What are a sales funnel and marketing funnel & how do they differ?

When it comes to the marketing techniques that help attract more customers, the first things that many people think of are the sales and marketing funnels. You’ve likely heard these two words before, and as they sound similar, you might assume they serve a similar purpose. So, what’s the difference between a sales funnel and a marketing funnel?

The sales and marketing funnels tend to overlap, but they are different. The marketing funnel helps form the marketing plan for a business, while the sales funnel focuses on nurturing leads and converting them into customers.

Marketing Funnel Marketing Strategy

A marketing funnel is a model that shows typical customer behaviour, starting from the point at which they know nothing about a product to the point at which they make a purchase decision. Let’s look at customer behaviour in each stage of the marketing funnel.

Awareness

First, we need to make our customers aware of our brand. We must find their pain points and show how our products or services can help solve them.

Interest

When the target group knows about our offering, the next thing is to drive interest and encourage them to find out more. Therefore, we must clearly present how our products or services meet the needs of our customers.

Decision

Although the target audience might now be interested in our brand, that doesn’t mean they’ll make a purchase immediately. Customers will likely have many options to consider, so it’s essential to differentiate our business in customers’ minds.

Conversion or Action

This last step is the most important. This is when we create conversions or close the deal. All we have to do is convince customers that we’re the right choice for them, whether that’s by stimulating them with promotions or a time-sensitive deal.

Sales Funnel Marketing Strategy

A sales funnel shows the process potential customers go through before making a purchase decision. Let’s look at what we need to do as a business to influence customer behaviour in each stage of the sales funnel.

Attract

The first step is to make our products or services attractive by focusing on adding value by doing things such as writing educational content and sharing information on social media.

Convert

Once customers know about us, the next step is to encourage them to buy our product or service. We can do this by having a strong call to action, such as encouraging customers to add us on LINE to receive promotions. 

Close

Next, we need to close the sale. CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is vital for building good customer relationships. You can do this in several ways, such as sending promotions to motivate them via email or broadcasting on LINE. This constant interaction reminds customers they have easy access to our products and services.

Delight

This process takes place after the customer has made a purchase decision. Customers will expect to be taken care of by the brand. Therefore, we must have good after-sales service to impress customers and make them want to return. Any feedback or opinions should be used to improve and develop our business. Maintaining a solid and loyal customer base is key to running a successful business.

As you can see, both the sales and marketing funnels have the same objective: building brand value while influencing customer buying behaviour. Knowing our target audience’s decision-making path allows us to build an effective marketing strategy and earn more revenue.