Modern customer journey – the funnel

Funnel is the buzzword of 2019 in marketing. What does this word mean and encompass?

Funnel means “funnel” in German.

The concept of a funnel

Put simply, a funnel is about filtering out the customers who are ready to buy your products from the many possible customers.

This is what some of the advertisers have already understood. However, the funnel then goes even further in a second part and also implements upsales. Upsales mean that additional features and subscriptions are advertised.

In reality, the funnel is a complex construct that reflects the modern sales process and requires a modern structure for your products and advertising.

Funnels can be built more or less complex depending on the product. The more advertising moves online, the more inevitable funnels become. Of course, the question of cost and impact must be carefully weighed up each time a funnel is constructed, as programming is relatively time-consuming but ultimately also highly effective.

Whereas in the old world a lot of money was spent on store premises and sales staff, in the digital economy the costs are incurred in programming websites and funnels.

I teach the background to understanding funnels in detail in my email series, which you can subscribe to here, on this page.

The implementation of funnels is part of my online marketing service. I advise you on the topic and implement funnel constructs.

The marketing side

The simple advertisements that most companies still use for their products are becoming less and less effective. Advertising blindness is spreading.

To counteract this advertising blindness, you need to make a little more effort to convince customers of your products and persuade them to buy them.

A modern funnel consists of several components that have to work together.

The advertising

In modern digital marketing, advertising is placed in social media, for which Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc. come into question. Of course, old marketing instruments such as TV advertising, posters, radio, magazines, etc. are also possible. The problem with these is that you cannot measure their effectiveness in the funnel.

All potential customers are targeted by ads that are placed via the platforms with messages that could be of interest to them. Contact is established via information. This can be done with videos, blogs or podcasts. This information is intended to sensitize customers.

At the same time, the pixels of the individual social media platforms are installed on the websites where the information is accessible.

This information is then used to place advertisements for the product for which they are optimized.

Retargeting | Landing Pages | Lead Magnets

With renewed advertising in the form of retargeting based on the pixels, potential customers who show interest are directed to a landing page where the e-mail address is requested via a lead magnet.

In the same way, various ad functions and communication tools can be used in instant messaging services to draw the attention of potential customers to the offer.

Other pixel functions are used to measure the actions of users on the websites.

E-mail autoresponder

In the e-mail autoresponder, the topic is rolled up from the problems to the solutions on which the product focuses.

Email automation programs can measure which actions recipients take on emails, how many emails are viewed and how many links are clicked.

Sales pages / Sales pages

The email autoresponder refers to the sales page for the product, which identifies the customer as a buyer.
Pixels are placed on the sales page, which make the purchase analyzable with the various goals.

Depending on the type and complexity of the funnel, the elements described can appear and be placed at different points in a process.

The result is a modern marketing strategy!

The products page

Once a first product has been purchased, this should not be the end.

First of all, you should expand customer contact and switch from the online world to the offline world depending on the product. Telephone calls, personal meetings and invitations to events remain part of the customer journey.

This requires a trained sales team, and management should also be involved in these activities for important customers.

Returning customers have always been the most important pillar of a company and long-term relationships pay off.

It is about developing a product strategy that addresses and solves a specific problem for a very specific customer group. You may not be able to produce all the products for the topic you are addressing yourself. However, there are products from other manufacturers and you may even be able to sell competitors’ products on a commission basis. To a certain extent, this results in different income streams for your company. Partnerships suddenly create synergies to attract the attention of customer groups and carry out growth hacking on social media platforms.

I teach, practice and implement product structuring in such a way that the customer journey is covered as a whole. If the theory is to be implemented, this is a lot of work. My approach is to design a step-by-step plan and set priorities.

It is important not to lose sight of the big picture so that costs do not explode.

A traditional marketing agency is no longer sufficient for these tasks. The necessary considerations extend far into the area of corporate strategy and IT strategy, where the tasks have to be distributed in detail for larger projects.

Funnel per customer group and per product group

If several customer groups are to be addressed, it is necessary to set up a funnel for each customer group. The customer journeys for two different customer groups look completely different.

If you process several customer groups in one funnel, you will have to keep it generic/general. In this case, you cannot deal with the problems of the customer group in depth.

In advertising, if you advertise to everyone, you advertise to no one!

In order to cater to different customer groups, it makes sense to keep the website general. On the homepage (entry page), the visitor can first be asked to make a selection, for example: “Are you a woman? Are you a man?

However, the advertising, landing pages, e-mail automation and product pages are duplicated or run several times with slight modifications.

The same applies to product groups as to customer groups, especially when products in different price categories are offered. An expensive chair should be offered to a different clientele than a cheap chair. In this case, upselling is not possible.

Conclusion

Implementing the customer journey and thus the funnel requires a detailed idea and strategy that goes beyond marketing.

In my opinion, the greatest difficulty is to restructure existing products from the old world in such a way that the customer journey works in the digital world.

I advise against implementing individual parts of all these options. This leads to nothing.

Do what you implement properly!