From an Inbound perspective, a marketing funnel (marketing funnel or customer funnel) is a system created to attract and optimize customer conversions through ‘seamless’ coordination between many different departments:
- The marketing department generates leads, assesses potential, and takes care of audiences that aren’t ready to convert.
- The sales department advises contacts on high-converting leads and provides important information to help the marketing team make appropriate adjustments.
By following these steps, you’ll be able to determine what aspects of your product are strong and what areas need improvement from the perspective of your consumers. When the conversion rates are low, or the monthly KPIs aren’t met, this tool may also assist the two divisions from butting heads too often. For example, consider the predicament: the sales team is complaining about the poor quality of leads, while the marketing team is complaining about the high volume of leads but the inability to “close” them.
Let’s read this post with Weapon Agency to find out what a marketing funnel model is and how to construct one:
What is a marketing funnel or a marketing funnel model?
To better understand the steps customers take from the “initiation” stage (when they are first exposed to your brand) to the “payment” stage (when they have decided to buy your product or service) you may need to create the marketing funnel. Your job now is to find out where your audience is getting stuck in the conversion process so you can devise a plan to “push” them forward.
Customers often progress very quickly in the early stages but will stall or ‘fall down’ when having to make a decision, especially when having problems with price, product quality, service, etc. And even when they are completely satisfied. satisfied with what you have to offer, uncontrollable factors such as friends’ opinions, incentives from competitors can also cause them to change their mind. Should the process be from stranger -> visitor -> lead -> customer, the conversion rate is never 100%. That’s also why the marketing funnel is funnel shaped
How to create customer funnels and applications in inbound marketing
Hubspot’s customer funnel model below was developed to facilitate communication between marketing and sales. In addition, this provides a foundation for firms to use in creating their own effective models.
Step 1: Define MQL (marketing qualified lead) in the customer funnel
Every lead isn’t created equal. For instance, the conversion rate for the “book a consultation” form is substantially higher than that of the “email/phone to obtain free materials” form.
Thus, defining what constitutes “high converting leads” (MQL) and “normal leads” (NQL) is the first stage in developing a customer funnel model. Of course, definitions will vary from company to company depending on factors such as user actions, data storage preferences, interactive features, etc. But if you need some guidance, here are the first two things to consider:
- Relevance: judge based on their similarity with the ideal customer portrait you built before
- Interest level: evaluate based on the behavior on your channel such as following Fanpage, viewing product prices, requesting demos…
A combination of 2 factors, usually there will be 4 cases happening:
- High relevance, great interest : should be transferred to sales/consulting team to take care of it within 24 hours
- High relevance, low interest : Should continue to care with marketing automation campaigns based on existing workflows
- Low relevance, high interest : Let consultants interact through approaches that don’t cost too much and time. Sometimes, maybe, you form new groups of people you never thought possible
- Low relevance, low interest : don’t hesitate, remove them from your care list!
Alternatively you can also specify the MQL by:
- Focus on relevance when the market is too small
- Focus on the level of interest so that when the market is too broad
But no matter how you evaluate a lead’s potential, make sure every decision you make is based on numbers, not feelings!
Step 2: Perform lead scoring to determine MQL’s ability to convert
As mentioned in the marketing funnel model, once you’ve determined what an MQL is, you’ll need to continue with grouping:
- Where are the leads that continue to be taken care of by marketing
- Which is the right lead to transfer to sales consulting?
And in inbound marketing, this process is called lead scoring – assessing the ‘quality score’ of each lead through a combination of multiple criteria. Usually, to determine a lead’s ability to convert, you can approach with
- Past behavioral data : how many actions they went through before they officially became your customers (e.g. pageviews, subscriptions, webinars, etc.)
- Identify the general rule : what are the signs that this is a high-converting lead? For example people who visit product details more than 15 times a month!
- Action List : Make a list of all the actions your audience will take before becoming a customer and analyze the conversion potential of each. More specifically, determine what percentage of your document download subscribers eventually become your customers
- Calculate average conversion rate : calculate an average based on the conversion rate of each action. Then focus on those ‘behaviors’ that are more likely to convert than average.
Step 3: Optimizing important metrics in the marketing funnel model
Optimizing each of the different stages of the marketing funnel is the final step in an inbound campaign. And you will need to continuously improve the following 8 metrics:
- Visitor to Lead Conversion Rate
- Lead to MQL conversion rate
- % Lead confirmed by sales
- Active lead rate
- Conversion rate from MQL to opportunity (for example, going to an English center for advice)
- Conversion rate from opportunity to actual customer
- Lead-to-customer conversion rate
- Average cost per guest
A final word about the application of the customer funnel model in inbound marketing
Marketing funnels let you know where customers are stopping in their shopping journey with the right content and touch points to improve conversion rates. That’s the theory, but to assess whether the audience is stopping at lead, MQL, or ready to become a customer based on the collected data, you will need:
- A CRM system that helps link engagement behavior from different advertising platforms
- The formula for calculating the quality rating of each lead
And to build the right models for each business model will often be very difficult if you are just learning the fields of CRM, inbound marketing or marketing automation!
Hope the above article will help you partly in the orientation. If you need some suggestions to perfect your ‘idea’, don’t hesitate to contact Digit Matter to find a solution together!
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