If you’ve watched videos on YouTube or Hulu you’ve probably noticed one thing in common: there’s usually a commercial between you and the content you want to watch.
A television show is a great way to give users a positive experience before literally funneling them through a series of commercials, akin to the “exit through the gift shop” strategy museums use.
Although the top of your marketing funnel is probably not a hit sitcom or VanGogh exhibit, it’s important to understand the importance of the marketing funnel and how to best use this tool for your business goals. Continue reading or jump to our infographic featuring tips for the mobile marketer.
What is a Marketing Funnel?
A marketing funnel, also referred to as a purchase or sales funnel, is a model that breaks down the stages of the customer journey. It begins with general awareness and ends with leads converting into customers.
While the exact number of stages can vary from industry to industry, they all represent the same process: awareness, consideration, conversion, and retention.
Originally developed by advertising executive Elias St. Elmo Lewis in 1898, the customer journey follows a linear path through four clearly defined stages, with potential customers following the same steps towards a conversion. 1
How The Marketing Funnel Works
While the stages of the marketing funnel might look different for every marketing and sales team, there is a similar goal at the end of every campaign: potential customers take action. Whether it’s making a purchase, signing up for product updates, or registering for a free trial, you are looking to make a conversion.
The original model developed by Lewis consisted of four stages: awareness, interest, desire, and action (also referred to as the AIDA model). These stages have evolved slightly over time to reflect modern markets, but many still reference Lewis’ original model as the go-to concept.
In the awareness stage, mobile marketers deploy tactics to draw attention to their business, product, or brand. These tactics can include social media advertising, referral marketing, email marketing, and many more strategies to promote mobile apps.
As users progress down the funnel into the interest stage and beyond, some will exit and the number of potential prospects decreases. This numbers game is why mobile marketers cast a wide net at the beginning stages of the funnel — the more leads generated in the awareness and interest stage are more likely to have higher numbers in the conversion stage, resulting in more customers.2
The Mobile Marketing Funnel
marketing funnel
While Lewis’ traditional, linear marketing funnel has been effective for marketers and salespeople for over a century and is still used today, the traditional funnel wasn’t designed to reflect mobile marketing efforts.
The layout and stages look similar between the traditional funnel and the mobile marketing funnel, but the tactics used to move a customer through those stages will be drastically different.
It’s no longer a simple and linear process — today’s mobile customer journey is complex and individualized. With so many resources available to today’s consumers, their decision-making journey is often much faster than the traditional funnel. 3
The Stages and Tactics of the Mobile Marketing Funnel
Exposure and Awareness
Regardless of Colombia Phone Numbers List what your marketing funnel looks like, it must begin with an exposure and awareness stage. Until consumers become aware of your brand or product, the other stages are irrelevant.
There are a variety of strategies that mobile marketers can utilize to develop awareness — most commonly these tactics include content marketing, social media, paid to advertise, and organic search. These methods allow you to easily share content with potential customers and help expose them to your value proposition.
As the mobile landscape continues to evolve, there exists a greater opportunity for reaching your target audience.
Marketing teams can also focus efforts on paid strategies, such as pay-per-click advertising, where you are only charged when a user has taken a particular action to view your site.
Consideration
Similar to the exposure and awareness stage, this second stage of the mobile marketing funnel is focused on providing leads with trusted content to guide their decision.
Consumers will look for trust signals such as app ratings, reviews, and other social proof to help them throughout the consideration stage. The top app stores are trusted sources for this consideration stage.
According to Statista, there were a total of 97 billion app downloads made in 2017, but 85% of people won’t download an app that has a 2-star or less rating on the app store. 4 Mobile teams must ensure that their app listing is well-optimized to highlight strong reviews and entice users to download.
Potential customers are aware of your company or offering, but now consumers are doing their due diligence and making the final decision if