In my previous article, I tried to establish what a lead funnel is. You need to understand that there different levels when it comes to defining your prospective customers’ levels. The process of classifying your leads will help you understand the kind of attention that you need to give to different kinds of audiences. In this article, I will be talking about all that you need to know about the lead funnel in Digital Marketing. Follow me as we are going to look at that in this article.

 

 

Lead funnel defines the process that the buyer has to go through when they are trying to purchase your products and services. You also need to understand that your customers are also going through this process when they are purchasing your products and service, although the process might be faster for different customers, they still have to go through that process. Also, the lead funnel defines the lead funnel using the AIDA perspective. Let us now look at what that is all about in this article.

#1 Attention

This is the stage when you create awareness by designing adverts that are launched and run so that customers and prospects can be aware of your products and services. These are done to attract customers’ attention to your products and services. When this is being done and the right audience is targeted, it might increase interest in your products and services.

#2 Interest

This is being used to boost customers’ interest in your products and services. At this stage, you have run the ads and they are already aware of your products and services. But you are trying to deepen the interest in your products and services. This happens when customers decide to give your product a try. Their conviction after this trial will now determine whether they will become permanent customers or not.
 

#3 Desire

This is when you make effort to convince the customer and make them believe that the product can fully their basic needs. You also tried at this stage to educate the customer about the usefulness of the product as well as how it can add value to their life in general.

#4 Action

This is when you lead customers towards taking action such as purchasing your product or fulfilling a commitment form. Here the prospect has now become or is about to become your customer. He is actually performing the desired actions that you want the customer to perform.

 

 

Marketing perspective to gain a customer

Here, the marketer has only the name of the customer. Marketers get the names of their customers from various sources such as referrals or purchase lists. Some organizations can also buy name and email lists from other non-competitive organizations that they have an association with. Some of these names can also be purchased online as well.  Above all, you need to identify your target audience based on the geographical location and demographic information of your target audience. You will not want to waste your time pursuing the wrong target.

 

 

Suspect

A Suspect is a person who shows interest in your brand or what you have to offer. They might perform some action on your site such as :

• Frequent visits to your website and attending your webinar
• Participating in content and promotion on your website
• Filling online form to download white papers, PDF etc and subscribe to your newsletters.

 You need to identify such customers and add them to your Drip program which is an email program that will allow them to learn more about the use of your products and services.

The drip program offers educational content and promotional offerings that allow prospects to become organizational customers. This will allow them to develop an interest in your products and services. This also allows you to send SMS that is also geared towards understanding your customers better.

 

Prospect

Also, a user will move from being a suspect to prospect when he takes any of the following actions:

• Interacts with your brand by attending webinars, participating in contests, and downloading your PDF files among others.
• Fits your demographic profile.
• He has a bi-directional conversation with you.

When it comes to prospects, we have them in two categories. They are called Marketing Qualified Leads and Sales Accepted Leads.

 

#1 Marketing Qualified Leads

They always have a direct conversation with the people via emails or phone calls. They can be seen as people who have called or emailed and have decided that they are going to purchase the product on a particular date.
You can identify whether the person is really interested and ready to purchase your product and transfer him to the sales department.

 

#2 Sales Accepted Leads

The salesperson follows the lead once the qualified lead is transferred from the marketing department to the sales department.

Opportunity

A salesperson can either close or lose the leads, Also, lost lead is again sent to recycled by conducting a drip program for the customer once again.

Customer

You gain a customer once the lead is closed. At this point, you need to maintain a good relationship with them in order to turn them from ordinary customers to brand advocates.

Advocates

Here, the customer becomes an advocate when he or she is with the marketer for a very long time. This customer becomes loyal as well as refers others to your customers.