How to Develop a Marketing Funnel That Converts

A challenge for nearly every business is finding leads and securing conversions. A saturated marketplace has made it increasingly difficult for brands to find their niche and attract loyal audiences. At the same time, digital marketing and social media have created new marketing opportunities.

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Luckily, you can more selectively pinpoint your core audiences and reach them online than you can with traditional advertising methods. It just requires a bit of a different approach. For example, brands that develop a marketing funnel that focuses on conversion are setting themselves up to entice users and solidify conversions.  

What is a Marketing Funnel? 

Think of a marketing funnel as a roadmap. It’s how users move from first hearing about your brand to becoming loyal customers. Profitable businesses always have a consistent flow in the funnel, pushing people through their different marketing tactics. These include paid ads, social media campaigns, content marketing, SEO, and more. 

At its most basic, the funnel consists of awareness, consideration, conversion, and loyalty. These stages are oftentimes displayed visually with awareness being the largest bucket and loyalty being the smallest. Every business will have a different marketing funnel depending on their needs. Marketing funnels can become complex as audience needs vary and the market evolves. For instance, a stay-at-home mom will use a calendar app differently than a business executive. 

Having a clear, well-defined marketing funnel can help simplify the customer journey. As you map out how you attract customers and through which methodologies, you may come across different pain points. Finding solutions to these issues, such as clearer calls to action, can increase your leads. By measuring how your funnel is performing, you can identify which areas need improvement for greater success. Now that you understand what a marketing funnel is, here are tips for developing one that converts. 

Keep it Simple

Building a winning marketing funnel begins with keeping it simple. Regardless of who your audience is or what you’re trying to sell, too many marketing tactics can overwhelm consumers. Simplicity can help you decide which tactics are worth your investment and which aren’t moving the needle. It’s also a more cost-effective strategy. 

When thinking of your marketing funnel, it can be helpful to divide it into three stages: top, middle, and bottom. The top of the funnel, sometimes called ToFu, are the channels you leverage for brand awareness. This can range from content marketing to SEO optimization to website design. It may be helpful to use a small business marketing automation platform to create a strong online presence. Because by educating individuals about the problem you can solve for them, you’re capturing their interest and attention. 

The middle of the funnel are those who have identified they have a problem and are actively seeking a solution. They may be in the research phase, comparing your brand against others. For those in this stage, tactics like retargeted ads, email marketing, webinars, and case studies can be beneficial. You need to convince them that you have the best solution. 

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Lastly, the bottom of the funnel is anyone who has moved through your funnel and taken out their wallet to become a customer. You’ve sold them on your brand, but the work doesn’t stop there. You need to keep convincing them that you are indeed the best and that they shouldn’t take their business elsewhere. This is how you gain loyal and dedicated fans who can become mini-brand ambassadors. 

Your marketing funnel will change over time based on the types of tactics you’re using or how you’re expanding your portfolio of products. However, it should never be so complicated that it’s hard for users to understand what you’re trying to offer them. Every marketing tactic should drive them forward to conversion and eventually loyalty. 

Establish Goals for Each Stage

After you’ve mapped out your tactics and aligned them with the three phases of the funnel, you’re ready to establish your goals. Every stage of your funnel should have a specific goal. This is how you’ll measure if your marketing funnel is successful and which areas need improvement. 

Top-of-the-funnel goals may include high click-through rates or time spent on a blog post on your website. These metrics ladder back to brand awareness and can be measured via Google Analytics or other third-party platforms. 

Individuals in the middle of the funnel may be adding items to their cart but abandoning the cart before checkout. In these instances, you’ll want to see why they aren’t taking the next step to checkout. In 2024, the main reason for cart abandonment was extra costs, such as taxes and shipping fees. Looking at the dropoff rate on the checkout pages may help you identify if this is the case for your business. Retargeting these potential consumers with email marketing and ad banners may help push them to paying customers. 

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Bottom-of-the-funnel goals include conversion rate or the percentage of those who took the desired action. It’s also worth calculating the customer acquisition cost to establish how much acquiring a new customer costs. If the cost of acquisition is more than the product or service itself, you’ll likely need to adjust your strategy to remain profitable. Retention rate is also important as it shows how many of your customers returned to repurchase. 

Tips and Takeaways

The main purpose of a marketing funnel is to focus your efforts on strategic marketing tactics that perform. You can forecast sales more accurately and have a better sense of when to expect an increase in sales. And based on where individuals are within your funnel, you’ll be able to test out brand messaging that resonates best with them. With the goal of conversions in mind, a marketing funnel can be the framework you and your team need to move to the next level of success.