The Real Marketing Funnel Stages (and What to Do About Them)

There are a million blogs about the different stages of the marketing funnel, from awareness to advocate, and they all have a pretty romantic view of the customer’s relationship with a brand, saying things like, “Here is an opportunity for brands to develop a relationship with the people in its lead database and introduce its positioning,” and, “Trust and thought leadership is established.”

The marketing funnel isn’t dead, but it’s not this romantic, symbiotic relationship that plenty of people seem to think it is. Consumers don’t typically have positive views of the companies that are advertising to them. In fact, most are usually annoyed that they’re being advertised to at all, and that’s the uphill battle advertisers fight.

Awareness (Top of Funnel—TOFU)

“How is there an unskippable 30-second ad in front of a minute-long video?”

The first instance of awareness is typically annoyance. People don’t like seeing ads. As much as we care about advertising, we might enjoy commercial breaks ourselves because we get to see what other creative work is out there. For most people, it’s just a thing standing between them and the content they actually want to see.  

The way to overcome this is to make your advertisements something enjoyable, something that people will want to see. A time-honored tactic in advertising is to create an earworm, a catchy song or jingle that gets in a consumer’s head, but sometimes advertisers take these too far and try to intentionally annoy consumers for the sake of being memorable. (Kars 4 Kids, we’re looking at you.) When consumers have so much choice, it’s not worth it to create a memorable first impression if they remember it because it was bad. Focusing on enjoyable, visually interesting creative will help give the consumer an experience that’s memorable for the right reasons, even if it’s playing before the video essay they’re trying to watch while eating dinner.

Consideration (Middle of Funnel—MOFU)

“Oh no! I’m out of ______.”

People aren’t carefully weighing the pros and cons of different brands so much as they’re making split-second decisions out of a certain level of desperation. The market research on your toilet paper commercial may have shown that people highly value texture, the number of squares in a roll, and having more ply, but when people need toilet paper, all they’re thinking is “Oh my God! I’m out of toilet paper!”

Then how does one appeal to consumers during this toilet-paper-induced panic? This is where brand touchpoints really matter. When someone’s making a quick decision, they aren’t going to start researching a product, their simply going to seek a speedy solution.

Conversion (Bottom of Funnel—BOFU)

*Check out on Amazon*

There really isn’t a lot to say here. If you’ve reached this stage, the advertising has done its job and you deserve a pat on the back.

Loyalty & Advocacy (Post-Purchase)

Loyalty

More appropriately called the “devil you know” stage.

True brand loyalty is much harder to come by than what we typically perceive as brand loyalty. After someone makes a purchase and it is at the very least usable, they’re probably just going to stick with that product for the foreseeable future. If you know it works, why risk trying another brand that might not.

It’s only when a consumer feels compelled to try something else and decides to either stick with it or go back to their original choice that you have achieved true brand loyalty. Getting someone to switch from the brand they currently prefer is difficult any way you slice it, but not impossible. People might shop around for a better deal or because a brand’s values better align with their own. Using strategies like email marketing to recent customers and offering discounts that reward loyalty are great ways to build loyalty. When customers feel like they’re getting a little something extra from their preferred brand, then there’s almost no reason to look elsewhere.

Advocacy

“Oh, I prefer ___.”

Brand advocacy is much more casual and subdued than people in the advertising world make it sound. Even if you simply adore your Verizon Fios internet, you’re not walking around town in a shirt with a Verizon logo, telling passersby about how fast your internet is. While advertising is capable of helping in the first four stages of the funnel, few people are recommending Progressive insurance to their friends because they have funny commercials. (Notice we said “few” and not “nobody,” because we’re absolutely doing that). 

While the best way to turn customers into advocates is to have a product so good they can’t help but recommend it to their friends, the humbler advertiser isn’t quite done yet. This is the time for a brand advocacy program. Reward your customers for helping you find new customers.

To Be Successful in the Marketing Funnel, You Have to Think Like a Marketing Funnel

You’d be forgiven if you read this and think our conclusion is that it’s not even worth trying, but that’s not the case at all. The whole point is that the marketing funnel isn’t dead, but it definitely isn’t what you picture when you read words like “loyalty” and “advocacy.” The hill you have to climb is much steeper than these terms would have you believe, but that just means you have to be better prepared for the climb. Knowing hard truths like the fact that most audiences aren’t thrilled to see ads and that no one walks around making product recommendations should inform your strategy.

Do you think the marketing funnel is perfect as-is and think we’ve committed sacrilege by giving the stages new names? Or do you maybe have your names for them? Either way we’d love to hear your thoughts. Schedule a meeting below and we can get your customer base from the “Oh no! I’m out of ______” stage to the “Oh, I prefer ___” stage.