The Three Step Marketing Funnel: How to Apply It to Your Business

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• What is a Marketing Funnel?

1. Awareness
2. Engagement
3. Conversion

• Conclusion

Introduction

Admit it: Marketing is complicated. There is so much to consider when attracting customers from which audience to target to how you should advertise. With so many moving parts, it is easy to get lost in the madness when crafting your marketing strategy, which only hurts your customer conversion rate and your sanity. 

Thankfully, there is a simple way to regain control of your marketing strategy. My name is Hannah Robertson, Force Media’s copywriter with years of writing experience. Today, I will cover what the “marketing funnel” is and how you can use it to get the results you are missing.

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What is a Marketing Funnel?

Marketing funnels are simplified outlines of a customer’s journey toward making a purchase.

Being conscious of where your potential customers are in their journey allows you to tailor your marketing strategy to meet your audience where they are and address any concerns that may be keeping them from progressing to the next phase of the marketing funnel. 

Just as marketing is complicated and never “one size fits all,” marketing funnels come in many different shapes and sizes. One funnel may fit your business’ needs better than another, but for the purpose of this blog today, we are going to focus on the simple yet effective three-step funnel we use at Force Media:

1. Awareness
2. Engagement
3. Conversion

1. Awareness

Before they can become prospective or paying customers, your audience first needs to be aware of your product or service. A good first step to bringing awareness to your audience is to first determine who your audience is. Not sure who that is? Be sure to check out our blog post “5 Ways to Determine Your Target Audience” to narrow down which group you should target and to decide how best to target them. 

From billboards to newspaper ads, there are a variety of ways to make your target audience aware of your product or service. In the modern age, an especially easy marketing device to get you started is social media.

Social media is free to advertise on (at least for front-facing advertisements) and extremely effective in reaching wide audiences when used properly. Experimenting with videos, photos, and short-and-long-form ad copy on multiple social media platforms is always a good way to introduce yourself to your audience.

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2. Engagement

So you’ve grabbed your audience’s attention: They’re exploring your social media pages, looking up your information online, and checking out reviews. Now what? Well, give them a reason to act on what they are seeing! 

When crafting your marketing information on social media and elsewhere, it is important to remember your goal for being online. Most of the time, this means you want to convert casual scrollers into paying customers.

So when you are crafting your posts and making your website, make sure there are opportunities for people to comment on your posts, share them with friends, and, ultimately, reach out to you as a paying customer. In this stage, you are no longer the one chasing your customers. They are the ones chasing you!

For more information on effectively spending time on social media, be sure to check out our blog post “Finding Results from Vanity Metrics.”

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3. Conversion

Good news: the hard part is over. Now that your audience knows who you are and why they should do business with you, it is time to seal the deal. Depending on your business, this may mean scheduling a consultation meeting to discuss business plans and how you can be of service. In other words, give them the results they have been chasing.

Though your audience member has converted into a paying customer, they are not necessarily removed from the funnel.

‍The cycle repeats endlessly, as it is important to remember that customers may conduct business with you on several different occasions. Repeat customers like these are even easier to market toward because they are already aware of your brand, engaging with it, and—assuming you did good work for them—eager to convert into paying customers again. Keeping this in mind as you craft your marketing strategy will be key to encouraging them to revisit your brand.

Conclusion

Key takeaways:

• Marketing funnels are simplified outlines of a customer’s journey toward making a purchase. At Force Media, we follow a three-step marketing funnel.
• The first step is to make your target audience aware of your brand. An easy way to do this is to establish a social media presence.
• The second step is to compel your audience to engage with your brand by interacting with your posts and telling friends about it.
• The third step and final step is to convert this viewer into a paying customer by having them take the desired action.

Tailoring your marketing strategy to appeal to and be accessible to those at all three stages of the marketing funnel will both silence the chaos of marketing and speed up the process of sliding your audience down the marketing funnel. 

Feeling stuck on what to post to spread awareness, engage your audience, or encourage repeat customers to reach out? Your friends at Force Media are happy to help. We have years of experience putting this marketing funnel into action and getting results from it, just as we did for our dental client:

Want to see what we can do for you? Please fill out our application link, and we will get in touch with you within 24 hours. 

There you have it! Now you know the three steps to the Force Media marketing funnel and how to use them to see results in your marketing campaign. Thank you for reading, and we look forward to seeing your marketing funnel in action!

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