What is a Digital Marketing Funnel?
What are Funnels in Digital Marketing?
If you’ve spent any time focusing on your digital marketing, you’ve probably heard the word “funnel” thrown around. The term relates to driving traffic and leads through a website, but a lot of people aren’t clear on what it actually means. Continue reading to learn more about what a funnel is and how it can help you to fulfill the goals of your marketing campaign.
The 3 Phases of Digital Marketing Campaigns
The literal definition of a funnel is “a tube or pipe that is wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, used for guiding liquid or powder into a small opening.” In the digital marketing space, a funnel refers to guiding the flow of traffic to your website through three phases – acquisition, engagement, conversion – toward a particular goal that you’re trying to achieve. Visualizing a web marketing campaign as a funnel can be helpful for structuring the campaign, analyzing the results, and determining what’s working well and what isn’t.
In a digital marketing campaign, the various channels that flow through a funnel can include SEO, Google Ads, social media, and more. The widest, uppermost section of the funnel where all these channels begin to converge is the acquisition phase. This first phase involves acquiring new traffic and bringing newfound attention to your website through a combination of these different channels.
The middle portion of the funnel is the engagement phase. This second phase involves keeping potential leads engaged on your website. Your digital marketing agency can determine what actions a prospective client takes when they get to your website – what pages they view, how long they spend on these pages, etc. This leads to the narrowest, bottom portion of the funnel: the conversion phase. In this final step, hopefully, the people viewing your page will be converted into leads for your company.
By visualizing a funnel, web marketing specialists can break down the flow of traffic to your website through the initial acquisition of traffic, the engagement of traffic on your site, and the percentage of traffic that is being converted into leads. The next step is to tie metrics to each of these three phases to determine what’s performing well and what needs improvement. As the old saying goes, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link; the same logic applies to the funnel. If a particular phase of your digital marketing campaign isn’t performing well, it will be detrimental to your whole campaign.
When tying metrics to the funnel, begin by examining traffic in the acquisition phase. Determine how many visitors are being driven to a website through the various channels of your web marketing strategy; if you’re not getting enough visitors, the acquisition phase needs improvement.
If acquisition is going fine, then look at the engagement phase. There are a lot of different metrics in this phase that can apply to what you’re trying to do, including bounce rate, time on site, and pages viewed per visit. If a high volume of traffic is being driven to your site but the time spent on your site is very low, this means that you may be funneling the wrong type of traffic to your website. If this is the case, you may need to reorganize your various SEO and ad efforts to make sure they’re attracting the right visitors to your site.
If both acquisition and engagement seem to be going well but you’re not getting enough leads, it’s time to break down the metrics of the conversion phase. The primary metrics of this section will be clicks on the contact form and call button on your website. If your first two phases are going well but you’re not seeing visitors being converted into leads, it’s possible your contact information isn’t visible enough on your site.
Understanding the Funnel Can Benefit Your Web Marketing
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of what a funnel is in terms of web marketing and how visualizing this funnel can help you break down and restructure your marketing efforts. If you’d like help with this process, don’t hesitate to contact NorthWing Digital today.