Digital Marketing Funnel
- Shannon Peel
- Jun 13, 2022
- 14 min read
Updated: May 28
Is your brand story spread out over the internet resulting in a bunch of fractured sound bites and an audience standing at the edge of a canyon wondering where the road went?
Don't leave your potential client's hanging, make sure they can find you and know where to go to get what you have to offer them by mapping out your digital marketing funnel. Too many people put their eggs in one basket expecting people to go from awareness to advocacy in one jump, but that rarely works. If you want your audience to become active advocates of your brand, you need to guide them through the customer journey. Starting with a digital marketing funnel template is a good place to start.
What you will find in this article:
Brand Story Funnel
Content creators use brand storytelling techniques to guide your audience from awareness to advocacy. When you look at the digital footprint from above you need to be able to see where the client journey moves and how they see the brand story you are trying to tell.
Your digital footprint needs to know which parts of the funnel each platform goes into so you know what type of content to create.
Platforms can have multiple spots in a funnel. MarketAPeel's main purpose sits in the middle of the funnel to give thought leaders and brands a place to establish their authority of a topic, gain credibility of a being published on a third party platform, and gain awareness through organic searches. From there their content guides community members to their own platforms to help them make a decision and close the sale.
I use a custom funnel to identify the parts of the whole story that need to be filled:
Awareness
Credibility
Authority
Decision
Action
Advocacy
There are different funnels, which you will see below. When creating a funnel for your brand story, make sure you cover all the parts of the customer journey and you know the intent of the action taken by the customer at each step.
What is the Digital Marketing Funnel
A digital marketing funnel describes the steps that users take to move from being a prospect to a customer. While there are multiple marketing funnels, most include stages focused on awareness, consideration, purchase, and retention. Businesses can use any funnel to guide their marketing efforts.
It’s often difficult to define a digital marketing funnel because it can take many different forms for many different types of businesses. In its simplest form, it has three components:
A foundation
A floodgate
The actual sales funnel
Utilising digital marketing funnels is the key to reaching a wider audience and getting the best conversion rate on your marketing efforts.
The anatomy of a digital marketing funnel.
As I mentioned in the brand storytelling funnel, there are different types. This one is mainly used for digital content marketing and e-commerce transactional buyers journey, which is much shorter than a relationship building journey and rarely has human to human interaction.
Top of the funnel (TOFU)
Middle of the funnel (MOFU)
Bottom of the funnel (BOFU)
This type of funnel is focused on search intent and the keyword you need depending on the intent of the searcher.
If you want to be seen as an expert, thought leader, or provider of choice, you need to go beyond a short cycle transaction and create a deeper funnel to represent your potential customer's journey.
If you have an online store - or you need an online e-commerce site - this type of three steps funnel is a good place to start, but if your audience needs more touch points to move through their customer journey, you will need a more complex funnel - see below.
Top of funnel (TOFU)
This is where your brand story begins and helps customers to recognise they have a problem that needs a solution.
Top of the funnel includes social media, publicity, word of mouth, and online searches. Organic results provide the best onsite results, but are hard to get based on the amount of sites competing for top spot. Making sure your website is optimized for search engines, like Google, you will have a better idea about how to craft the stories you tell on your website.
Google Search Statistics (1)
Google’s overall search engine market share is 91.86%.
In 2021, the Google brand was valued at $458 billion.
There are nearly 4 billion users of Google's products and services.
Google takes over 200 factors into account when delivering search results
Over 50% of Google searches end without a click.
“Coronavirus” was the most searched word in 2020.
Google Search Index contains over 100,000,000 GB.
96.21% of apps in the Google Play Store are free.
A business spending $1 on ads through Google Search makes $8 on average in profit.
Moving up 1 spot in the Google Search results can improve a site's CTR by up to 30.8%.
Content marketers focus on creating content to meet the needs of consumers who are making searches using terms that signal the start of the customer journey.
You need to entice them to take the next step and bring them to your website where the next digital marketing funnel stage takes shape. While many marketers will tell you that doing so starts with good ad design or witty copy, it actually begins earlier: with targeting the right audience.
Informative Search Intent:
Platforms where audiences are looking for an answer to a question, information about a topic, or to learn something new. Your client will need to learn how to tell their brand story in a compelling way that draws the audience in and gives the interviewer or platform something unique. Platforms are looking for unique content when they interview people, they don’t want the same story you gave to the last 10 interviewers.
Navigational Search Intent:
Search platforms and other directories where people will search to find a specific site, brand, or person. They want to go to a specific place. This is where your client’s Brand SERP needs to bring up their website, their social media profiles, videos, and high-ranking media by ensuring their brand name is in the title of the interview. When they google their name, you want to see as much credibility of third-party stories as you can get in the first page. To help, add links to these stories onto your client’s Google Business Page. Create an in the news page on their website and back link to the stories using their name & brand name to let Google know that the story is about them.
Transactional Search Intent:
Your client’s website or e-commerce platform fits into these searches, by this time in the customer journey – the story is click buy and checkout. If you did your job right, the web design people in this part of the funnel will be happy.
Commercial Investigation Search Intent:
Search platforms are answering questions about which brand to go with. They know they have a problem, they are just looking for the best solution. At this stage you are looking to book your client opportunities to quote in crowdsourced articles about which product to buy. They need to tell stories about which problems the product solves and how they solve them. This is where reviews fit into the picture. Your client needs to be sending three questions to help them tell the story of the product or service solving their problem. Questions to help them come up with A beginning, middle, and end to their review story.
Consumers of digital content make snap decisions about whether or not they want to consume a piece of content or ignore it. We’ve all become really good at swiping one way or the other in the blink of an eye. If you haven’t read Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink or the Book Click – both dive deeper into how we make split decisions and why somethings click while others don’t.
The steps of the digital marketing funnel I map out to build a digital footprint are:
Awareness
Credibility
Interest
Decision
Action
Advocacy
In this article, I will explain how to map out the Brand Awareness stage of the customer journey and your digital marketing funnel
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How to Create a Funnel for Your Business
When diagrammed, a digital marketing funnel shows where the person’s mind is at within their customer journey. Once you understand each stage of your customer's buying journey you can start creating content that connects with them by telling their story to them to elicit empathy or a connection based on understanding with each person.
You will need to draw out your customer's buying journey and know where they will land on your digital footprint. If you have a big gap between chapters of your brand story, your audience is going to be going along ticketey boo and then ... urrrrch full stop before they do a Thelma and Louise off the edge of the Grand Canyon because they don't know where to go.
The Digital Marketing Funnel Template:
How will your audience learn about your product or service?
At the top of a sheet of paper write down all the ways people will become aware of you and how they will see you. For example: On LinkedIn through comments and searches. From there where do they start seeing you? For example: On LinkedIn followers will then see my posts. Put a box around each step. Like this:
I use Lucidchart to help me visualise how customers will go through their buyers journey and my digital footprint. This is one of many different flowcharts I use to ensure there are no gaps.
Map out the Customer Journey
When you start mapping out your digital footprint you will need to know two things:
The platforms you are telling your story on
The platforms your audience touches on their journey
Here is an exercise you can do to help you uncover the route potential buyers take to your product or service. Forget everything about your business and become an uninformed consumer looking for a solution to the problem you solve. Rule: You can't search using words describing your solution, trademark, or company name. You want to see what shows up when people need the help you provide but they don't know who you are. Are you showing up?
Another exercise: Be self-aware of the journey you go through when you have a problem and are making a buying decision, don't go through the process on auto pilot. As you go through your own buying journey, you will discover those points in the funnel where messages need to inserted and how others are guiding you from awareness to advocacy.
I use Lucidchart. to map out the flow of traffic through my large digital footprint. This way, I can identify if there are any large gaps along the path so my potential customer doesn't end up staring in the abyss of a canyon with no idea how to get to the other side where I want them to be.
Brand Awareness and the Customer Journey
Brand awareness is the first rung in the marketing funnel and where most people spend the bulk of their money and time. The problem occurs when they expect their audience to go from awareness to action in the course of a few ads or posts. Unless you want to constantly be looking for new customers and paying money to Facebook and Google in order to keep your cash flow going, you need to move away from transaction based marketing and into brand storytelling along the full marketing funnel.
Some buyers journey's will be moments, others could be years depending on the problem, the urgency, and the amount of money they need to spend to get what they want.
In the brand awareness tier you have social media, publicity, and searches. The customer may not have a problem or know they have a problem, but they see your brand in their social media feed as an ad, on a website's adwords space, in a news article, podcast interview, or a Google search. This is where they are introduced to your company name, image, and products or services.
Rarely does a customer see an ad or a brand for the first time and buy. They used to say it took 5 impressions, then 7, now its just over 11 impressions before they recognise your brand and are aware of your existence. They may not remember you off the top of their head, but if shown your logo or image they would recognise it and move to the step in their journey.
How can you ensure you get in front of someone enough times to make an impression so they will recognise you in the future and take the next step because they have a problem you solve?
This is where time, patience, and a strategy for brand awareness comes in. Answer the following questions to help you determine if your brand awareness digital footprint is complete.
Make a list of all the places people may come across your brand
Which platforms are you already on?
Which platforms do your favourite customers hang out on?
Which platforms does your competition hang out?
Where are you not? Do you have to be there? If so, why?
Do your posts have a similar look and feel to them or a recognisable trait, like your logo?
Is your name, image, and message the same across all the platforms?
Google yourself and see where else they might come across your name, business, image
Whenever I Google my name or my company name, I always find another piece of content where I've been quoted, interviewed, or am a contributor.
Look at your brand awareness map from above, fill in the missing pieces and make a note about how the person would know to go from one step to the next. For example, if a person saw a post on twitter in their feed because someone engaged with your post, answer the following questions:
What would a person who sees the post think to do? List all the steps the can take to move closer to your brand.
What step do you want them to take? How can you communicate the call to action without sounding spammy or like you are selling them something?
For example: Your twitter post could have a call to action, check out my profile for more - either on the corner of the graphic or in the limited 280 characters. In your profile you can pin a post that tells people what you post about and who should consider following you.
Go through all the places people can become aware of you and think about how you can subtly move them from awareness to the next step in your brand story's digital marketing funnel.
Commenting, Consistency, and Commitment
It takes effort to get your brand story noticed on social media. Posting over and over is not enough. You must take time to strategically engage with others to get noticed and build your following. Then as they see your posts, over time, they will learn who you are, what you do, and why you do it, all of which, builds trust in your brand.
Join the MarketAPeel Community to access the 30 min for 30 days challenge and test the theory by measuring what happens when you strategically comment on posts for 30 minutes a day for 30 days.
I've tested just posting consistently for 6 weeks and doing no engaging on other's profiles, strategic or otherwise, and it does very little for a following or brand awareness. It is easy for people to ignore what they see when they are in zombie scroll brain mode. Commenting on other people's posts shifts gears into engagement brain mode and they will recognise you if they come across you again in the future.
This is why viral posts do very little for longterm brand awareness. You may get an uptick, but unless they follow you, they will forget about you. Don't go after viral or comment on posts with hundreds of engagements because the person is an 'influencer,' Your comment will get lost in the crowd and your brand awareness will not improve. Instead, look for posts with some engagement and make a thoughtful comment about the post itself.
The best type of content for brand awareness
For brand awareness the best content you can create is the teaser - the trailer - the hook. Write the bigger story, the longer version, and tell the part closest to the action or climax of the story. Get them curious and leave them with the promise of finding out more if they choose to take action and moving to the next stage of your story.
Want to know more and build out your marketing funnel?
Become a MarketAPeel Member - Which is FREE - and learn how you can tell your brand story to the marketplace with market appeal.
Building out your digital footprint to tell your brand story takes time but with each piece, you build on the story until over time when you Google yourself, you dominate. Don't believe me?Google Shannon Peel and see what happens. The proof is in the pages. Keep going you'll get there.
6 Steps to Create a Marketing Funnel
Map out the flow of your customer’s buying journey
Create an offer
Create content engage your customers
Design landing pages to bring your customers deeper into your story
Map out your email sequence
Test and ensure all paths lead to the end game
You can sit here and figure this out on your own, or you can join me and we can work together to ensure your digital marketing funnel is telling the right story to the right audience along the digital footprint. Brand storytelling courses, events, and workbooks are designed to help you get your digital footprint built and be known in your marketplace.
You want to start by mapping out the customer's buying journey so you can create content to answer their questions and meet their needs along the way to your buy button. As you create content and build out the digital footprint you will find multiple ways for people to enter into your funnel and start their journey to your solution for their problem. As your digital footprint grows your brand story becomes fractured and you end up with dead ends and orphan pages, both of which will not help your customer find your 'buy now' button.
Use a program like Lucid Chart or a pen and lots of graph paper to help you keep track of where you post content and where you expect it to lead your audience.
Subscribe to the APeeling newsletter:
Receive ideas to help you get known in your marketplace
Find out when MarketAPeel events are coming up
The latest UnPeeled blog post
The lates BrandAPeel podcast episode
Where is Shannon Peel online
Interesting content to help your brand get known
PLUS MORE
What's a Brand Storytelling Funnel?
This is different than a marketing funnel because you are creating a larger story and then breaking it down with cliff hangers to guide people from brand awareness to brand advocacy. This is a huge undertaking and topic that takes lots of time to build the foundation before you get to a point where it runs itself like an engine.
I use Lucidchart to create flowcharts so I can visualise how an audience will go through the story and keep track of which details need to go where.
There are many different ways people can go through a brand story depending on where they stumble upon it in the bigger digital footprint.
Digital funnels are not linear and as much as it would be awesome for someone to go ...
1 ... 2 ... 3 ... Buy ... That isn't how it works in the real world.
Audiences move up and down the funnel. The start down the road and then get side tracked by something else they want to know about or a kid screaming they want to be fed. Then they go along their merry way and boom, they see your brand again and this time enter the funnel from a different location. Until they give you their contact information, they are going to want to dance with your brand for awhile before they step into commit.
This is why you have to have multiple story threads and they need to interchange and weave through each other without confusing the audience and causing them to wonder, "So, what is it that this company does?"
Create a larger storyboard, pick your core value words, your product keywords, your customer's problem keywords and map how they all work together to tell the full story. Once you know what the bigger story is, you can start to break it into sound bites, trailers, chapters, and sections.
Lucidchart is one of the tools I use to help me strategise, see the bigger plan, and know how the story will flow from one platform to the next. If you are having to plan out anything that needs to go from a to b, Lucidchart is a good tool to have in your tool box.
Bookmark this site - make sure you sign up for the newsletter to discover when I'll be adding more to this post about how to create a digital funnel for branding, marketing, and sales....
Digital Funnels are Not Funnels
When you map out your customer's journey from Brand Awareness to Brand Advocacy, you will discover that the customer journey is not linear, nor is it a funnel. There are many loops and paths that double back on themselves.
There is the Digital Loop not a Funnel- Funnel
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