When it comes to marketing your organization online, marketing funnels are necessary to drive new members and participants to the point of conversion. Think of marketing funnels as a kind of treasure map—a way to get from point A to point B and get the gold. But instead of it being literal gold, the gold your potential customers are seeking is becoming members or signing up for classes, programs and camps. A win for both you and your customers!
What Are Marketing Funnels?
Marketing funnels are designed to attract customers and take them down a path that will eventually lead them to convert—to purchase a product, service or offering. There are many different types of funnels, including webinar funnels, product funnels and more, but in this instance we’re going to be discussing sales funnels for the purpose of marketing, as that’s likely the most pertinent to your organization if you are currently utilizing or looking to utilize digital marketing.
Stages of the Marketing Funnel
There are multiple stages within the marketing funnel that will take your potential customers and turn them into actual customers who purchase memberships and sign themselves and members of their family up for classes, programs and camps. Each stage is important, but as your potential customers move further and further down the funnel, the funnel grows smaller as each stage removes those who are not likely to convert. The stages are awareness, interest, consideration and conversion.
Awareness
To make potential customers aware of your organization and all it offers to the community you must first drive them to the first stage of the marketing funnel: awareness. It’s through awareness that people will get to know what your organization is about and all the wonderful things it provides. Essentially, it’s through awareness that people see the solution to their problems by learning about what you provide.
There are multiple ways in which potential customers can get familiar with your organization though awareness, including:
- Blog posts
- Sponsorships in podcasts and newsletters
- Social media ads
- Searching on Google or Bing (good SEO helps you rank higher)
- Watching your organization’s videos on YouTube or other social platforms
Awareness is often referred to as top of funnel, as it is the first touchpoint between your organization and your potential customers. By casting a wide net, you are able to touch as many people as possible and hopefully capture their attention so that they may continue to the next stage of the marketing funnel.
Interest
The second stage of the marketing funnel is where you pique your potential customer’s interest. You’ve already hooked them through your content, ads or videos, and now they are even more interested and want to do more research to see what your organization can do for them. It’s in this stage where it’s imperative that your SEO demonstrates its worth, as it’s likely that your potential customers will be searching specific terms on Google instead of general ones. So what do you need to do ensure so that your organization’s content and website appear near or at the top of the search engine results page when potential customers are using specific search queries on Google?
- Make sure your content and website’s SEO does what it needs to do to get you to rank, so when potential customers search specific queries with those keywords, you rank for them.
- Demonstrate with your content that you are the expert they want to learn more from.
The goal of this stage is to guide them with a gentle nudge toward the final stage. To lightly push them in the right direction, you’ll need to be the solution to their problem and demonstrate your organization’s worth.
Consideration
By the time potential customers reach this stage in the marketing funnel, it’s likely they’ve also researched other organizations that could potentially solve their problem as well. It’s your job to convince them that your organization is the right one to meet their needs and then some. Some great consideration content includes:
- Case studies and white papers
- How-to content
- Demo videos (sign ups can be added to your website, emails to prospects and landing pages)
Remember to distribute this content via email to prospects, and share it on all your organization’s social channels.
Conversion
It’s during the final stage of the marketing funnel that you have nearly won over your potential prospect, but they need just one more nudge to fully commit. Usually at this stage your potential customers may need an incentive to become a member or sign up for that class, program or camp. Offering a promo code or a discounted rate, if you’re able, will definitely give them the incentive they need to convert. However, you may want to create a sense of urgency so that they don’t sit on their decision and eventually forget it. Using phrases like, “register before it’s too late” or “sign up before all the spots are taken” are great calls to action that can create a sense of urgency. You might also want to include any upsells you think your prospects might benefit from.
Other good ways to get prospects to convert include:
- Sharing testimonials and reviews via email and social posts
- An easy and trustworthy sales process/checkout
Retention Post-Conversion
Now that you turned your potential customers into members and participants, it’s time to work on keeping them customers. Make sure to have excellent customer support for whatever questions and needs your members and participants may have, continue to incentivize them through special offers and promotions, connect with them in person via a phone call and even through email and give them the space to let you know their needs and what they think your organization can offer the community.
It’s through nurturing relationships with your customers that you’re able to keep them around year after year.
Make Digital Marketing Easier With ACTIVE Network
ACTIVE’s digital marketing services can help you implement marketing funnels, as well as set up and manage everything related to digital marketing, for your organization. Our digital marketing services team can assist you with SEO strategy, Facebook, Instagram and Google ads. Connect with us today to see how ACTIVE can help take your organization’s digital marketing to the next level.
