The Buyer Journey Funnel: How to succeed in the 4 stages

The Awareness stage is when people first learn about your brand. A marketing funnel is a multi-stage process that guides potential customers from first learning about a product to making a purchase. Starting with founding Ireland's first content strategy/digital marketing agency, she has over 20 years’ experience launching and building international digital-led businesses, from early concept to funding to growth. Businesses focus on their customer post-sale communication, for example, through customer service or email newsletters.

So the business needs to continue to engage with them, provide added value, and create a real relationship. At this stage, a business’s content tends to communicate key benefits, capabilities, and differentiators from competitors. They are a bit more knowledgeable and understand what different solutions competitors are offerings.

Prospects in the decision stage have compiled a list of appropriate businesses and are ready to purchase. Mapping out the journey provides an in-depth view of how your potential customers behave at every step in the buying process. On the other hand, can you actively seek out positive messages from key influencers and reward people for their brand loyalty? Offering and advertising cross-platform digital, social media, telephone and in-person interaction will make sure you have all the bases covered. Realising they have a need that must be met, the consumer actively considers whether or not to buy the product or service on offer.

And you’re probably influenced by what you hear from other people about amazing brands. As you may have guessed already, the modern marketing funnel isn’t comprised of four steps, and it doesn’t suddenly stop at the purchase. Although it broadly summarizes the basic steps a customer takes on the way to purchase, it doesn’t get even close to representing the complexity of the modern buyer’s journey.

How to create a marketing funnel

As potential customers progress to the Interest Stage, they become more familiar with your offerings and start to engage more deeply. By employing creative content marketing, social media engagement, and targeted advertising, businesses can produce a significant impression during this phase. Each buyer has a journey that they embark on from the awareness stage to the consideration stage, the decision stage, and the delight stage (if your business uses the inbound funnel, feel free to swap out the stages). Additionally, many PPC marketers choose to consider incentives for prospective buyers, including discounts and free trials, as another way to accelerate conversions. The most relevant PPC ads for the consideration stage are remarketing ads on social media platforms, as they let companies customize their display ads campaign for people who have previously visited their website. At this point, customers are researching and considering options to solve their now-identified problems.

Here’s a breakdown of the three key stages

Buying decisions are made by a group of people, so you need a holistic view of what each person is doing and how your program influences them. Your GTM strategy needs to reflect buyers' reality, meet them at key moments, and influence their decisions. You can use various methods to gather this data, such as surveys, interviews, web analytics, social media listening, and customer feedback. I’m tracking website traffic and social media engagement to see who gets involved and how deeply they engage. It’s different from a B2C persona, where you’re researching demographic data like age and income level or interests.

A well-constructed marketing funnel can attract all kinds of people, but if you’re grabbing the wrong crowd, you’re wasting time and money. Offering clarity helps you convert leads and equip sales to close the deal and turn prospects into customers. At the bottom of the funnel (BOFU), leads are narrowing their options and are looking for proof they’re making the right choice. The B2B marketing funnel is a framework that charts the journey a business-to-business buyer takes to purchase a product or service. Here, you need to provide them with valuable information that positions your offering as the best choice. If you’re gathering enough data—the right kind of data—you’ll have a good idea of your organizational strengths and weaknesses.

” Businesses respond by providing digital content that answers these questions or provides a possible solution to the problem. Businesses want to position their product or service as the solution to a problem or the answer to a question. The Awareness stage occurs when the consumer becomes aware of a problem that they want to solve in their life. Digital tools enable businesses to monitor how customers progress through their decision-making journey.

• Typically, selling to businesses usually takes much more time, requires more complexity, and involves more buyers and sellers than consumers require.
• They can see the steps that a customer goes through, from first becoming aware of a need or problem, through to evaluating options, making a decision, and buying a product or service.
• From here, you’ll want to go through the list to find keywords that are relevant to your site.
• This replaces the idea of buying committees as faceless lists of roles and pain points, and shows how your program influences the buying journeys.

Jaden, a Conestoga College Business Marketing Graduate, is well-versed in various aspects of business marketing including creative content writing, email marketing, social media management, and search engine optimization. Many businesses integrate loyalty programs or exclusive offers at this stage to maintain engagement and drive subsequent purchases. It’s crucial to differentiate your offerings from competitors by showcasing unique value propositions and testimonials.

What are the five stages of the customer buying journey?

During the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey, prospective buyers journey funnel buyers realize that they have a problem, try to put a name to it and solve it by purchasing a product or service. Now more than ever, companies should consider each stage of the buyer’s journey to fully capture leads every step of the way leading up to a purchase. Good indicators provide valuable data for analyzing and managing the business. In a buying journey-based funnel, the focus is on the customer’s buying process, thus making sales tailored to the customer’s actual needs. As the focus shifted to the customer, the funnel had to evolve into a funnel based on the customer’s buying journey.

That’s why food companies offer free samples—one taste, and you’ll know if you’ll buy it. Some people in your industry have built a large audience of loyal readers, listeners, and viewers. In the Awareness stage, you'll want to create content targeting keywords that your target audience are likely to be searching for early in their journey. For example, you could be driving a lot of traffic to your website; yet none of those people are signing up for your email list. You’ll be able to ensure you’re executing marketing tactics at each marketing funnel stage. Therefore, the marketing funnel simplifies the customer journey and serves as a mental model for businesses to tweak their marketing strategy.