Digital Marketing Sales Funnel

What It Is & Why You Need One

Digital Marketing | Funnel Development | 7 min. Read

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What Are Digital Marketing Sales Funnels?

“A digital marketing sales funnel is a combination of marketing tactics utilized to generate traffic to your business and nurture them properly to become loyal customers who advocate for your business.”

Key Points in this article:

  • Funnels are extremely important for turning your web traffic into customers on automation
  • The funnel process is grouped into stages: foundation, floodgates, and the actual sales funnel
  • Use the AIDAA formula for constructing your digital marketing sales funnel

Just curious – do you still use a Windows 98 PC for your business or a new laptop/computer? Chances are, you probably chose the latter – if not, it is definitely time to upgrade!

The same concept is true for your digital marketing. Old ways of marketing for your business are not effective anymore. Traditional marketing strategies are on a fast decline and for good reason. There is no way to measure the performance or effectiveness and it’s brutally cost deficient. Can you truly measure the ROI on your traditional marketing?  

Digital marketing has changed the way large and small businesses have communicated with their customers and increased sales. With all the different platforms available for internet marketing, the opportunities are endless.

With all those opportunities though, feeling overwhelmed and stressed on how to proceed is common for many small businesses. In fact, far too often, we come across local businesses that have not even heard of a digital marketing funnel let alone implemented one.

Which brings us here.

Although we defined it in the opening quote of this article, that statement is still a little vague. A digital marketing sales funnel is essentially the process of moving someone who knows nothing about your business to a loyal customer that shares their experiences with their friends and family (advocating).

How Does a Digital Marketing Funnel Work?

If you think about the fundamental use of a funnel, you place the funnel where you want something to pour into, then you pour the substance into the funnel and it fills the container.

A digital marketing sales funnel follows the exact same concept. First, you build your sales funnel to achieve a specific objective – a customer purchasing xyz product/service from your business. Then you fill your sales funnel with traffic using digital marketing tactics to drive that traffic from the top of the funnel to the bottom of the funnel where they convert into a paying customer and become an advocate for your local business. 

AIDAA – Digital Marketing Funnel Formula

Most digital marketers will tell you that digital marketing sales funnels utilize a 4 or 5 stage funnel following the AIDAA formula. 

  • Awareness
  • Interest
  • Desire
  • Action
  • Advocacy

Each letter of the formula represents a stage throughout the digital marketing funnel. In order to convert a visitor into a customer who is an advocate for your brand, you have to nurture them from the time the enter the funnel until they become a customer.

With that said, not every person who enters your digital marketing sales funnel will turn into a customer. However, you can greatly improve your odds utilizing this formula to establish a lasting relationship with the prospect.

What Are The Components of a Digital Marketing Sales Funnels?

Obviously, this is easier said than done so let’s break down the three main components of a digital marketing funnel:

  1. Foundation – Defining your objective
  2. Floodgates – Getting traffic into your funnel
  3. Sales Funnel – Moving traffic from the top of the funnel to the bottom

1. Foundation – Defining Your Digital Marketing Sales Funnel

Before you can begin to build out your digital marketing sales funnel, you first must conduct research and build a strategy to ensure maximum efficiency is achieved with your sales funnel.

Conducting a complete competitor analysis, developing SMART goals, and identifying your buyer personas are extremely important to the success of your funnel. Here are some great links resources to help you conduct your research and build out your digital marketing sales funnel strategy.

Next in the digital marketing funnel strategy is creating your value ladder and mapping your funnel. For the sake of brevity, we’ve provided the following links to get you started on your value ladder and mapping your sales funnel.

2. Floodgates – Filling Your Digital Marketing Funnel With Traffic

Traffic into your funnel can come from many different places whether it be search engines, social media, advertisements, email campaigns, offline events, etc. The best performing sales funnels are those that utilize all sources as a means to generate traffic into the digital marketing sales funnel.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is a great route to take to bring customers you’ve engaged with into your funnel and also keep your loyal customers up-to-date on new specials and offers.

Tips for Social Media Marketing Traffic:

  • Follow the three E’s rule of posting
    • Educate – inform your followers with content to educate them on topics relevant to your industry
    • Entertain – show your business’ culture with content they’ll enjoy and also be able to relate/learn about your business
    • Engage – always respond to messages, comments, and questions, but don’t stop there. Create polls, surveys, and questions for your followers to engage with frequently.
  • Throw multiple jabs before you ever try to land a hook
    • Post regularly following the 3-E rule without asking for anything in your posts. Deliver superb content and information to your followers > engage with them > then deliver a right hook for a striking blow to get those followers to sign up for your offer and enter your funnel.
  • Brand every post with your company
    • Include your logo in all image – subtle but well defined

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is one of the best long-term sustainable approaches to get digital marketing traffic into your funnel. The objective is to rank your website at the top of Google for designated keywords so when visitors are searching for the information you’re offering, they click your website and are now in your funnel.

Paid Advertising

Advertising comes in many shapes and forms from Facebook ads to Google Adwords. No matter the medium in which your advertising on, the objective remains the same – filling your funnel with relevant traffic.

Here’s some links for great articles on advertising:

Marketing Events

Marketing events are a great source of traffic into your funnel. Events can come in many different formats from online webinars to in-person charity events. Use these events as a means to connect with your prospective customers, generate awareness for your brand, and encourage people to check out your website (preferably a page designated for the event or similar). This will drive visitors into your funnel and provide retargeting opportunities through ads via Facebook or Google.

Email marketing

Tactics used to nurture digital marketing funnel traffic can vary significantly from chatbot integrations, SMS/Voicemail campaigns, etc. however, one of the best strategies is through the utilization of email marketing automation.

Essentially, when a customer subscribes, downloads, or signs up for something on your website, you can capture at minimum their name and email address (we recommend phone number as well if applicable). Once they’ve subscribed, tools like ActiveCampaign provides and decision-tree styled automation system to send emails campaigns that you designate to those customers.

When implementing a digital marketing sales funnel, be sure to inc