Insight Details
A marketing funnel represents the journey businesses guide individuals through—from strangers to paying customers. It is a visual model comprising multiple stages that narrow down as prospects progress, illustrating a decreasing conversion rate at each step. For instance, out of 1,000 website visitors, only 10 might complete a purchase. By optimizing each stage of the funnel, businesses can effectively expand their business scope, ensuring more opportunities for growth and higher conversion rates.
Figure 1. Illustration of how a marketing funnel works, there is a reduction in the number of people each time they move to the next funnel
Understanding Buyer’s Journey
The first step in creating an effective marketing funnel is understanding the buyer's journey. Firstpage as a digital architect, can help businesses to ensure that as customers move through the funnel, content evolves to align with their stage, role in the buying organization, and engagement level, thereby optimizing the process for a broader business scope. For instance:
Stages of the Funnel
The customer acquisition process is typically illustrated as a digital funnel, divided into sequential stages that narrow the customer base from initial suspects to actual buyers. While the concept of a digital funnel is well-established, its definitions and stages can vary. Businesses can strategically optimize each stage—such as the four primary stages defined by D’Haen and Van den Poel (2013): suspects, prospects, leads, and customers.
Models of marketing funnels, such as AIDA and TOFU-MOFU-BOFU frameworks, provide structured approaches to optimize this journey in digital marketing. While foundational, AIDA has limitations, particularly in its lack of emphasis on post-purchase such as loyalty and advocacy. The AIDA model, conceptualized by Elias Lewis, outlines four key stages:
1. Awareness
Prospects discover the brand through ads or other marketing tools. Awareness stage aims to capture attention and sparks interest in products or services. Detailed databases enable precise targeting, ensuring messages resonate with segmented customer groups, enhancing the likelihood of engagement.
2. Interest
At this point, the potential customer begins to engage with the product or service. They start to research and explore whether the product meets their needs. The marketing strategy must provide valuable content to inform the customer about the product and how it solves their problems. This stage is crucial for deepening the relationship with the prospect by providing more tailored content, such as educational resources, case studies, product demonstrations, or testimonials.
3. Desire
Customers develop a preference for the brand, driven by appealing solutions to their needs. This stage is often the longest because customers are deliberating on whether to commit to a purchase. It is essential for marketers to reinforce the relationship and provide further proof of the product’s value. For instance, e-commerce sites might offer clear shipping policies, FAQs, security assurances, or authentic customer reviews to boost confidence. This stage is a pivotal moment where marketers need to address any remaining doubts and prepare prospects to make a purchase.
4. Action
This stage represents the final step where customers make a purchase. For the purchasing process, analytics tools provide insights into the efficacy of campaigns and customer behavior, enabling businesses to refine their strategies further.
Figure 2. One of the challenges faced by business is ensuring that suspects who go through the digital funnel turn into customers at the bottom of the funnel.
The 5A Model: An Enhanced Version of AIDA
As its name suggests, the 5A digital funnel model encompasses five stages: aware, appeal, ask, act, and advocate. This funnel model was introduced to address some shortcomings of the AIDA model, such as its overly hierarchical structure and its focus on advertising, which made it less effective for other marketing communication strategies. Another drawback of the AIDA model is its lack of attention to customer loyalty after a purchase and the personal experience aspect that influences the customer decision journey.
In contrast, the 5A funnel is highly flexible, applicable across various business sectors, and provides a more realistic depiction of customer behavior. Unlike AIDA, the 5A digital funnel illustrates that customers do not necessarily follow all stages sequentially. For example, loyal customers may directly proceed to the "act" stage for repeat purchases without revisiting the previous stages. Additionally, during the decision-making process, customers can move back to earlier stages as needed.
Stage 1: Aware
The awareness stage marks the starting point of the customer journey. Customers encounter marketing efforts from various brands passively or receive recommendations through others. On the other hand, brands must actively establish visibility within the customer’s reach.
Efforts to boost brand awareness can include distributing advertisements based on the target customer's location or area of activity. Marketing campaigns can take the form of outdoor billboards, digital posters, word-of-mouth recommendations, television commercials, newspaper ads, and more.
Brands often rely on their core values to stand out to their target audience. For instance, The Body Shop consistently incorporates values like cruelty-free product testing and women's empowerment in their campaigns. Similarly, Tesla promotes its environmentally sustainable vehicles equipped with advanced technology features.
Stage 2: Appeal
In the appeal stage, customers become aware of various brands and process the messages they receive. They then evaluate these options and narrow down their choices. A brand can stand out by delivering trustworthy, meaningful communication enriched with compelling features. This approach ensures that the brand remains prominent in the customer’s preference list compared to competitors.
To captivate their target audience, brands must ensure their digital marketing materials are extraordinary and attention-grabbing. If your brand fails to catch a customer’s attention within a short span, they are likely to overlook your advertisement entirely.
Typically, customers filter brands based on specific criteria, such as product or service alignment with their values, interests, or perceived social image of the brand.
Stage 3: Ask
At the ask stage, customers actively seek information about brands that have piqued their interest. Driven by curiosity, they engage in discussions and ask questions about the brand, often in digital spaces such as social media comment sections, marketplaces, websites, and other platforms.
For this reason, brands must remain present in the environments frequented by their target audience and interact using language that resonates with them. A customer’s curiosity about a brand can also be influenced by promotions involving admired public figures or recommendations from family and friends.
Stage 4: Act
The act stage is reached when customers are confident in the information gathered during the ask stage. The success of a purchase decision depends on whether customers feel compelled to take action.
Customers may hesitate to complete a purchase—whether in physical stores or online—due to various reasons. These include price, packaging, product variety, ease of use, sales interactions, shipping options, and the completeness of provided information. This makes the fourth stage particularly complex.
Stage 5: Advocate
At the advocate stage, digital communication plays a vital role in fostering customer retention, surpassing traditional models. Tools such as CRM systems, personalized emails, and social media engagement help ensure customers receive ongoing support, transforming them into brand advocates. Encouraging happy customers to share their experiences on social media expands outreach while fostering trust with potential customers.
This post-purchase stage involves deeper customer engagement through after-sales services. Brands must demonstrate attentiveness and offer solutions to customer concerns or complaints.
When customer experiences meet or exceed expectations during this stage, they often develop strong emotional affinity and loyalty. Customers who share positive stories about a brand's products effectively become its advocates. Furthermore, loyal customers may defend the brand against criticism, negative comments, or derogatory remarks.
Kevan Lee's model introduces five stages with three primary phases:
Focuses on awareness by attracting attention through blogs, websites, and social media. Companies can leverage keyword-optimized content to turn visitors into leads. For instance, engaging Google Ads or well-crafted blog posts help initiate customer interactions.
Builds interest and desire through targeted content and personalized calls-to-action (CTA). CTAs are vital at this stage, prompting users to take action, such as signing up for newsletters or visiting specific pages. Companies often implement digital tools like pop-ups and landing pages tailored to customer preferences, simplifying the journey toward purchase.
Drives conversions by helping prospects finalize purchasing decisions. Analytics tools provide insights into the efficacy of campaigns and customer behavior, enabling businesses to refine their strategies further.
Figure 3. Illustration of brand's marketing efforts to increase customer loyalty as one of the post-purchase phases.
The ACCL Funnel: A Practical Model for Digital Business
ACCL is an acronym representing a digital funnel model consisting of four stages: awareness, consideration, conversion, and loyalty.
Stage 1: Awareness
The awareness stage refers to how familiar individuals are with a brand's existence. For businesses, brand awareness is a critical factor in determining progress toward conversion and loyalty. When customers are exposed to elements related to a brand's identity, they are more likely to recognize and remember the brand during the decision-making process. Brands can enhance awareness through marketing campaigns, search engine optimization (SEO), and organic search strategies.
Stage 2: Consideration
The consideration stage reflects the audience's willingness to potentially purchase products or services from the brand. Marketers often prioritize this stage because it directly impacts sales performance. The success of the consideration stage relies on the effectiveness of a brand's persuasive efforts. At this stage, customers identify brands that can meet their needs. Meanwhile, brands must actively build positive relationships with target audiences or potential customers who are beginning to show interest.
Stage 3: Conversion
The conversion stage bridges the gap between audiences or visitors and their transformation into "loyal customers." This stage includes several processes: acquisition, activation, and monetization.
Each of these processes plays a critical role in driving customer commitment to the brand.
Stage 4: Loyalty
Loyalty is defined as a customer's tendency to recall a specific brand as their first choice and their willingness to support it. Loyalty often leads to a natural inclination to recommend the brand to others. In some cases, even if an individual does not use the brand's products but has a positive customer journey, they are likely to recommend the brand.
Loyalty is a cornerstone of long-term business success. Returning customers are more likely to endorse the brand and share their favorable experiences. Marketers should focus on creating opportunities for customers to generate and share brand-related content. Establishing a community of brand advocates can significantly boost organic growth and enhance lead generation efforts.
