There is no point in having a large target market and a high quality product, if you cannot bridge the gap between the two. The attempt of connecting these two elements is known as marketing in the business sector. Marketing is paramount to any business sinceit enables organizations to profit and generate value. Amongst many techniques, a marketing funnel is a predominantly used strategy that has proven to be useful. It is where the business maps out the journey of a customer and analyses it in order to understand their consumer behaviour. A marketing funnel will enable you to understand how a stranger becomes a loyal customer of your product. This understanding will enable you to encourage and motivate others within your target market as well. Listed below are the four main components of the marketing funnel.
Awareness
This is the initial and the very first stage of the process where your potential customer comes in contact with your product for the first time. You need to identify the reason why this stranger particular choose your product and only then must youlaunch your campaign. This could be anything from traditional campaigns like physical billboards or an SMS marketing campaign for instance.Depending on your campaign, you may have different challenges. For instance, not all customers respond to SMS alerts. This is why you need to up the game by giving them an influential reason to respond to your message. For instance, the SMS message could promote an offer or discount that will peak the customer’s interest and influence them to follow up. You must use this opportunity to lure the customer since it is quite easy to communicate through SMS services. The customer will not feel pestered or disturbed since the messages are often concise and direct. With luck, you can also utilize the chance to extract information from them as well. Try to get their email address or work place address to establish a more professional way of communication than SMS.
Interest
This is when the consumer starts to show interest in your tech products and services. By this stage, you should have used the extracted information to attract the customers. In order to peak their interest, you can cater the products to their specific requirements – now that you are aware about them in detail. This will make the customers feel special since you took the effort to get to know them and their interests and catered your products or services accordingly. This will result in brand loyalty which is a sign of trust and reliability. Once your customers show loyalty and interest for your brand, you can confidently stage any of your marketing strategies since they will definitely work.
Desire
While this loyalty is an advantage to your company, you must also remember the existence of your competitors. They can very easily lure these customers away from your grasp by giving them something better. Of course your customers will switch sides despite their loyalty since at the end of the day, what they look for is better service and value for money. This is the stage where you explain to your customer about the suitability of the product. You need to convince them and make them understand that no other product in the market will be suitable for them. An easy way to do this is to market the benefits of your products. A common mistake many organizations make is to market their product features. Instead, you must advertise its benefits and how it helps and affects your customers.
Action
At this stage, you need to work towards the purchasing. This is where you convert a potential customer into a lead. You will have to discuss and market relevant features of the product such as the price, quality, delivery, etc. You need to make the customer believe that there is no other solution to their problem than to purchase your product. Once the purchasing is done, most companies think that their job is done. It is if you are satisfied with your profits. In order to maintain your income and generate more revenue, you need to make these customers into repeat purchasers. This can only be done by establishing brand loyalty. You can easily achieve this by offering your customers something new and different from time to time.
The marketing funnel will not only help you study consumer behaviour and attract potential customers, but, you will also be given the opportunity to keep a hold of your existing customers to maintain a steady balance in your business.