure it’s important for keeping existing customers. After all, keeping customers is cheaper than finding new ones.

Automated email campaigns, discounts on recurring subscriptions and marketing in community spaces (e.g. Facebook groups, Slack, Discord) can help you maintain a good relationship with your regular customers.

Think of all the times you’ve seen a product online, thought, “I like that,” and got distracted. That was you in the “desire” stage. You might forget about it and then see an ad or a social media post reminding you of the product again. You’ve returned to the “interest” stage.

The marketing funnel is a useful visualisation tool. But it’s important to remember that some customers will move back and forth through different funnel stages.

Differences Between B2B and B2C Marketing Funnels

Your marketing funnel needs to suit the user personas of your target customers. Depending on your customer base, how customers navigate your marketing funnel changes.

B2C (business-to-consumer) customers either travel through the marketing funnel alone or with loved ones and friends.
B2B (business-to-business) customers have large buying groups that focus on interacting directly with sales representatives. This is in the lower portion of the marketing funnel.

The Benefits of Marketing Funnels

The idea of using marketing funnels is to clearly illustrate the customer’s journey from first impressions to eventually (hopefully!) converting.

Other benefits include:

Flexibility — A marketing funnel can track a wide range of customer interactions. From online sales to click collecting as an affiliate, marketing funnels bring visibility to every moment of connection with your customer.
Measurability — Arguably the biggest benefit, marketing funnels show you where you might be losing customers. Based on this, you can alter your marketing strategy.

Marketing funnels are a simple and easy way for companies to follow how consumers interact with their brand and each step of the purchasing decision process.

Understanding your client base better will help you define exactly what your customers want and how you can provide it.

It just takes a little research to get started!

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