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Problem Solving

Clarifying the ‘5 Whys’ Problem-Solving Method

By Lean Enterprise Institute

July 19, 2018

This brief animation offers a detailed explanation of one way to discover a problem's root cause.

To help lean thinkers apply this powerful approach to overcoming  work  obstacles, LEI Senior Advisor John Shook guides lean thinkers through a detailed example from Taiichi Ohno’s  Toyota Production System : Beyond Large-Scale Production . Find a transcript below.

Let’s take a look at the problem-solving method known as the “ five whys ” or also “causal chains.” Let’s take a look first of all at how that relates to the problem-solving funnel as a frame where we began with a high-level problem—it might be something vague that we don’t fully understand, but it’s the problem coming at us on a day-to-day, moment-to-moment basis. 

What we want to do is break the problem down to understand it, get some data, get some facts, and look for patterns. And from there, that means understanding the work, which is certainly a primary characteristic of lean problem-solving, which is to go and deeply observe and understand the work. From there, we can identify a point of occurrence, sometimes called the direct cause and also can be thought of as a problem on its own.

Now we can do the fun part, which is to start asking the five whys. We can put on our investigative hats and ask why, why, why is this occurring? That will lead us to a root cause regarding which we can attach a countermeasure. 

To look at this part of the problem-solving process , the five whys or a causal chain, let’s look at the famous example from Taiichi Ohno of Toyota and the one he used starting in the 1950s of a machine breaking down. 

The problem that he saw as the machine shop manager is that machines would often break down, and his people would often just attach a Band-Aid. They would only stop it at the first level of cause, meaning that the problems would recur; they would come back. So, he trained himself and his people then always to ask the five whys, sometimes three, sometimes eight, the point being to follow the causal chain all the way down to a root cause.

In this example, he looked at a machine that had stopped working and identified with the first why that it had blown a fuse in the control box because it was overloaded. The overload caused the fuse to blow. But, he didn’t stop there and asked why again, and recognized that insufficient lubrication was getting to the bearing. So, the bearing, therefore, was causing the overload on the machine. 

Not stopping there, he went to the next cause and, asking why, found that the pump was not drawing lubricant. So, the lubricant, then, would not be sent to the bearing.

Still not stopping there. Why, again, was the pump not drawing lubricant? Because the shaft was worn, causing it to rattle and not function properly. 

Now, another why there led him to a root cause, which was that there was no strainer, which allowed metal chips to enter and damage the pump. So, with the damaged shaft, that would mean the pump wasn’t drawing lubricant, so that there wasn’t enough lubrication going to the bearing, which overloaded the machine and blew a fuse, which stopped the machine from working.

So, he’s got a five-why causal chain going down to the root, and you can check that with the “therefore chain” going up as well. 

Now he knows if he applies a countermeasure here, which is to make sure there’s a strainer, then the problem will be solved so that it doesn’t come back.

So, this is what you can accomplish with a fairly simple way of thinking so that we’re not just putting Band-Aids on symptoms—that we’re solving problems at the root cause. 

Good luck with your problem-solving attempts.

Learn How to Identify and Solve Business Problems

• Gain a solid understanding of lean problem-solving by taking the on-demand, online course Intro to Problem-Solving. Learn more and register.
• Get an in-depth instruction and intensive coaching that will improve your—and your team’s—problem-solving capabilities. Join the next Managing to Learn Remotely workshop. Learn more and register.

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An Introduction to A3 Leadership and Problem-Solving.

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Excellent, deep troubleshooting explained in detail and easy to understand. A concept well with the example.

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What Is Funnel Analysis? Definition, Examples, and Tools

Use funnel analysis to identify key events along the customer journey and improve metrics like acquisition and conversion.

Not all prospects will become customers, and not all customers will immediately find the value of your product. Funnel analysis can help you pinpoint key events along the customer journey so you can conduct tests, improve the user experience, and increase conversions.

What Is Funnel Analysis?

Funnel analysis is a method used to analyze the sequence of events leading up to a point of conversion. Events within the funnel take place inside products, mobile apps, websites, emails, or other digital touchpoints. Funnel analysis lets product and marketing managers understand user behaviors and the obstacles encountered throughout the customer journey.

As users travel this digital path, they will probably encounter experiences that prevent them from reaching the desired outcome. You can improve the points of friction to encourage users to travel further down the funnel by zooming in on each step.

According to TechCrunch , “From leads all the way through to engagement, conversion and retention, understanding each step and making even small optimizations at any stage will have down-funnel implications.”

As an example, let’s say you’re trying to convert free trial prospects into paid subscribers. Your funnel might look like this:

• Step 1: Prospects open an email and discover an offer for a free trial.
• Step 2: They click on a CTA button to redeem the free trial.
• Step 3: Prospects create an account and use your product for free.
• Step 4: Prospects convert to paid customers after the free trial expires.

Many distractions or barriers can happen in between each of these steps, and there are likely patterns of behavior that can tip you off to what’s working and what’s not. Perhaps prospects are dropping off at step 3 because of a multi-device activation required to create an account?

Maybe you discover that if you can usher prospects past step 3, you have a stronger chance of conversion. Without funnel analysis, you’ll miss these opportunities to delight customers and drive business outcomes.

• Funnel analysis is a method used to visualize, measure, and understand key user behaviors throughout the customer journey.
• As customer habits and patterns shift, you’ll need to be able to monitor those differences ASAP. Funnel analysis alerts you when something isn’t right, so you can keep users on their path to conversion.
• Funnel analysis is nearly indiTakeawaysspensable when it comes to product improvement, personalization, and creating smooth customer journeys.

The Importance and Benefits of Funnel Analysis for Your Product

At its core, funnel analysis is important because it allows you to monitor user actions and behaviors. This is critical because those behaviors reveal the intention and motivation of your customers.

Funnels are not just used in sales or marketing to create prospects, they are also important for customer retention . Once you know what your customers want, you can inject that value into each step of the customer journey.

Although every business has unique goals, funnel analysis can be used to:

• Improve conversion. Conversion funnel analysis can support a lot of outcomes or specific goals. The final step for a user might be clicking a “Sign Up” button or downloading a PDF. Funnel analysis enables you to find out what’s preventing users from reaching the end destination. Each stage of the funnel poses opportunities for a smoother, more personalized journey to the end of the funnel.
• Streamline the funnel . Your company probably supports multiple points of digital interaction , such as websites, mobile apps, email, or dashboards. Each one has a funnel of its own, but together, they represent one overall customer journey funnel Funnel analysis can provide a macro perspective on how each of those funnels links together.
• Merge marketing and product teams . Oftentimes, marketing teams are focused on converting prospects into customers, while product teams are primarily focused on retaining those customers. Funnel analysis presents an opportunity for both teams to cross-pollinate data and insights. If prospects respond positively to a certain aspect of the marketing funnel, they may stick around if they find that same value in the product funnel.

4 Ways to Use Funnel Analytics

Funnel analytics presents many different ways to extract insights from the data you collect. How you interpret funnel data and leverage it to achieve goals is native to your business and industry.

• Conversion: This is the default mode of analyzing your funnel. It measures the number of users who have converted through each step of your funnel. Depending on the platform, this data can be visualized through a chart or bar graph. The results of this method should immediately alert you if there’s a problem. If there’s a severe drop-off of users during one step of the funnel, you’ll know where to center your efforts.

• Conversion over time: Conversion over time lets you see conversion rates for users who enter the funnel on a certain date. Users don’t necessarily have to complete the funnel to appear in your analysis. This is useful when it comes to understanding how your funnel operates through different times of the year, like holidays or special events.

• Time to convert: An important factor in analyzing a funnel is time. How long should it take for each user to click through each step? These user tendencies can confirm that your funnel sequence is operating as designed. For instance, someone shopping on a quick-service restaurant app should convert faster than someone shopping on a tax service app. By breaking conversion down by hours, days, weeks, and months, you can alter the flow of your funnel in a way that’s meaningful to your business.

• Frequency: How many times do users perform an action or behavior before they move on to the next step in the funnel? By measuring frequency, you can see exactly what your users are doing (and how often) throughout the funnel. Understanding the frequency of events can help you make changes to specific funnel steps to encourage higher conversion.

Oftentimes, problems in your funnel need to be approached from a unique angle or perspective. Funnel analytics provides a launchpad to start asking the right questions . Once you’re familiar with basic analysis methods, you can find innovative ways to overcome challenges.

Tools for Conducting Funnel Analysis

Analytics platforms are nearly indispensable for businesses that offer digital products and services. Without the right tech stack, it becomes extremely challenging to measure and improve things like conversion.

There are many options available when it comes to choosing a funnel analysis tool. The best tool for you is dependent on your product, industry, and current tech stack.

Amplitude’s Digital Analytics Platform offers a unified suite of products that gives you an in-depth understanding of how customers experience all of your digital touchpoints. Amplitude’s funnel analysis product is built for websites and products, giving a more holistic perspective on data.

Any event or user behavior can be measured and tracked, not just page views or sessions. When conducting funnel analysis in Amplitude, you can order the events of your funnel, segment behavioral cohorts, and set specific conversion windows.

To meet the needs of companies across every industry, Amplitude’s funnel analysis chart is flexible and customizable, making it an ideal option for multiple teams or stakeholders. Easily leave notes for teammates or quickly share a link to a funnel view.

Other funnel analysis tools

Other tools you can use for funnel analysis include:

• Adobe’s funnel analysis product
• Google Analytics

Learn more about each of these tools on a review site like G2.

Real-World Examples of Funnel Analytics

Many companies are taking advantage of funnel analysis because understanding the customer journey is critical to building successful products . The power of funnel analysis comes from its utility—although it’s only one tool, it can be used to solve a host of various challenges. Below are two funnel analysis examples, so you can have a better idea of what’s possible.

Patreon Increases Subscriber Conversions with Funnel Analysis

Patreon provides creators, artists, and entrepreneurs with the opportunity to earn a living through donations. Users can “pledge” donations to creators on Patreon’s platform, and when creators win, Patreon wins. Patreon faced a conversion challenge—they needed to find new ways to incentivize monthly subscriptions to creator content.

Patreon discovered an opportunity to improve the pledge flow funnel through Amplitude’s funnel analysis chart. Patreon tested a new feature called “blurred posts” to encourage more users to click through the pledge flow. These blurred posts concealed a portion of creator content, enticing users to delve deeper into the pledge flow funnel and ultimately subscribe. The result? Patreon was able to double pledge conversions on creator pages.

Mindbody Uses Funnel Analysis to Drive Conversion with New Features

Mindbody is a digital application that connects customers with fitness experts. Users can book classes, track fitness progress, and find local deals. Using Amplitude’s funnel analysis tool, Mindbody tested a new app feature, the “Activity Dashboard,” to find out how it would influence the conversion rate of booked classes.

Mindbody created behavioral cohorts—groups of users categorized by behavior—to conduct their analysis. Cohorts were segmented into two groups: those who interacted with the Activity Dashboard and those who did not.

After comparing the two groups in the funnel analysis chart, they noticed a huge lift in conversions. The group that used the Activity Dashboard booked 24% more classes per week. Based on this success, Mindbody placed the new feature in the navigation bar to make it more noticeable.

• Build and Analyze a Funnel Analysis Chart Video , Amplitude
• Funnel Analysis and Its Use Cases Live Session , Amplitude
• In freemium marketing, product analytics are the difference between conversion and confusion , TechCrunch
• Don’t Throw Your Customers–And Your Business–Down The Funnel , Forbes
• Optimize Your Marketing Funnel With These Three Questions , Forbes
• Designing Customer Journeys for the Post-Pandemic World , Harvard Business Review

About the Author

More best practices.

• The Questioning Funnel – Effective Questioning
• Communication Skills

The questioning funnel is a technique that can help you improve how you ask questions , whether in sales, fact-finding or coaching. The questioning funnel shows us how to use different types of questions in a particular order to gather the information that we need.

The Questioning Funnel

The questioning funnel is broken down into 3 key areas of questions. These are:

• Open questions
• Probing questions
• Closed question

The idea behind the questioning funnel is that we start with broad open questions, probe to gather more specifics, and then use a closed question to clarify.

Open Questions

We start the process by using some broad open questions relating to the subject we are questioning around. This allows us to get the conversation started but also gives us the information we need to ask more specific questions in the next part.

As a reminder, open questions begin with:

It’s important to only use these questions at this stage as the process will not work effectively if open questions are not used here.

For example, we could ask something like “what’s your favourite type of movie”?

This might lead to an answer such as ‘comedy’.

Or, we might ask something like “tell me what happened in this situation” as another example.

Probing Questions

Once we have some answers to our initial open question, we can then begin using probing questions to ask for more specific information. The idea in the probing section is to make sure our next question is always based on the last answer. We are looking to dig deeper with each question.

Probing questions are also open questions. You can use closed, but only if absolutely necessary.

For example, “why do you like comedy movies?”

The answer may be something like ‘I like movies that make me laugh’.

We can then ask “what type of comedy really makes you laugh?”

The answer may be ‘silly situations’.

We can then ask “What examples of silly situations have made you laugh the most?”

The answer me be ‘in this particular movie, this happened…’

We can keep going here if needs be.

Closed Questions

After the probing section, we need to show the person that we have listened and understood. We do this by asking some closed questions to clarify.

We might say “so what you are telling me is that you like comedy movies because they make you laugh, especially silly situations such as… Is that right?.

Providing the answer is yes, then the funnelling technique has allowed us to uncover the right information.

As a reminder, closed questions typically lead to a yes or no response, They begin with:

This is why they work so well at this stage as they seek clarification.

Questioning Funnel Applications

You can use the questioning funnel for a number of different things. You can use it for:

• Sales – probing the customer to understand their needs to offer the right products or services
• Coaching – asking the right questions to fact-find to understand where to provide help and support
• Problem-solving – to understand how a problem occurred and fact find the right information
• Investigations – to ask the right questions to get the information you need
• Relationship building – to show genuine interest and have the other party open up more

These are just a handful of examples, but the technique can be used in any scenario when questioning is required.

Further Learning

The funnelling technique is used as a method in many of our communication skills training courses. Take a look at our communication skills training courses for more information.

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In this article.

• 1. Background
• 2. The Questioning Funnel
• 3. Open Questions
• 4. Probing Questions
• 5. Closed Questions
• 6. Questioning Funnel Applications
• 7. Further Learning

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Demand Gen: Growth Unleashed.

Funnel Analysis: How to Spot and Resolve Drop-Off Points

Ron Sela / Last updated: September 21, 2023

Funnel analysis  gives businesses crucial insights into the customer journey and sales process. It pinpoints where potential customers are dropping off, allowing them to identify issues and optimize activities.

Breaking down the sales funnel brings transparency to what is and isn’t working at each phase. With it, businesses better understand areas requiring more resources or adjustment.

Basically, you need something that sheds light on hard-to-track efforts like brand awareness by providing estimates of total leads vs. website visits vs. conversions, for instance.

A thorough funnel analysis empowers data-driven decision-making by quantifying cause-and-effect relationships. It maximizes funnel health and sales effectiveness through informed strategy adjustments.

Don’t know where to start? You’re in the right place. We’ll guide you through the basics, why it matters, and how to set up and analyze your own funnel. Dive in, and let’s get started.

Table of Contents

Key Takeaways

• Funnel analysis provides businesses with invaluable insights into customer behavior and the effectiveness of marketing and sales strategies. By pinpointing drop-off points and tracking user interactions, businesses can identify areas for improvement and optimize their activities.
• Through funnel analysis, businesses can make informed decisions backed by concrete data rather than relying on gut feelings or assumptions. This approach enables them to adjust marketing strategies, allocate resources effectively, and focus on areas with the most potential for improvement.
• Implementing funnel analysis allows businesses to continuously improve their performance, boost conversion rates, and increase revenue. By identifying successes and failures, adapting strategies, and optimizing the customer journey, businesses can foster growth and maintain a competitive edge in the market.

What is Funnel Analysis

Funnel analysis is a systematic approach businesses use to dissect and optimize the customer journey through various stages, from initial awareness to conversion.

It involves tracking and analyzing customer behavior at each sales funnel stage to gain insights into marketing and sales strategies that work best.

In the context of a sales funnel , potential customers enter the wide end, and as they progress through each stage, the funnel narrows, leaving only the most engaged prospects at the narrow end, who then become customers.

Conversion funnel analysis is the system of tracking these stages and identifying where prospects drop out. It can help you determine bottlenecks in your sales qualification process and find areas for improvement.

Various funnel analysis tools are available that can help you in this process. These tools can track the user journey, measure conversion rates at each stage, and give insights into user behavior.

We will tackle this in a bit. Meanwhile, let’s take a closer look at why doing a simple funnel analysis is crucial.

Why Funnel Analysis Matters

Even if your sales and conversion processes seem to be going smoothly, it’s essential to regularly measure and analyze your funnel performance. This becomes even more important if you’re facing struggles.

Identifying Drop-Off Points

Funnel analysis is vital for identifying drop-off points in your customer journey or sales process. These are critical junctures where potential customers or leads abandon their journey.

By pinpointing these drop-off points, businesses gain crucial insights into what might hinder conversions.

For instance, if you observe a significant drop in the number of users moving from the “Interest” stage to the “Consideration” stage in your online sales funnel, it could indicate that your product descriptions or pricing strategies need improvement.

Identifying these bottlenecks allows you to focus on the areas requiring immediate attention and optimization.

Analyzing Customer Behavior

Marketing funnel analysis provides a detailed understanding of customer behavior at each stage of the funnel. This means tracking users’ interactions with your website, app, or marketing campaigns.

It reveals which pages they visit, how long they spend on each page, where they drop off, and which actions they take before converting.

This data is invaluable for tailoring your marketing strategies and content to align with user preferences and expectations.

For example, if you discover that a significant portion of users abandon their shopping carts during checkout, you can investigate the reasons behind it.

It could be because of unexpected shipping costs or a complex checkout form. Then, you can make the necessary improvements.

Improving Conversion Rates

One of the most direct benefits of funnel analysis is its potential to boost conversion rates.

Businesses can implement data-driven optimizations by identifying drop-off points and understanding customer behavior.

This might involve refining marketing messages, streamlining the checkout process, offering personalized recommendations, or handling common objections .

The result is a smoother and more efficient customer journey that encourages more users to progress through the funnel and convert.

Even small improvements at various stages of the funnel can substantially impact overall conversion rates, which, in turn, can significantly increase revenue and profitability.

Enhancing Customer Experience

Funnel analysis is closely tied to improving the overall customer experience. Identifying and resolving pain points in the customer journey creates a more positive and satisfying experience for your audience.

This, in turn, fosters customer loyalty and increases the likelihood of repeat business.

For example, if you analyze customer behavior and discover that users often get stuck or confused during the customer onboarding process of your software, you can redesign the onboarding flow to be more user-friendly.

It will reduce frustration and improve the experience for new users.

Boosting ROI and Revenue

Ultimately, funnel analysis is a valuable tool for boosting return on investment (ROI) and revenue.

By optimizing your funnel and increasing conversion rates , you can create more revenue from your existing traffic and marketing efforts.

Additionally, you can minimize wasted spending by reallocating resources to focus on the most effective strategies and campaigns, further enhancing ROI.

The data-driven insights from funnel analysis enable businesses to make informed decisions about where to invest their marketing budget, resulting in more efficient and profitable marketing ops .

Next, let’s delve into the important role of data collection and tools in optimizing conversion funnels.

Data Collection and Tools

You’ve understood why funnel analysis is crucial. Now, let’s talk about data collection and tools.

Think about the different sources where you can collect data for your funnel analysis and the key metrics you need to track. There’s also a variety of tools and software available you might want to consider.

Data Sources for Funnel Analysis

To conduct a thorough funnel analysis, you must pull data from various sources. These data sources for funnel analysis are crucial to understanding your customer journey comprehensively.

• Website Analytics:  Website analytics tools like Google Analytics are a primary data source for funnel analysis. They provide detailed information about user behavior on your website, including traffic sources, page views, bounce rates, and conversion tracking. This data helps you understand how users engage with your website and where they drop off in the funnel.
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems:  CRMs store valuable customer data, such as contact information, purchase history, and interactions with your sales team. Integrating CRM data with funnel analysis allows you to track how leads progress from discovery call  to conversion and beyond, providing insights into the effectiveness of your sales efforts.
• Email Marketing Platforms:  If email marketing is a part of your funnel strategy, email platforms like MailChimp or Constant Contact offer data on email open rates, click-through rates, and conversion tracking. This data helps evaluate the performance of email campaigns at different stages of the funnel.
• E-commerce Platforms:  For businesses with online stores, e-commerce platforms like Shopify or WooCommerce provide data on product views, add-to-cart actions, and purchase history. This data is crucial for analyzing the effectiveness of product pages and checkout processes in the funnel.
• Social Media Analytics:  Social media platforms like Facebook Insights and Twitter Analytics offer data on engagement, click-through rates, and conversions from social media campaigns. This data helps assess the impact of social media efforts on funnel progression.

Key Metrics to Track

Here are the key metrics anyone should track for effective funnel analysis.

• Conversion Rate:  The most critical metric in funnel analysis, the conversion rate, measures the percentage of users who complete a desired action (e.g., making a purchase) out of the total number of users who entered the funnel.
• Bounce Rate:  Bounce rate indicates the percentage of users who land on a page and then leave the website without taking any further action. A high bounce rate at any stage of the funnel could signal a problem that needs attention.
• Exit Rate:  Exit rate tracks the percentage of users who leave your website or a specific page after viewing it. This metric can reveal where users are dropping off within the funnel.
• Average Session Duration:  This metric shows how long, on average, users spend on your website or specific pages. It helps gauge user engagement and can highlight areas where users are spending more or less time.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR):  CTR measures the percentage of users who click on a specific link or call-to-action (CTA). Tracking CTR can help assess the effectiveness of your CTAs and content in moving users through the funnel.

Funnel Analysis Tools and Software

You can use dozens of funnel analysis tools and software to understand your customer’s journey better and improve conversion rates. You’re not limited to a single option.

With the right tool, you can dig deeper into the customer funnel, identify bottlenecks, and optimize your strategies.

Consider these top tools:

• Google Analytics:  Google Analytics is a powerful, widely-used tool that provides comprehensive website analytics. It offers features for setting up and tracking custom sales funnels, allowing you to visualize and analyze user journeys on your site.
• Mixpanel:  Mixpanel is a user analytics platform that specializes in event tracking. It’s valuable for businesses wanting to delve deep into user behavior and cohort analysis, making it useful for understanding how users move through a funnel.
• Kissmetrics:  Kissmetrics is another user analytics tool focused on tracking customer behavior. It provides insights into user engagement, conversions, and retention, making it suitable for optimizing funnel performance.
• HubSpot:  HubSpot is a comprehensive inbound marketing and CRM platform that offers funnel-tracking features. It allows you to create and analyze marketing and sales funnels, integrating data from various sources.
• Custom Solutions:  Some businesses opt for custom-built funnel analysis solutions tailored to their needs. These can be built using programming languages like Python or R and may involve data from various sources integrated using APIs. Custom solutions provide flexibility and control over data analysis but may require more development resources.

Data collection and the choice of tools are critical aspects of funnel analysis. They enable businesses to gain deep insights into customer behavior, optimize their funnels, and make data-driven decisions that drive conversions and revenue.

Setting Up Funnel Tracking

So, how do you go about setting up funnel tracking? First, you’ll need to define your funnel stages clearly. After that, it’s all about implementing those tracking codes and then testing and debugging to ensure everything runs smoothly.

Defining Your Funnel

You’ll need to identify each stage in your sales process before you can accurately define your funnel.

Understanding the customer journey and the key touchpoints is vital. It’s not merely about making a sale. It’s about nurturing a relationship with your customer.

Consider these three points:

• Identify your customer’s journey: Understand the steps your customer goes through from awareness to purchase.
• Define your stages: Break down your sales process into actionable stages. This could be awareness, interest, decision, and action.
• Set your goals: For each stage, set measurable goals. This could be increasing awareness by 20% or improving conversion rates.

A map user flow also helps. Visualize how users should ideally move through the funnel. In doing so, you’ll have a well-defined sales funnel to help you track progress, identify bottlenecks, and drive growth.

Implementing Tracking Codes

Tracking codes, often called pixels, let you see how users interact with your site. They’re like the unseen detectives of your online business.

You’ll see where traffic is coming from, what’s engaging your visitors, and where they’re leaving.

Don’t worry if you’re not tech-savvy. Many tools can help you set up tracking codes easily.

Here’s a process:

• Install Analytics Tools:  If you’re using tools like Google Analytics or Mixpanel, make sure the tracking codes are correctly installed on your website or app. This involves adding code snippets to your website’s HTML or using tag management systems.
• Event Tracking:  Set up event tracking for each stage of your funnel. This involves configuring your analytics tool to monitor specific user actions, such as button clicks or form submissions. For instance, you can track when users click the “Add to Cart” button or submit a lead generation form.
• UTM Parameters:  Use UTM parameters in your marketing links to track the sources of traffic and campaign effectiveness. UTM parameters are tags appended to URLs, providing detailed insights into the origin of your website visitors .
• E-commerce Tracking:  If applicable, enable e-commerce tracking to monitor revenue, transaction data, and product performance. E-commerce tracking is vital for businesses selling products or services online.

Testing and Debugging

Make sure you’re regularly testing and debugging your funnel tracking to ensure it’s accurately capturing your customer’s journey.

Regular check-ups are essential. It’s like keeping an eye on your health. You wouldn’t neglect a routine check-up, would you?

Here are three key steps to ensure your funnel tracking is up to scratch:

• Test the Funnel:  After implementing tracking codes, thoroughly test your funnel to ensure that events and conversions are tracked accurately. Go through the funnel yourself, clicking on various elements, and completing conversion actions.
• Use Debugging Tools:  Many analytics platforms offer debugging tools that help identify tracking issues. These tools often provide real-time data on user interactions, allowing you to see if events are being recorded correctly.
• Cross-Browser and Cross-Device Testing:  Test your funnel across different browsers (e.g., Chrome, Firefox, Safari) and devices (desktop, mobile, tablet) to ensure that tracking works consistently for all users.
• Data Validation:  Regularly validate your funnel data to ensure accuracy. Compare the data in your analytics platform with other sources of truth, such as CRM or sales data, to identify discrepancies.

Establishing robust funnel tracking is a systematic process that demands careful planning, implementation, and regular testing. This iterative process of understanding your customer’s journey, implementing precise tracking mechanisms, and validating the data regularly is a clear roadmap to your business’ growth.

Interpreting Funnel Analysis Results

Interpreting funnel analysis results is a critical phase in the data-driven decision-making process for businesses. This is where the process concludes.

Making Informed Decisions

Making informed decisions based on funnel analysis results means using the insights extracted from the data to guide your strategies and actions.

These decisions are rooted in evidence and provide a clear path forward for optimizing the customer journey.

In essence, funnel analysis empowers businesses to move away from gut feelings and assumptions, ensuring that every decision is backed by concrete data, ultimately leading to more effective and efficient operations.

Adjusting Marketing Strategies

Adjusting marketing strategies based on funnel analysis results means tailoring your campaigns, content, and outreach to address your audience’s specific needs and behaviors.

Adapting your strategies ensures that you remain relevant and effective in a dynamic market environment.

If funnel analysis reveals that a particular marketing channel is driving more conversions, consider reallocating resources to that channel. Conversely, if a campaign is underperforming, you can make adjustments or discontinue it.

This adaptability is essential for optimizing your marketing spend and focusing efforts where they yield the best results.

Identifying Successes and Failures

Identifying successes and failures in funnel analysis results involves recognizing what works well in your funnel and what needs improvement.

Acknowledging successes and failures is essential for continuous improvement and learning from past experiences.

Celebrate your successes and build upon them. If a specific marketing campaign or strategy consistently drives high conversions, analyze what elements contribute to its success and replicate those tactics in other areas.

On the flip side, if you identify areas of failure, view them as opportunities for growth. Determine the root causes of these failures and implement changes to address them.

This proactive approach ensures that your funnel evolves and becomes more effective over time.

Marketing funnel analysis is indispensable for businesses. It offers a structured approach to understanding customer behavior, optimizing conversion processes, and enhancing overall performance. As we’ve explored, funnel analysis empowers organizations to identify bottlenecks, calculate conversion rates, segment audiences , conduct A/B testing, and utilize visual tools for in-depth insights. By implementing funnel analysis, businesses can make data-driven decisions that boost ROI and revenue and foster a superior customer experience . As technology and user preferences evolve, the importance of funnel analysis remains steadfast, encouraging organizations to harness the power of data and embark on a journey of continuous improvement in their pursuit of success.

Related Posts:

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About Ron Sela

Ron is a marketing advisor to technology-driven businesses. He has 15 years of digital marketing experience and an MBA from the University of Florida. Ron helps companies grow their revenue by developing and executing integrated marketing plans that align with their business goals. He has a proven track record of success in helping companies achieve their growth objectives.

Research Techniques for Computer Science, Information Systems and Cybersecurity pp 39–58 Cite as

Adopting a Funnel Strategy and Using Mind Mapping to Visualize the Research Design

• Uche M. Mbanaso 4 ,
• Lucienne Abrahams 5 &
• Kennedy Chinedu Okafor 6  
• First Online: 25 May 2023

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This chapter explains the need to adopt a research strategy and illustrates the funnel strategy that enables the researcher to move from identifying the flaws, or defects or gaps that require attention to scoping the problem statement, finalizing the research proposal as a foundation for data collection and analysis and conducting the experiments or fieldwork, through to the point of analysis and thesis writing. It presents the funnel strategy as a roadmap that can be applied to completing the various phases of the research. The chapter demonstrates the application of mind mapping techniques (graphical representations of what to do and how to do it) to the identified research problem. It sets out a series of major activities as part of the mind mapping process. It presents a series of visuals, for example, artificial intelligence and robotics sub-topics.

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• What is Funnel Analysis and How it Can Improve Your Efficiency

Sales funnel analysis may be the thing you consider least within your business. Even though you know that sales are fundamental to your success. A lot of businesses work this way, and there’s a good reason why.

The problem is caused by the terminology – the sales funnel. How exactly is that supposed to work?

The Sales Funnel

Your sales process is unique to your business but will most often be patterned after a popular sales technique. One of the most common forms of the sales process is known as a sales funnel.

The concept of the funnel is simple – many potential customers are poured in at the top of the funnel, and a few come out at the bottom ready to buy. In fact, it’s more like a water filter than a funnel.

With a water filter, a reservoir is filled at the top, and the water with all its impurities flows through a smaller channel. This channel blocks and filters out the undesirable elements, leaving pure water (exactly what you need) at the end.

The sales funnel filters out the people who aren’t interested, who aren’t ready to buy, who won’t commit. At the end, it leaves you with just what you want – the paying customers.

The Benefits of Sales Funnel Analysis

With a water filter, there’s no reason for the user to analyze what’s going on inside the filter until it becomes ineffective. When the impurities are coming through too often, the filter needs changing. This is true of a sales funnel (if too many non-buyers get right to the end, you need to change the process). But, you will also need to see what is happening inside to ensure you get the best results.

There are two things to monitor. First, the progress of individual leads within the funnel and the effectiveness of each stage of the funnel.

Individual Customers within Funnel Analysis

The benefits of being able to track individual customers include the ability to push them further and to build your ideal customer profile.

Someone may become stuck in the funnel, and don’t proceed but also don’t abandon the funnel entirely. Then, you need to know whether they are worth pursuing. By understanding how your customers think , you’ll be able to determine how to help this customer along to the next step.

You might know that your customers get stuck because they don’t like the pricing structure. More often, they don’t understand it fully. If that’s the case, contact this customer and clarify your pricing. Offer a discount if it will help.

Customers might get stuck because they don’t know enough about your products or services to make an informed decision. Get in touch and answer their queries, make it easy for them to make the purchase.

Knowing how your customers tend to progress will help you identify the most likely of all your leads to purchase, and you can concentrate your efforts on them rather than the ones who will never buy.

Funnel Analysis Keeps Your Business on Track

To further break down your sales funnel, analyzing each stage of the process and the number of people in each stage will help keep your business on track and maximize sales.

There are many variations on the sales funnel model, but it generally works by building awareness, generating leads, turning leads in interested prospects, closing the sale. Awareness is quite difficult to track and is more directly related to your marketing activities, whereas knowing how many leads, prospects, and people ready to buy is much more straightforward.

You may think the ideal situation is to get everyone into the “closing the sale” section. While this is important, a strong flow all the way through is more important.

How could it be more important than actual sales? Imagine this scenario – 10 people are ready to buy, you have 0 prospects and 0 leads. You close all 10 sales – well done! What next? There are no prospects to work on and you’ll have to start marketing to even begin the process.

A better scenario is to have 1 person ready to buy, 4 prospects, and 20 leads. You can easily move everyone through the funnel as you need to, and if your number of leads begins to drop, just bump up your marketing plan.

Funnel Analysis Promote Efficiency

Getting those leads into your sales funnel is important, but on occasion, you may find that the opposite situation occurs – you have more leads than you can handle.

Monitoring each step of your funnel will allow you to make a wise decision relating to this. Perhaps you need to cool off on your marketing activity, or maybe you need to change the requirements for each stage of your funnel.

You might even be in a position where your business is ready to expand – you might need to enhance and enlarge your sales team to cope with the extra demand. Again, without monitoring what is happening, you won’t know how to react most effectively.

You want your sales team to always be busy, but you don’t want them to be too busy to treat the leads properly. Extra-busy periods are fine, but when it becomes the norm rather than the exception, you may need to carefully examine how your business is performing. Then, make changes to ensure you always get the best from everyone – both your sales team and your customers.

Why Funnel Analysis Matters

You wouldn’t drive a vehicle without making sure there was fuel in it, and you can always check how much fuel you have – there’s an indication right there on the dash. You wouldn’t let your phone battery run flat if you could avoid it, and there’s an indication of the charge left right there on the screen.

It’s just as important to know exactly where you are with your business and your sales funnel. If no new leads are entering the funnel, you’re going to run out of sales/fuel/battery and can’t do anything about it. When you can’t make sales, your business can’t survive.

Get yourself a good CRM that can make your funnel analysis process much easier. Check out LeadSquared , trusted by 850+ customers across the globe! You can book a demo and see for yourself.

Meenu Joshi works with the Content Marketing team of LeadSquared. She consults with multiple clients on leveraging content to generate and nurture leads. You can connect with her on Twitter

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Innovation Funnel

Innovation Funnel: the Innovation Funnel is a mechanism that enables a constant stream of ideas that can be screened for viability. It’s a tool that helps companies and individuals to innovate successfully. This article provides a practical explanation of the Innovation Funnel . After reading, you’ll understand the basics of this powerful innovation tool.

What is the Innovation Funnel?

The Innovation Funnel is a mechanism that enables a constant stream of ideas that can be screened for viability. The Innovation Funnel, also referred to as Funnel Management Process, is a popular approach for innovation that is used by many companies to create an innovative and realistic action plan.

The core of the Innovation Funnel is to generate as many ideas as possible, a large portion of which will be refined and converted into concrete development plans. This creates a funnel-like shape, from lots of ideas to a few ideas. As the best ideas will remain, the Innovation Funnel is an excellent tool to prioritise ideas and ensure that the best will be fully developed and advanced projects, products, or other innovations can be launched.

The idea of the Innovation Funnel originates from the world of sales. The idea was that it takes lots of potential customers to qualify for making a deal as a company, and that it takes lots of ideas and brainstorming sessions to evaluate whether a new product or service will be profitable.

Henry Chesbrough subsequently changed the concept by making the funnel permeable. He came up with the term ‘open innovation’ and proposed that ideas can and must come from individuals within the organisation, but also from external customers and partners. The ideas enter the funnel on the left side. Ideas can exit the funnel on the right side and move on to third parties.

Criteria in the Innovation Funnel Management Process

The Innovation Funnel Management Process demands that each idea is carefully and constantly screened and compared to several rules, criteria, and filters. Here, it’s important that the Innovation Funnel Management Process isn’t limited to generating new innovations or processes, but also that there are ongoing projects that must constantly be scrutinised by means of the previously established criteria to ensure that they function optimally.

The employees or the team must draw up criteria regarding feasibility and the time schedule of the innovation plan. Examples of criteria include:

• To what extent does the idea meet the customer’s ideas and wishes?
• Does the idea fit within the strategy or the strategic objectives (SMART) ?
• To what extent is the idea risky?

The criteria must be adjusted depending on the type of idea or proposal.

Developing Innovation Funnel

The steps below can be used to start using the Innovation Funnel actively. The funnel is used to describe the steps in developing a process or product. The goal is to create processes or products that meet market needs and that can be produced in an economically profitable way.

1. The Mouth of the Funnel

The goal of this first step or phase is to gather as many ideas as possible. In doing so, the organisation expands its knowledge and availability of information. The more ideas the organisation can come up with, the larger the number of solutions and the better the quality of these solutions. Gathering information is vital and relatively easy. Information can be found at competitors, partners or institutes, in studies, and at university connections. Market research also yields valuable information. Sometimes, this requires travel to the areas where the demographic can be found.

To efficiently go through this phase of the Innovation Funnel, a clear perspective on the objectives must have been established beforehand. The organisation needs to understand the possibilities and have the pure intention to actualise ideas. The ideas come from both the internal and external environment of the organisation. Due to the constant stream of ideas, these must be carefully studied and connections must be made between the idea and the objectives.

2. Narrowing the Funnel

In this phase of the Innovation Funnel, the ideas the organisation has developed in the first phase are screened. The screening process encompasses matching the ideas with the goals of the organisation to check whether they have added value. Subsequently, an evaluation is made of the yields (cost-benefit analysis), the risks (matrix), to then decide which ideas must be selected. Testing the product or service with real customers also begins in this phase.

After establishing and selecting the good ideas, resources must be allocated to the most promising and viable plans and opportunities. These resources are scarce, so careful identification of the yields is an absolute necessity. It’s also important that the ideas position the company positively to enable future projects.

3. Narrowed Part of the Funnel

In this phase, the organisation ensures that the selected ideas are tuned to the company’s objectives that were drawn up when the company was started. The first evaluations and reviews of the test phase are also expected in this phase. If everything went well, the new product, idea, or the new service can be launched on the market.

The funnel shape is easy to use and therefore is also often used by organisations that specialise in more than one industry. However, the Innovation Funnel doesn’t help to establish the requirements for developing a new product or service.

The user must be careful that the Innovation Funnel doesn’t discourage creativity. This can occur because new ideas are rejected at an early stage when they don’t meet the criteria. The model encourages development of the safe ideas, rather than the creative ideas.

In Conclusion

Innovation comes in many forms. A website can make the entire order process fully automatic, new processes such as automated malware combating are designed, and organisations nowadays have tools to boost the sales leads. All these innovations result in improvements and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the internal processes.

These possibilities arise from multiple sources. Sales representatives harass their customers about new products and services, and private equity companies bring the companies in their portfolio under the attention looking for potential adopters who wish to be part of an up-and-coming system.

Now It’s Your Turn

What do you think? Do you recognise the explanation of the Innovation Funnel Management Process? How do you shape innovation within your organisation, or how do you recognise innovation within the company where you work? Which rules do you believe are crucial in the innovation game? Do you have any tips or additional comments?

Share your experience and knowledge in the comments box below.

More information

• Du Preez, N. D., & Louw, L. (2008, July). A framework for managing the innovation process. In PICMET’08-2008 Portland International Conference on Management of Engineering & Technology (pp. 546-558). IEEE .
• Flynn, M., Dooley, L., O’sullivan, D., & Cormican, K. (2003). Idea management for organisational innovation . International Journal of innovation management, 7(04), 417-442.

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Published on: 19/03/2019 | Last update: 15/02/2022

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Ben Janse is a young professional working at ToolsHero as Content Manager. He is also an International Business student at Rotterdam Business School where he focusses on analyzing and developing management models. Thanks to his theoretical and practical knowledge, he knows how to distinguish main- and side issues and to make the essence of each article clearly visible.

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The Power of a Funnel Diagram and its many uses

Funnel diagrams or funnel charts are all about visualization and help represent a significant amount of data through them. Creating a funnel is about showing the various stages in a process, with data behind it as needed. It’s best to use diagram software to build funnel diagrams as there are a lot of updates they will have.

What is a funnel diagram used for?

The primary usage of a funnel diagram many people first encounter is as part of a sales process. A funnel diagram is then called a sales funnel or sales pipeline. It’s meant to track the stages of a sales process and how many are at each stage. This was first designed over 100 years ago by a man named E. St. Elmo Lewis. It was originally called the purchase funnel and is still used today as part of the marketing and sales process. 

Since every industry generates sales revenues, they can get benefit from creating a funnel chart. This also created one of the first funnel templates that covered current marketing terms. It also helped to show the initial thinking of each stage in a sales process.

It can also be used as a brainstorming tool to help generate ideas in various aspects of a business. Areas such as problem-solving or process improvement will easily benefit from the use of a funnel chart.

How do you create a funnel diagram?

You need to first understand the purpose when creating a funnel chart. What will your funnel charts show? Are they meant to be working tools, or will your funnel charts show informational items? Either way, the process should be relatively the same, yet one will be modified from time to time.

The easiest way is to create a funnel diagram starting from a predefined template and then fill it out and customize it. You can use a simple funnel diagram template or even an hourglass funnel diagram template like these ones:

1. Select your categories

In a funnel chart, you will have a process flow. For example, when a prospect passes from one phase to the next phase, they become a sales call. This goes down each stage in a sales process until that lead becomes a returning customer, advocating the product. A typical example of each step in a sales pipeline can be as such:

2. Understanding each layer

Typically with any funnel templates, the top is larger than the bottom. That’s because of the process flow of a typical sales pipeline. That means the Leads portion will be the largest above, with the highest data point. As one passes from one phase down to the next, data is reduced. That’s because they’re slowly becoming refined and on their way to converting into sales.

3. Combining other data forms

Consider including a bar chart with your funnel templates or a pie chart. A bar chart helps to represent other actionable and relatable data points. Keep in mind that a bar chart can also be part of the funnel template. A pie chart will help show time spent on activities as they are a percentage of the whole. You’re already going to have a reduction of data down the sales pipeline. It can be good to add more specific data sets along the way. 

4. Color Code

Try your best to incorporate colors to differentiate the different pools of data. It will help to become a better graphic organizer. It will also help if you want to visualize this with a different data style, such as a bar chart that’s also color coded the same way. 

Where is a funnel diagram used?

While creating a funnel chart is primarily used for some sales pipeline representation, it has other uses. The reason it’s such a popular sales tool is because of how iterative it is for an often stressful position. Instead of just breaking down between leads to sales, it helps represent key steps and success rates at each level. 

Another thing to note is that they can be actionable items. You can easily turn them into a funnel diagram infographic. This can showcase a process flow visually and stages in a process or even represent data sets. It can be a way to generate ideas for developing new variants of a stage in sales or operational efficiencies. 

Besides its use case with sales, we can find creating a funnel chart useful in other areas as well. For example, it can be used in recruitment as a selection process visualization. From candidates that have applied to be screened to those actually hired, it can show data points to improve the process. For example, the figures can show the whole amount of total applicants and the percentage at each stage.

One can create a funnel chart to showcase marketing efficiencies, and we can take a look at each stage of the process flow for an email marketing campaign. This example will have figures such as emails sent, all the way down to converted sales. Once the figures are in place, we can see where there is room for improvement. These can be clickthrough rates to emails being opened. All the while, it helps the team to improve the process flow. 

Funnel Diagram Example

An excellent example of how to use funnel diagrams in an advanced sales and marketing pipeline is below:

Using the right funnel templates can even be done for operational aspects such as order fulfillment. This can help showcase bottlenecks in operational process flows. Whether it’s too few orders being sent out, or too many returns happening, the funnel charts show actionable items. You can also use it in the same area as a funnel diagram infographic for training purposes.

Software to visualize and collaborate

Instead of generating ideas on paper, finding the right diagram software can help. Mindomo helps you to have a graphic organizer and a set of funnel templates to collaborate from day one. You can visually lay out all the necessary stages in a process when you create a funnel chart on Mindomo. As always, you can expand your usage as needed, but Mindomo always has a free version to use. You can work to create powerful visuals through the creation of funnel charts, and you can begin whenever ready. 

Keep it smart, simple, and creative! The Mindomo Team

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How and When to Use an Argument Map?

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What are Funnels and How to Create Them? Examples & Benefits

Marketing and sales are chasing conversions and lead but often forget about the most important thing – their customers and effective communication. Business funnel building is all about it. Based on the best funnel-building experience, let’s check out how to build a sales funnel in such a way that to collect as many targeted leads as possible and bring the maximum number of users to a deal via effective communication.

What is a Sales Funnel?

What is a funnel in business? The sales funnel is a buyer journey, the movement of a customer from getting to know a company to make a product or service purchase.

Why is a sales funnel important?

Understanding the concept of a funnel system and sales funnels is essential. This is   a useful model for visualizing the data, namely the customer journey from initial awareness all the way through the conversion. The sales cycle concept provides a useful framework to analyze your business and identify areas for improvement deeply. That is being a data-driven company with high potential.

If a user could wait several hours or days for a company to contact them earlier, companies must now adapt to their customers and respond quickly to requests. User- cantered communication is a key process for the funnel structure, and it must be organized in such a way that the user receives a solution to the problem quickly.

The Sales Funnel Explained: How it Works

If it’s ok with the definition, then it will be easier to understand why you need a funnel and how it actually works. When your prospects get into the sales funnel you build for a particular business goal, in the process, they pass through several stages before they become customers. They are organized in such a way that each stage of the funnel takes the prospect one step closer to making a purchase and is aimed at simplifying that process. Thus, a well-planned sales funnel will define the actions your business needs to take to push prospects to the next stage throughout the funnel plan.

An Effective Sales Funnel Example

Understanding the way the sales funnel works and the stages it offers to the target comes with the best sales funnel examples. Here they are:

Stages of a Sales Funnel

The stages of the sales funnel are well described by the AIDA business funnel model: awareness, interest, desire, and action. The AIDA framework is the most universal one to divide user interaction into stages depending on the readiness to purchase and helps to get more customers. The AIDA model looks like a funnel because the number of people decreases at each stage.

The AIDA funnel model is suitable for any type of business, but the stages of the funnel depend on its specifics. The funnel consists of four stages:

At the first stage of going through the sales funnel, the user will know that your company exists. The user here sees an ad on a social network or a link in the search engine results, etc., and goes to the website.

The user gets interested in the offer: looks at the catalog studies the terms of delivery, payment methods, and other details.

The user may add an item to the cart and wants to buy it. Or leaves the contact details in a filled-in form on the website.

The user finally reacts to your CTA and performs a target action: places an order, subscribes to the newsletter, leaves the contact number, etc. The AIDA model looks like a funnel because the number of people decreases at each stage.

What does a funnel look like in B2B?

How to Build a Sales Funnel

How to build a funnel that converts? There are a couple of certain steps, to begin with. So, you may build funnels from scratch according to this scenario:

• Create a landing page.
• Offer something valuable.
• Nurture the prospect.
• Close the deal.
• Follow up on the process.
• Measure and analyze the outcome.
• Optimize your sales funnel.

Ask your sales team to create the perfect level of awareness for your target market and align them with the marketing. Engage with your audience and benefit them by building their trust which will lead to transforming your website content consumers into brand advocates and buyers. And all thanks to providing them with excellent customer service, to keep them coming back repeatedly in no time. That’s how your fuel becomes a perpetual sales machine.

Measuring the Success of a Sales Funnel

To measure the success of your conversion funnel is to take into account the performance of your sales funnel. To uncover inefficiencies at various stages of the sales funnel, look for weaknesses that are detrimental to your metrics. Knowing what measure equates to success will clarify the situation. Take a look at these measurement tools depending on your goals to gauge the effectiveness of your sales funnel:

• Traffic sources and engagement statistics,
• Call to Action effectiveness,
• Email click rates,
• Social media engagement,
• Landing page efficiency,
• Email marketing automation performance and so on.

With these general areas, you have an organized starting point to focus on what part of your marketing automation process needs to change. Your analytics will tell you what to do. Remember that these are direct results of your customers’ behavior, so let them guide you in the right direction throughout the funnel analysis.

Why You Need to Optimize Your Sales Funnel

The way you organize a marketing funnel structure also counts. Sales funneling optimization is another way to keep up with your audience and stay data-driven. With a marketing funnel, you have the opportunity to maximize your efforts and even automate your work with a high level of efficiency. Once you have worked out your sales funnel strategy, a consistent percentage of customers will lead to sustainable business growth.

Embed an effective marketing strategy into your ongoing processes. The opportunity to generate more revenue will come when you can expand the top of your funnel. This way, you may increase your sales and grow your customer base. From here, you can use other methods that will strengthen the foundation of your campaign.

How to Optimize Your Sales Funnel

For exceptional funnel design and optimization, it’s highly recommended to use professional marketing tools like Creabl and similar.  You simply choose the service you find the ideal from a reliable full marketing automation company that may be able to provide your business with the sales funnel automation you need to build a powerful marketing sales funnel and more. For more information, visit our website, and feel free to sign up for a demo right now.

Principles of Persuasion for Effective Sales Funnel

In marketing or sales, we not only use the particular models or funnel steps; we may also apply six principles of persuasion to help optimize the process best of all. Here are the principles and how we may use them in sales:

1)    Reciprocity

This principle means that you should do something for a person with no conditions or expectation of a favor in return, and they are more likely to do something for you sincerely, simply because the human psyche works like that. So, it means they do something in response to an action in a way that corresponds or is somehow equivalent to that action.

2) Commitment/Consistency

The truth is that gaining commitment is an essential element of the selling process. It consists of closing (or checking in) at every step and making certain conclusions about where your customer is in the sales process for the moment (on which level of the funnel too).

3) Social Proof

Social proof in sales is the act of using other prospects’ and customers’ behavior as examples to influence your leads.( Nutshell ) The only thing that will be left to decide is which ones to use and for what reason.

4) Authority

In sales, establishing authority requires revealing that you’re a specialist in a particular field or process, and expertise a particular skill set that can help your prospects in solving their problems. Establishing authority is also necessary to staying in control of the sales process throughout funnel information.

What is the liking principle for sales? According to the liking principle, we are more likely to be persuaded by people we like rather than dislike and those we want to be like. It’s common that people tend to like people who are similar to them, who pay them compliments, who cooperate towards mutual goals, etc. This is the liking principle.

6) Scarcity

Scarcity in marketing and sales is a technique that the teams apply to encourage their customers to purchase a product or discount before it even goes away. In other words – a sense of urgency. Often, this means putting timers on promos and sales, limiting the offers and number of items in stock, creating seasonal offers or promotional items to sell for a short time, etc.

Benefits of Creating a Sales Funnel

So, the huge benefit when you create a funnel is that it may cater to satisfying all your sales or marketing needs goals, and suits for applying sales principles and so much more. Funnel thinking in any project you do is a way to success.

When it comes to sales or digital marketing, one of the most important things is having an effective sales funnel. It’s a powerful sales tool for multiple goals.  Even if you’re new to the world of online marketing, learning how to build a sales funnel should be a top priority on your to-do list. Discover how to create a funnel with us in no time and use it to achieve success in your business.

Conversion Funnel Frequently Asked Questions

What is funnel building made for.

The marketing funnel helps with generating new and nurturing existing leads. The marketing funnel building is good for attracting your prospects’ interest to your brand, guiding them from their first touch to the point where they have some interest, and finally learning more about your products or services to purchase them.

How does a funnel work?

It’s very easy. Each funnel stage takes the potential buyer one step closer to making a purchase. Well-planned sales funnel will distinguish the actions your business needs to take to you’re your prospects to the next stage.

How to master sales funnels for beginners?

Apply Creabl or a similar platform to build funnels from scratch.

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The Power of Divergent and Convergent Thinking: Guide Your Group’s Thinking Process to New Heights of Productivity

April 21, 2010 by adminsmartstrm

This article originally appeared in our SmartStorming “Innovation Insights” newsletter. To subscribe, click here , or simply use the registration form in the right hand column.

One of the simplest, most valuable skills a brainstorm facilitator can develop is the ability to “read the direction” in which their group’s thoughts are flowing. Just like the ebbing and flowing tides of an ocean or river, collaborative thinking flows in one of two distinct directions: 1) it can diverge outward, in a broad, multidirectional, expansive exploration of ideas; or 2) it can converge inward, narrowing focus in an effort to judge, select and eliminate ideas.

Divergent and Convergent Thinking Divergent thinking opens the imagination to all possibilities, while convergent thinking analyzes and chooses from among those possibilities. In a sense, divergent and convergent thinking are the Yin and Yang of creative problem solving. Neither is superior to the other – simply more appropriate for the task at hand. And both processes are essential to the ultimate success of any group idea generation session. So it’s important to understand their relative benefits, to identify when and under what circumstances each type of thinking is taking place, and to learn how to guide the group back to the most appropriate and effective method of thinking.

The Benefits of Divergent Thinking Divergent thinking allows a group to generate as many fresh, new ideas as possible in a short timeframe. During this process all judgment is suspended, the group is encouraged to go for quantity of ideas, not quality, spontaneously build on one another’s ideas, and push the boundaries of the imagination…even wild, crazy, audacious ideas are welcome. In fact, the motto for divergent thinking is, “Everything is possible!” All ideas are equally embraced and recorded. In divergent thinking there really is no such thing as a bad idea . The goal is to simply achieve the largest creative yield of ideas and new connections possible. Look at divergent thinking as “big picture,” unencumbered by any practical or logistical constrains, limitations, or judgments.

The Benefits of Convergent Thinking If divergent thinking is casting the widest net possible to capture new ideas, then convergent thinking can be thought of as harvesting of the very best of catch. Just as a funnel decreases the scope of a substance, so that it fits through a narrow opening, convergent thinking narrows down a large number of ideas through the process of analyzing, judging, eliminating and selecting. Convergent thinking is ideally suited for thoroughly evaluating the merits of an idea, or seeing how well it holds up to scrutiny based on pre-established criteria. We use convergent thinking to gain clarity, consider practical constraints, draw conclusions, determine the bottom-line, and select the best ideas.

When Thinking Processes Collide As we mentioned earlier, each of the two thinking processes has an essential role to play in an effective brainstorm. However, if they take place simultaneously, or at the inappropriate time, they will quickly become an obstacle to success. Like matter and antimatter, one will neutralize the benefits of the other and create potentially “explosive” situations.

For example, imagine your group is in the middle of a spirited “blue sky” exploration of new, inventive ways to promote your product or service in light of new competition (divergent thinking). Suddenly a participant begins to judge or shoot down fledgling ideas they feel aren’t worthy of consideration (convergent thinking). What happens? The spontaneous outflow of idea sharing comes to a grinding halt. People clam up, become defensive and withhold their thoughts in fear of being judged or ridiculed. It takes a vigilant and skilled facilitator to spot convergent thinking when it seeps into the divergent ideation process. To get the session back on track, the facilitator must quickly stop the judgment and shift the group back in the direction of productive, divergent thinking.

Conversely if your group is in the selection process of narrowing down an abundance of ideas, convergent thinking is just the method you need. By assessing and judging ideas according to an established list of objective criteria, you can quickly separate the wheat from the chaff. However, if divergent thinking enters your evaluation process, your group will start free-associating ways to save an impractical idea… or worse, spontaneously begin a whole new round of unnecessary idea-generation. When this occurs, the objective selection process gets hijacked; sessions run overtime, and usually end without closure.

The Best of Both Worlds An awareness and understanding of both these types of collaborative thinking can have a profound impact on the ultimate effectiveness of your idea generation sessions. Learn to identify them quickly. Develop skills for guiding or redirecting your group’s attention in the most productive direction. Then watch, not just as the ideas flow – but as the very best rise to the top.

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Thinkific Plus

Boosting your business revenue with sales funnels: a complete guide, share this article.

Full disclosure: this article is part of a sales funnel.

No, we’re not here to pitch you a product or dangle a limited-time offer in front of you. The truth is, we want you to read this guide, learn something helpful from it, explore some of our other resources, strengthen your relationship with us, see positive results within your own business… and keep coming back happy.

We aren’t alone in this endeavour, either. In fact, you’re likely engaged in a few different sales funnels right now (and “a few” is an understatement). That report you downloaded the other day? That’s part of a sales funnel. That free trial you signed up for? A classic sales funnel strategy. That website you visited after a quick Google Search? Yep, even that’s involved in a sales funnel. And that clearance sale that caught your eye at the mall? You guessed it – sales funnel, again.

And if you aren’t thinking about your own sales funnel right now – the journey your customers make from prospect to purchase – well, now’s the time to start doing so. Because whether you’ve created a strategy around that journey or are more of a “build it and they will come” approach, customers are on that path. And if you aren’t making it easy to arrive at the destination, you’re almost certainly missing out on opportunities.  

We’re here to break down the sales funnel: from what it is and why you need to think about it, to how to build one and keep improving it.

From top to bottom: What is a sales funnel?

A sales funnel describes the entire sequence of steps people take as they discover your business, build a relationship with you and ultimately decide to become a customer by purchasing one of your products or services or enrolling in your course offers. 

The shape of the funnel represents the number of people across each stage as people progress through:

• At the top of the sales funnel, you’ll find a diverse universe of people who might be interested in your courses or offerings. This includes your target market, people who might not necessarily be interested in what you have to offer, and everyone in between.
• In the middle of the funnel, that universe narrows to include leads who are more likely to enrol in your course and purchase your offerings. Those who aren’t interested have left the pool of individuals, and those who remain are actively considering you as one of many options to solve a problem they are currently facing.
• At the bottom of the funnel, the pool of individuals narrows down to leads who are interested, and even more to those who are ready – and willing – to buy from you right now. These are the prospects who are most likely to make a purchase… and who will be more costly if you lose them.

Like the namesake you might find in your kitchen cupboard, a sales funnel begins wide at the top and narrows at the bottom. This is because you likely have a much wider universe of prospects interested in what you have to offer compared to the number of people who will actually click that “purchase” button. 

But unlike its namesake, the sales funnel is really more of a sieve. People “fall out” and exit at each stage, and that’s actually a good thing – after all, you don’t want to waste time and resources showing your offerings to prospects who aren’t interested in what you’re selling or who are simply not the right fit. 

Still, your goal is ultimately to improve the experience of each customer as they enter the top of your funnel so that they’re more likely to make it all the way through to the bottom… again and again!

One size does not fit all

While sales funnels can be as simple as that three-stage top-to-bottom structure, they can also get more complicated.

If your sales journey has a lot of steps and you are asking leads to make a large financial commitment or if your product requires a lot of upfront education to demonstrate its value, you may need a sales funnel with more granularity than a standard top-middle-bottom approach.   

You may want to create one overarching sales funnel that contains other mini-funnels within it if you have many products, services and courses to offer to new and returning customers.

Alongside the sales funnel, we also need to consider how the customer journey changes over time. The pre-digital path to purchase used to be much more linear, with companies “pushing” prospects through. Today, customers wind and weave across channels, with more alternatives available to them on the market, different sources of trust and truth, and higher expectations for personalization and service.

All this to say: don’t expect to get things right on the first go. A great sales funnel takes time to plan, build and implement, and even more time to tweak until it reaches its full potential.

The benefits of establishing your sales funnel

Are the time and effort needed to implement an effective sales funnel worth it? A resounding yes. We’ve seen it work with Thinkific customers like Eric Sui, CEO of Single Grain first-hand. He shares: “ You’re going to have something that’s indestructible, that’s evergreen for the long term, and people are going to love you because you’re delivering value.”

Creating an effective sales funnel is a boon to both marketing and sales teams. Ultimately, the goal is to move more people from the top to the bottom, but let’s not forget the whole suite of benefits:

• Target your messages : Reach the right people, in the right way, at the right time with the right content. When you know who is on the purchasing path and where they are, you can tailor your messages and offers to them in ways that feel personal, rather than generic.
• Better use of resources : When you understand the customer journey, you can identify key moments of transitions where touchpoints with potential purchasers will have the greatest impact.
• Capture more opportunities: Identify opportunities and create touchpoints along the customer journey where you can upsell, downsell or cross-sell other courses or services you offer.
• Remove sales friction: Move customers through the sales cycle faster and easier by examining where they get stuck (and where they leave the process entirely) and taking steps to keep them moving through.
• Track and measure success: Mixing a little science into the art of sales, the sales funnel gives you the cold, hard, quantitative facts on whether your sales process is performing the way you’d like it to.
• Scale your sales process: A great sales funnel is easy to repeat and grows with your business, making the customer journey feel seamless no matter how many people are in the funnel at any given moment.

And the effort pays off. When you provide valuable content along every stage of the sales funnel, you win hearts and change minds – 87 percent of B2B buyers say it sways their buying decision, anyway. And when you nurture your leads, you nurture your deal size too – these customers tend to make 47 percent larger purchases .

Creating a Sales Funnel Strategy

What does it take to build your own sales funnel? It’s generally a good idea to work backward – starting with what you and your customers will get out of it. We’ll walk you through the basics and explain each stage a little deeper, step-by-step.

Step 1: Set your goal

Before you book a hotel, rent a car and make a restaurant reservation for your next trip, you need to know your destination. The same goes for your sales funnel. If you don’t know what you want to get out of it at the highest level, you’ll have a hard time figuring out what goes into it.

For example, you might want your sales funnel to help:

• Increase the total revenue your sales and marketing teams bring in
• Get more value out of individual leads
• Reduce the length of your sales cycle
• Spend money in smarter places throughout your funnel
• Keep happy customers returning for more

In addition, consider setting goals for individual stages of the funnel, too. Suppose you’re getting a lot of poor prospects through the top of the funnel. You might decide to make qualifying better leads a priority in the earliest stages. If you find a lot of people are dropping out of the sales process right before closing a sale, you might want to focus on better retention toward the bottom.

This goal (or goals!) you identify here will influence the amount of time, money and energy you put into each stage of the funnel. It’ll also dictate how you measure the success of your strategy and what kinds of improvements you make.

A quick note: the more precise you are when you set these goals, the better. A statement like “Increase revenue from inbound sales by 30 percent” will prove more useful than a nebulous objective like “increase revenue.”

Step 2: Understand your customers

Sales funnels are people-oriented, meaning you’ll need to figure out: who are the people you most want to sell to?

That means understanding who your perfect client is – your Ideal Client Profile (ICP). Your ICP is a persona you create that describes someone who is experiencing a problem your business or organization directly solves, who has an immediate need (and perhaps more needs in the future), and who has the motivation and resources to enrol in one of your courses.

When building your ICP, consider:

• Who are they? Dig into the demographics where you can.
• What are they doing? Look into their behaviors – where they hang out online and where they seek answers.
• Why do they care? Understand the problem they’re facing and what pain points come with it.
• How do you help? Identify opportunities where you and your business or organization can help solve specific problems.

Few leads will perfectly fit your Ideal Client Profile. So don’t forget about the people who are already buying from you. For that, consider a customer segmentation strategy that can help you make sense of the people who are already excited by your courses.

Understanding your ideas client’s problems, needs and behaviors at each stage of your sales funnel will help you make a bigger impact on prospects who are likely to convert (and waste less time on those who won’t).

Step 3: Map your sales funnel stages

No two businesses are exactly alike – so it should come as no surprise that no two sales funnels look the same, either.

Generally speaking, your sales funnel stages should align closely with the behaviors and needs of customers as they move through their journey. That’s why models like AIDA – or Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action – are favorites for sales and marketing teams.

But ultimately, the model you choose should reflect the business you run, the product or service you offer, and the people you serve.

AIDA: The time-tested sales funnel

A classic promotional model first proposed in the early 1900s, AIDA is still alive and well, loved for its simplicity and focus on the customer journey. For this reason, it’s a great starting point for businesses that are taking their first steps into creating a sales funnel.  

Here’s how it breaks down:

• Awareness Prospective customers first hear about your business, your product or your service. Until now, they didn’t know you exist, but now you’ve caught their attention. At this stage, prospects aren’t necessarily ready to buy (though some may be, if the conditions are just right). They might not even be interested in what you have to offer at the moment. But the important thing is: you’re on their mind. And when that problem pops up or a need arises, your business or organization will already be a familiar name. Paid advertisements are one major way to reach prospects at this stage, but organic content marketing – helpful information on your blog, social media posts and more – is key to success early on, too. A mention from an influencer or expert in your space can help spread the word. For those who already know they have a problem to solve, SEO can play a big role here, too. The more targeted you get, the higher quality prospects you invite into your funnel.
• Interest Prospects want to know more about you. Chances are, by now they have a specific problem to solve, and they’re getting to know their options. Prospects are doing their research, getting to know more about what you – and your competitors – have to offer. They’re not looking for a product pitch, but rather a helping hand to inform them about their options and guide them toward the best decision. This is also a great opportunity for you to learn more about them in return. The right content at the right time can make all the difference. Your blog is key in establishing your expertise and trustworthiness, as are lead magnets like guides, ebooks and reports that require an email address to access. Once you have those email addresses, you can launch targeted email campaigns to keep them interested throughout the research process. SEO plays a huge role as well, so make sure your website ranks high for the terms people are likely searching for.
• Desire Your prospect has narrowed their options down to two or three – and they feel good about adding you to that shortlist. Prospects know by now that you can solve their problem and that you are a good fit for their needs. But if you’re going to win them over, you need to get specific about how you come out ahead of your competitors. Ask yourself: What benefits can you offer that no one else can? What do you do better than anyone else? Seal the deal with social proof – testimonials and case studies can help potential customers see exactly how you’ve helped people like them in the past. The details matter here, too. Specifics around pricing options, package deals and features can sway opinions in your favor – and even help you level up customers to a higher tier or premium offer.

Modern AIDA add-ons

While AIDA is good as a generic sales funnel model, it isn’t perfect. After all, it was posited in a pre-digital time, when customer journeys were much more linear and predictable.Today, however, customers have more power. They don’t want you to push products on them – they want to pull information as they need it. They can do more research on their own – a quick Google search can return millions of results in a matter of milliseconds. Self-service is now preferred by many prospects – in the B2B world, the average buyer consumes 13 pieces of content before making a decision.

• Evaluation: Prospects typically spend more time researching their options, and more time deliberating with friends, family and colleagues. They’re on social media, browsing reviews and asking for recommendations. This is a fantastic opportunity to nurture prospects who already know about you, offer limited-time promotions to help them move to a decision phase, or even enter into their awareness set if they haven’t heard of you before.
• Engagement: The average sales lead requires between six to eight touchpoints before they make a move. Nurturing them with targeted (or even personalized) communications and offers throughout the decision process can elevate your company above the rest by showing that you’re on the other end, paying attention to them. Participating in spaces where customers spend time online – think forums or social media groups – shows you’re willing to help, too.
• Retention: Customers require attention after purchase, too. After all, if they’re happy with your course, they may decide to enroll in another one – or upgrade to your top-tier service. And if they’re really happy, they may even bring more customers with them through word of mouth. Regular emails, participation in communities, customer feedback and continuing education can make the difference between a customer who comes back and one who says goodbye.

Step 4: Define your metrics

You can’t manage (or improve, for that matter) what you don’t measure. That’s why metrics make the list of vital steps in creating your sales funnel.

Each interaction with your company – from ad click to buy button – tells a powerful story about your customers and how they’re interacting with you. And quantifying that journey helps you figure out the places where your funnel is performing well, where it needs a little boost and whether you’re on track to hit your overall goals (remember Step 1?).

Let’s talk about some of the most important metrics, from top to bottom of your funnel… and beyond:

Top-of-funnel metrics 

• Entry sources: The routes through which people enter your sales funnel. This includes click-throughs on social media ads, organic search results, shared blog articles and even cold calls or emails. Pay attention to the sources that attract your very best customers in particular. Expanding on those efforts may yield even greater results!
• Lead acquisition cost: The amount of money you spend on marketing and promoting your business to gain a single lead. This will give you an idea of how much money you’re spending in the earliest stages of your customer journey – and give you a number to measure against as you hone in on the most effective methods.

Middle-of-funnel metrics

• Advertising click-through rates
• Website and landing page visits
• Pageviews for specific pieces of content
• Email open and click-through rates
• Social media interactions
• Call-to-action clicks

Bottom-of-funnel metrics

• Conversion or close rates: The number of prospects at the top of the funnel who eventually make a purchase. You can track mini-moments of conversion along the way as well, such as email signups and resource downloads.
• Customer acquisition cost: How much money you spend on a single customer before they make a purchase. Similar to your lead acquisition cost, knowing this metric will help you make better decisions about the resources you allocate to different marketing and sales efforts.

Post-sale metrics

• Customer lifetime value: The total value of a customer over the lifetime of their relationship with you. This is a calculation that considers both the worth of a customer as they purchase from you, their value as they advocate and promote you, and the cost of acquiring and serving them.
• Retention rate: The number of customers who continue to buy from you after their first purchase, over a period of time. It’s often less costly for a business to retain customers who keep buying than it is to acquire new ones.
• Customer churn: The percentage of customers who leave over a given time period. This metric can help you identify common areas where people lose interest or encounter issues after their initial purchase – useful knowledge if you want to provide support and keep them around for longer.

Whole funnel metrics

• Exits : Places where people drop out of the sales funnel. Exits are inevitable – after all, not everyone is a perfect fit for your product. But there may be some leaks you can fix to prevent good leads from leaking out.
• Lead volume: The number of people in each stage of your funnel at a given time. This metric will help you understand your overall deal flow along with changes in the number of leads as you tweak your strategy.
• Time in stage: The length of time a prospect or lead takes to move from one stage in your sales funnel to another. This is a valuable insight when it comes to knowing when people feel ready to convert – a boon when you’re timing your communications. Knowing this also gives you a good idea of your whole sales cycle.
• Revenue growth: The change in revenue your sales and marketing efforts generate over time. If revenue is a driving goal of your sales funnel strategy, tracking this metric is a must-do.

Step 5: Identify gaps in your sales funnel

A sales funnel isn’t a one-and-done exercise. To get the most from it, you’ll need to give your funnel a periodic health check for gaps – places where it just isn’t performing the way you’d like. Once you know where those gaps are, you can address them.

These health checks are especially important when your sales funnel strategy is new. But when you continue to test solutions and recheck your progress, you should see improvements as you hone the process.

Your sales funnel health exam may include a check for common red flags like:  

• Slow movement or bottlenecks: Are people getting stuck at certain points? Do they take a really, really long time to move from one sales funnel stage to another? Once you know where the roadblocks are, you can take steps to remove them.
• Sales funnel leaks: It’s going to happen – if leaks didn’t occur, we’d call it a sales cylinder, not a funnel! But if you find a lot of people exiting your funnel in the same places, it’s worth investigating what’s turning them away.
• Low lead volume: To get 100 sales, you might need 500 engaged leads, 5,000 interested leads and 10,000 prospects (of course, we’re making these numbers up, but you get the idea). If you’re short in the sales funnel stages above, you’ll be short below, too.
• Low lead quality: Pay attention when poorly qualified leads – people who aren’t likely to convert – move into the later stages of your sales funnel. Leads at the bottom tend to be more costly than those at the top, and if they never pay off, it’s a waste of resources.
• Underperforming content: If no one clicks on your blog article or opens your email, does it really exist? Okay, it’s not a tree falling in a forest, but the point is: if people don’t with your content, that content needs to be re-evaluated and improved or removed.
• Frequently asked questions: If lots of potential customers ask you the same questions at the same time, that’s a good indication that you’re missing an important piece of content somewhere. Use this knowledge as an opportunity to strengthen the content you provide.

Step 6: Optimize and manage your sales funnel

Once you’ve analyzed your metrics and identified your gaps, it’s time to adjust your funnel – and polish it until it shines!

At a high level, optimization and management mean doing more of what works and less of what doesn’t. They’re also about prioritizing your time and resources in the places that make the most impact and on the people who are most likely to convert.

There are two main ways to determine what to optimize and how to do it effectively.

Survey your customers

Ask people at each stage of the funnel about their experience. A simple survey is enough to yield helpful results, especially for those who don’t have a strong relationship with you yet. Existing and past customers may be willing (and even happy) to give you 10 to 15 minutes of their time to answer more specific questions.

• What problems are they currently experiencing with your course topic or area of expertise?
• Where do they start their search?
• What solutions immediately come to mind?
• What kind of solution are they looking for?
• Where do they put their trust?
• What priorities are most important when making a decision?
• What convinced them to purchase from you?
• What content was most helpful in making their decision?
• What kept them coming back – or caused them to leave?

Put your sales funnel to the test 

Think of optimization as an experiment. You make a hypothesis about a change that might boost your sales funnel’s performance, test it out and track the results against your existing metrics.  

The way you optimize your funnel will depend on the stages you choose and the content you offer, but here are some ideas you can start with.

At the top:

• Run multiple ads targeting different audiences. Test different messages, colors, fonts, images and calls-to-action to see what resonates best with your target market.
• Test different approaches to content , from the videos on your YouTube channel to your blog to your podcast. See what gets shared organically on social media, what catches peoples’ attention and what people are most likely to interact with.

In the middle:

• Try different lead magnets – valuable content offered free of charge in exchange for contact details. Does a free sample course lead to a higher volume of high-quality leads than a guide, webinar or newsletter?
• Hone your email campaign . Try different approaches to your messaging, frequency, subject lines, links to targeted content, calls-to-action and more. Track your open and click-through rates to see what performs best with your high-value customers-to-be.
• Perfect the landing pages you build in a similar way. Test different headlines, messages and calls to action. Even small differences in fonts and colors can make a big impact.

At the bottom:

• Even the offer you make – whether it’s a limited-time discount or a bundle deal – can sway people in different ways. See what resonates most… and what nets you the most revenue.

Sales funnels in action

Let’s walk through an example of a sales funnel specifically built for an online course: 

• Publish free content that solves a problem your target audience has . This might be a video, a podcast episode or a blog – something that lands you on their radar, piques their interest and gets them engaged.
• Build an email list with a content upgrade . Suss out the casual readers from those who are more likely to enroll by offering a higher tier of content (think ebooks, checklists, guides or even a free course). Ask for an email address in return.
• Welcome new subscribers with an email . Thank them for joining and direct them to their free resource from the step above. Using an autoresponder system makes this easy and fast.
• Create a follow-up email series. Build interest and anticipation by highlighting the content and benefits of your product, service or course. Include a clear call-to-action in each, and end the series with a bang – an offer they can’t refuse.
• Follow up with the non-buyers. In sales, “no” doesn’t mean “never” – it may simply be “not right now.” If someone showed interest and intent but didn’t enroll, ask them why… and keep checking in on them in the future.

Learn more: Create a sales funnel for your online course 

SaaS sales funnels

If you’re a software-as-a-service business, your sales funnel might look a little different. For one, you might place more emphasis on establishing trust, nurturing a long-term relationship and building customer retention than a business that relies on one-time purchases.

The low-risk try-before-you-buy approach is popular for building that kind of relationship. You’ll see this across streaming services like Apple TV’s seven-day free trial, Amazon Prime offering a one-week trial at a heavily discounted price or Disney+ partnering with telecom carriers to provide a free year of streaming. Once customers experience the product for themselves, they can make a more informed decision on what they’ll gain when they sign up – and what they’ll miss out on if they don’t.  

SaaS businesses essentially need to keep winning customers month by month, keeping them satisfied that they’re getting value throughout the lifetime of their relationship with you. After all, it’s roughly five times more costly to bring in new customers than it is to retain existing ones.  

Look no further than Salesforce for a shining example of post-sale support through community engagement. Their Trailblazer community is built of Salesforce users who have stories to tell and skills to share with others who are just getting started. New users benefit from knowledge that gives them greater success as they get off the ground. Overall, they find a sense of belonging among others with similar interests, locations and roles.

Marketing sales funnels

A marketing sales funnel is another kind of conversion funnel that puts emphasis on the kinds of content and messaging people receive across your channels as they move through the journey from prospect to purchase. They typically align with your sales funnel with a particular focus on the kinds of marketing touchpoints, channels and messages people receive along the way.  

Let’s put that into a little more context with a quick example:

• To garner awareness , your marketing efforts may be more focused on targeted ads, sharable videos, partnerships with influencers and a strong landing page as you cast a wide net.
• To stoke interest , you might focus on marketing that helps with research, like blog content, YouTube videos and social media mentions.
• To foster desire , your priority may be more in-depth content gated behind email signups feeding into a personalized email campaign that culminates in a last call for an irresistible offer.
• To invoke action , special offers, pricing information, customer reviews and case studies can help drive the deal home.

A journey through the marketing sales funnel may look something like this: 

Social ad > Landing page > Email campaign > Purchase

Google search > Blog > Customer reviews > Purchase

Generally, at each stage of the marketing sales funnel, you’ll want to be able to answer the following about your prospects and leads:

• What do they think about my business or organization?
• Where can my business or organization meet them?
• How can my business or organization engage with them?
• What content do they want?
• How will I move them to the next stage?

Keep your sales funnel strong

We started this article with full transparency, and we’ll end that way too. Because implementing a sales funnel is a lot of upfront work – and it isn’t easy. You can expect to spend some resources on tactics that don’t quite fit with your business or resonate with your customers.

And it’s never really “done.” Revisiting your sales funnel regularly will help you keep up with new markets, fresh competition and changes in customer behavior and expectations. It’ll also help you make improvements to your courses as you understand more about your customers and the challenges you help them solve.

The magic happens after you’ve tested a few approaches and started to get things right. Once you have it up and going, with all your metrics in place, you walk away with an evergreen sales funnel set up to grow with your business and serve you over the long term.

Looking to boost revenue for your business with online course sales?

With Thinkific Plus , you can build, design, market, and host online courses that are easily accessible to your prospects, customers and business partners. 

Thinkific Plus is a scalable platform that is simple to maintain, seamlessly integrates with your existing software, and is customizable for your brand needs. Schedule a call to try it for free.

Daniela Ochoa is the go-to Content Marketing Specialist here at Thinkific Plus! With years of experience in marketing and communications, she is passionate about helping businesses grow through strategic storytelling, innovative digital campaigns, and online learning at scale.On this blog, she shares her expertise in content marketing, lead generation, and more.

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7 Major Sales Funnel Challenges (and How to Solve Them)

by Seth Kinney | Jan 3, 2023 | Sales Leadership , Sales Tips | 0 comments

Even a well-designed sales funnel can come with its own set of issues. From leads going cold to time wasted on the wrong deals, today’s sales funnel challenges kill your bottom line from both directions: increasing costs and reducing revenue.    

In this post, we’ll dive into some of the most common sales funnel challenges and give you some steps to handle them. By implementing these strategies, you can optimize your sales funnel and drive more revenue — without wasting time on dead-ends.  

1. Discovery call happens and then it goes cold

Perhaps the biggest sales funnel challenge is when a discovery call happens and then the lead goes cold. This often happens when nobody follows up, or when the follow-up attempt is met with silence (i.e. you get “ghosted” by the lead). As a result, the sales team is left wondering where the lead went.  

To solve this problem, keep the SDR team engaged with the prospect after the discovery call. This is because the account executives, who are great at closing deals, may not always be the ones taking the first call and building rapport for future engagements. Without this initial rapport, the prospect may simply write off the product or service as a “nice-to-have” rather than a “must-have”.  

Meanwhile, the SDR team is often able to get the prospect back on for a second or third meeting, where they can continue to build the value of the product or service. This will help maintain the early-stage excitement and prevent the sales funnel from going cold.  

2. Long cycle times

Another common sales funnel challenge is elongated cycle times. In today’s market, decision-making can take longer than it used to (especially during a recession ). This can be frustrating when sales teams are eager to close deals and move on to the next opportunity.  

To overcome this challenge, it’s important to put in the effort at the early stages of the sales process to connect the right people and shorten the cycle time. Consider these strategies:  

• Find an internal champion who can provide valuable information and insights about the company, including who to approach and who to avoid, what the company cares about, and how to put together a more effective sales proposal.  
• Create a sense of urgency . Highlight the benefits of leads making a decision quickly, such as securing a discount or getting access to limited-time offers. (Framing these in terms of loss-avoidance tends to get better results).  
• Have a good nurture stream in place . This is crucial. This means regularly reaching out to leads, whether through calls or automated outreach, such as sending relevant blog posts or case studies. This helps keep the prospect engaged and interested in the product or service, which can help shorten the sales cycle.  

3. Not enough pipeline

A particularly common challenge in the sales funnel is not having enough pipeline. This can be especially frustrating for ambitious sales teams who may feel like they don’t have enough opportunities to work on.  

To solve this problem, it’s important to get the SDR team more involved, and better set up for success. This involves:  

• Better assets : Make sure they have referenceable use cases based on industry vertical personas.  
• Better positioning training : Train them how to position these messages to the right people. This will help them generate more leads and build the pipeline.  
• Better account list : Once they’re ready, you need to point the SDR team toward an account list that they can target and get results from. This will help focus their efforts and increase their chances of success. To fill a pipeline with higher quality leads, you may want to consider outsourcing sales development .  
• Better lead generation automation : to a certain extent, you can attract and nurture incoming leads via good marketing automation, without minimal long-term time investment. Avoid going overboard with this: read about sales automation best practices for more details.  

One important caveat to this challenge is that if you switched to an account-based marketing (ABM) approach, this can explain the drop in pipeline.   

That’s because the ABM model involves targeting specific accounts rather than trying to capture every potential customer. As a result, the target addressable market becomes smaller and the sales team has to be more selective in their approach.   

ABM changes the marketing perspective, but it changes the sales perspective much more, as they are no longer going after every fish in the ocean.  

This can lead to a drop in velocity and pipeline, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing if it’s what the company wants and you’re following ABM best practices . After all, you shouldn’t waste your time on the wrong types of leads. Speaking of which…  

4. Going after deals that are too small, or a bad fit

If your team is chasing deals that are too small for a realistic ROI, or your targeting isn’t refined enough, you waste a great deal of time and resources.   

This challenge often happens when sales teams try to capture every potential customer, even when some opportunities don’t make sense to pursue.  

To solve this problem, double and triple check your account list at the early stages of the sales process, and make sure every account on the list fits the criteria for return on investment for the initiative.  

This may involve going deeper on qualifiers, such as looking at additional information that can’t be found on a ZoomInfo account page. For example, website traffic might be relevant to your business, or you may notice that certain geographies are more important than others.  

By applying these qualifiers before any sales outreach, you can filter out suboptimal leads and cut out all that wasted time upfront. This will result in a more profitable sales funnel, with higher conversion rates in the end, and better initial contact rates when done early enough.  

5. Low contact rates

In recent years, contact rates have consistently declined, and email reply rates are often below 1%. Sometimes it’s an issue of sending too many emails on the marketing side, or sales reps failing to do prior homework on the contact. Whatever the reason, it can make it difficult for sales teams to reach potential customers and generate leads.  

To address this challenge:  

• Shift channel priority : Focus more on areas that will provide the most return, such as phone calls and LinkedIn outreach. (It’s still important to include email in your outreach strategy, so don’t neglect it entirely).  
• Improve list quality : As above, make sure you have high quality lists so you’re not wasting time on the wrong leads. Better targeting and segmentation go a long way to boosting success rates.  
• Personalize outreach more : Make messages more relevant to each contact. Most people (yourself probably included) are sick of getting cookie-cutter cold emails and tend to trash them without giving them more than a casual glance. When it comes to calls, consider the best time to call them based on their profession, and have a good voicemail pitch dialed in, since an increasing number of people avoid picking up calls from unknown numbers.  

Part of your success here comes from your ability to stand out from the crowd to establish how you’re uniquely relevant.  

6. Standing out from competition

Another common challenge in the sales funnel is rising above market noise. For most prospects, there are five or more companies that all look the same on the surface.   

There are a few ways to address this:   

• Positioning and value prop : Marketing and SDR teams need to know their differentiators really well. They need to have a strong grasp of what makes your product or service unique and valuable to the customer and be able to communicate this effectively to prospects.  
• Concrete examples : Consider sharing customer success stories or case studies, which can provide concrete examples of how your product or service has helped other businesses.  
• Training for live conversations : Make sure the SDR team is trained to communicate these differentiators to prospects in the moment, during phone calls or other outreach efforts.  

With all of this in place, you still need to assess your team’s performance. Which brings us to our final challenge.  

7. Tracking performance metrics accurately

It’s impossible to improve if you don’t know how you’re doing. Make sure you’re tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) for sales, such as:  

• Calls until a conversation  
• Conversations until a meeting (or meaningful interaction)  
• Meetings until a sale  

By tracking these metrics, you can identify problems before they become real issues, and take steps to improve your sales process.  

To do this effectively, it’s important to establish benchmarks for your industry. This will give you a baseline to compare your team’s performance against, and help you understand what is and isn’t working in your sales process.  

Once you have these benchmarks established, you can start ranking your team’s performance based on these metrics. This will help you identify areas for improvement and provide guidance on how to optimize your sales process for better results.   

By tracking performance metrics accurately, you can make more informed decisions and improve the overall effectiveness of your sales funnel.  

The Imagination Tree

Creative play and learning for kids

Tubes and Funnels at the Sensory Table

March 6, 2014 by Anna Ranson

To increase the play and discovery possibilities we then added a cardboard box structure over the top of our sensory table to  act as a support for tubes, funnels and to provide new ways to access the materials through holes and archways.

I cut arches along the sides of a large, flat cardboard box, and taped the columns to the edges of the sensory table. Then I simply drew around the outside of three tubes which had been cut from a wrapping paper roll, and slotted them straight in. If the hole is just the right size they should stand up independently. On top of those we added three funnels in different sizes, which were 3 for £1 at the £1 shop. We later modified the box to include two large access holes from the top so they could sweep materials into the table and could see and reach through too.

Into the table went some out-of-date beans and rice along with some small bowls and scoops.

We are in the process of modifying this structure more at the moment and changing the sensory materials to provide a new learning opportunity. I’ll post the results soon!

Have you tried changing the access and design of the sensory table, either sand, water or other material? What did you (or the children) do?

What they are learning as they play:

creativity: deisning structures in 3D, imaginative play with loose parts

knowledge and understanding: exploring cause and effect, understanding funnels and pipes, experimenting with different possibilities in play

physical: fine motor control, hand eye co-ordination, shoulder strengthening, pincer grasp, fist grasp, scooping, tipping

Browse the sensory play archives for loads more ideas here!

[Amazon affiliate link included for your convenience.]

March 6, 2014 at 11:45 am

Cathryn would LOVE this! Great idea, thanks for sharing 🙂

March 6, 2014 at 3:43 pm

I am falling in love with your website! I love that so many of your ideas are DIY and frugal and use supplies I already have around my house. Only wished I’d come across your site a few weeks ago during all our cold weather. Going to try making the goop and sensory table with funnels today. THANKS!

March 27, 2014 at 10:39 am

Howdy this loved one! I have to declare that benefits and drawbacks remarkable, fantastic published you need to include almost all substantial infos. I’m going to notice additional content this way .

Privacy Overview

Top-of-Funnel Marketing (TOFU)

• Written By Peter Berube
• Updated: December 7, 2023

What is top-of-funnel marketing? 

Top-of-funnel marketing, or TOFU marketing, is the first stage in the marketing funnel. It focuses on attracting and engaging a broad audience of potential customers. In this initial stage of the buyer’s journey, individuals are in the early research and awareness phase. 

It’s an opportunity to build brand awareness and offer educational, informative, and non-promotional content that addresses your target audience’s pain points. As potential customers progress through the sales funnel, they move to the middle of funnel (MOFU) and bottom of funnel (BOFU) stages. That’s where you use more targeted and specific content to convert them into paying customers.

Why is top-of-funnel marketing important? 

Top-of-funnel marketing is essential for introducing your brand to a broader audience. It’s an opportunity to:

• Nurture leads
• Build trust
• Establish your authority

Incorporating top-of-funnel content in your content marketing strategy lays the groundwork for more targeted and successful middle and bottom-of-funnel efforts. And that ultimately leads to increased conversions and business growth.

How the marketing funnel works from top to bottom

The marketing funnel is a visualization of the buyer’s journey. Each stage calls for specific marketing tactics to reach the intended audience. Here is a quick cheat sheet: 

Top of Funnel (TOFU) – Awareness Stage:

• Goal:  Attract a broad audience and create brand awareness.
• Audience:  People who are just becoming aware of their problem or need but may not be familiar with your brand.
• Content:  Educational and informative content, such as blog posts, social media posts, infographics, videos, and e-books. The focus is on addressing pain points and providing valuable insights without being overly promotional.
• Key Metrics:  Impressions, website traffic, social media engagement, and lead generation (e.g., email sign-ups).

Middle of funnel  (MOFU) – Consideration Stage:

• Goal:  Nurture leads and build a deeper relationship with potential customers.
• Audience:  People who have shown interest in your brand or engaged with your top-of-funnel content.
• Content:  More specific and targeted content that showcases your brand’s expertise and product offerings. Examples include case studies, webinars, comparison guides, and email nurturing sequences.
• Key Metrics:  Click-through rates, lead quality, engagement with MOFU content, and lead nurturing effectiveness.

Bottom of funnel  (BOFU) – Decision Stage:

• Goal:  Convert leads into paying customers or clients.
• Audience:  Qualified leads who have expressed a strong interest in your offerings.
• Content:  Content that directly addresses purchase intent, such as product demos, free trials, testimonials, and limited-time offers. The focus is on persuading the lead to make a buying decision.
• Key Metrics:  Conversion rates, sales revenue, customer acquisition cost, and customer lifetime value.

Common top-of-funnel marketing tactics

Top-of-funnel marketing tactics should include informational and inspirational content that helps your audience better understand their problem. Because your audience is early in the funnel, you don’t want to jump to conclusions by serving up later-stage content that doesn’t serve them.

When you educate this audience, your brand builds awareness and trust. When that visitor is ready to buy, you’re the resource they already follow. That makes them much more likely to consider your product or service when shopping for a solution.

ToFu marketing ideas:

Email marketing (newsletter or nurture campaign with educational content)

SEO (search engine optimization)

SEM (search engine marketing)

Landing page

Social media post

Event/trade show

Press release

Infographic

Interactive quiz

Explainer video

101 webinar

101 podcast

101 courses (shorter length)

Interactive tools (e.g., generators, analyzers)

Direct mail

Top-of-funnel marketing do’s and don’ts

Do create problem-solving content.

If you want your message to reach the ToFu audience, it should be helpful to them. They’re figuring out their challenges and prioritizing solutions. In the next stage, mid-funnel (MoFu), people compare and contrast solutions. Make your brand memorable now so they remember you later.

Do appeal to your intended audience

You’re casting a wide net at the top of the funnel. Appealing to your intended audience needs to be a top goal. Messaging should be for your specific personas at their particular stage in the funnel. So, continually focus on personas AND stages. 

Do what works multiple times

The upper funnel is a playground for marketing experimentation because you create the most content for this audience. Along the way, you’ll test things and find out what works. When you find something that works, be sure to repurpose that content in various formats across multiple channels.

Don’t sell when no one’s ready

Old-school marketing tactics used to be very intrusive. The modern audience is resistant to these tactics.  No matter how excited you are about features and benefits, stick with problem-solving content. That’ll steer your ToFu audience in the right direction instead of attempting a hard sell. 

Don’t do all the content internally

High content production demands for engaging your audience in the upper funnel can be extremely taxing for your internal team. If you haven’t looked into  outsourcing content , this is an excellent option for busy brands. Freelancers allow your brand to scale and save time by bringing skilled creatives together who fill gaps and increase output with content production.

Next Steps in Your Top-of-Funnel Marketing Strategy

Today’s buyer will ultimately choose their own adventure along their journey. Understanding top-of-funnel marketing means you’re prepared to serve the appropriate content for anyone who interacts with your brand at this stage. Through non-selling marketing activities, you can connect with your audience on their terms and become the resource they turn to when it’s time to select a solution.

When you’re ready to create top-of-funnel content that converts, talk to a ClearVoice  content specialist  and find out how we can help you reach your customers at each stage of the journey.

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7 benefits of using a sales funnel in your digital marketing

To grow your business, you must identify your sales funnel as part of your digital marketing efforts.

Not sure what a sales funnel is? Check out our breakdown explanation of the four stages:

Simply put, a sales funnel is the journey a consumer takes from being a prospect to a paying customer. It’s critical in regard to customer conversions and driving sales because it requires you to better understand how customers find you, why they find you and why they stay or leave.

About 68 percent of companies have not identified or attempted to measure their sales funnel. You do not want to be part of that 68 percent.

The following are seven reasons why you should use a sales funnel to help fuel your digital marketing efforts.

Attracting new leads

A sales funnel with the right content will inevitably attract new leads to your business. 

Of course, the question then becomes: What’s the right content?

That depends on your business, your industry and the type of leads you want to attract.

Think about what you’re an expert in and what problem(s) you solve for your customers. Your content should be valuable to your target audience and answer a question or problem that they have. Format-wise, this can be a downloadable ebook, an online quiz, etc.

The key is that you capture at least everyone’s email when delivering the content they want. That way, these prospects are now in your funnel for you to nurture and build a relationship with.

Streamlining your marketing

Ever feel overwhelmed with all the things you could be doing with your marketing? A sales funnel helps keep you focused on what should be happening to both attract leads and convert them into sales.

It’s not necessarily about making your marketing easier, just more effective. You’ll experience fewer missed opportunities as well.

Focusing on the right leads

Unfortunately, not all leads will turn into customers, but creating a sales funnel will help you identify which leads to pursue.

This helps you use your time and resources working on the sales leads that have potential rather than spending too much time on the leads that will just never convert.

One way to do this is by including an initial phone call or email survey for new leads. Doing so will help you better understand your prospects and determine who is more serious about buying your product or service.

Sorting and ranking your leads

On that note, an online sales funnel can help you sort, evaluate and rank your prospects. 

Not all leads are created equal.

Knowing who requires immediate attention and who needs long-term nurturing, for example, will help prevent any missed opportunities for conversions. Of course, there will be still others who are just a poor fit in general and should garner too much of your time.

Building trust and relationships with leads

Not everyone will make their decision to purchase from you immediately or even quickly. A sales funnel featuring multiple points of contact over a determined period of time is critical for conversions.

The idea is to regularly share your content with them that will educate and build a relationship with them over time until they are ready to finally make their purchasing decision.

People buy from companies that they trust.

Increasing your conversion rate

We all want to see more of our leads turn into paying customers. Understanding your prospects’ journey to ultimately making a purchase is the way to convert more leads.

It’s about thinking through the eyes of your prospects, what they need, meeting them where they are and building that relationship of trust that earns you that sale.

An overall average sales funnel conversion rate of most industries is about 3 percent . That might not sound like a lot, but take a quick look at what your conversion rate is without a sales funnel (if you know). At least 3 percent is a good starting place for a goal. You can always build up from there.

Better forecasting of your sales volume

We’ve already mentioned the unfortunate reality that not all leads will convert to customers. Digital marketing is definitely a numbers game.

However, this doesn’t mean that a buckshot, capture-all approach is what it takes to be successful. 

Measure how many leads your sales funnel is capturing and how many convert.

Understanding that conversion rate will help you more accurately forecast your sales volume, which is an important part of running your business and managing your digital marketing effectively.

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Top of Funnel Marketing: Best Practices for 2023

How do you get people to buy your products or subscribe to your services?

You can develop the best solutions in your industry and come up with value propositions no consumer can say no to. And sure, investing in content marketing, social media promotions, and website SEO optimization are superb methods to engage and convert your leads.

But none of these actions will matter if your audience can’t find you in the first place. The only surefire way to attract potential customers is to employ the right top-of-funnel marketing tactics.

In this article, we’ll discuss the objectives of awareness stage marketing, along with the most successful strategies you can employ for targeting the top end of your sales funnel.

A quick look at the stages of the sales funnel

When deciding what products to buy, consumers go through a process commonly referred to as the customer journey. Essentially, this process consists of several phases. Throughout these stages, buyers identify their pain points, explore solutions, and discover products that fit their needs. Then, they consider multiple decision-impacting factors to choose which solution to buy.

In marketing, the term sales funnel depicts a system of various marketing actions that brands can use to lead consumers through the customer journey and ultimately convert them into customers.

Generally, a sales funnel will focus on getting consumers through the following four stages of purchase decision-making.

• Awareness . The top of the sales funnel is called the awareness stage because this is the phase during which consumers become aware of solutions for their pain points. The point of top-of-funnel marketing is to get your content to new people, helping them recognize the value in your offer.
• Interest . Once consumers have become aware of your brand, they’ll enter the interest stage. During this phase of the sales funnel, your job is to help consumers evaluate whether the solutions your business offers meet their needs in the right way.
• Decision . This stage is where people decide whether they’re ready to invest in your products . They’ll consider price, delivery, packaging, and even reviews to ensure that they’re getting the best possible value for money. When targeting this section of the sales funnel, do everything you can to make an offer your web visitors won’t be able to resist.
• Action . Finally, once they have collected all the relevant information, buyers enter the action stage of the sales funnel. The bottom of the sales funnel is where you either convert leads into customers or lose them to your competition.

Awareness stage marketing objectives

As you will see, there is a wide variety of top-of-funnel marketing tactics you can employ to reach your target audience. All of these strategies aim to arrive at similar outcomes.

There are two common objectives with awareness stage marketing: building brand awareness and enabling emotional buy-in.

Brand awareness

The elementary goal with marketing tactics for the top end of your sales funnel is building brand awareness. That is, introducing your business to potential customers.

In general, these strategies will inform consumers about:

• What your product does
• How your product can address their needs
• Why your product is different from your competitors’ offers

Emotional buy-in

Buyers choose what brands to support based on different factors. And according to research , many of these factors are emotional rather than rational. So, the second objective of top-of-funnel marketing is building up your brand’s reputation in a way that will inspire consumers to invest in your products.

You can do this by using awareness-stage marketing to:

• Build brand trust and credibility
• Define (and enact) organizational values that your target audience cares about
• Underline the benefits of your audience becoming a customer of your company
• Discuss the risks of customers not choosing your solution to address their pain points

8 marketing tactics for the awareness stage

Once you have a clear idea of what you’d like to achieve with your top-of-funnel marketing efforts, it’s time to get to work.

The following are all excellent tactics you can employ, whether you want to build brand awareness, introduce your products and services to potential clients, or describe the benefits your audience will gain by choosing to shop with your brand.

1. Educate the audience about your products without sales pressure

Generally, consumers in the awareness stage don’t respond well to aggressive sales tactics.

Sure, a time-limited discount or personalized offer presented at the right moment are both great ways to get bottom-of-the-funnel consumers to make that final decision. However, pressuring someone who’s just beginning to explore their options into making a purchase can be damaging to your brand’s relationship with them.

This is, in part, because consumers distrust advertising. According to Nielsen’s 2021 Total Audience Report , fewer than one in five consumers find ads very trustworthy.

Source: nielsen.com

Considering this, using hard-sell techniques on segments of your audience still in the top stages of the customer journey is likely to hurt your bottom line and your brand’s reputation.

Top-of-funnel marketing can help you solve this issue. Start by creating educational content that introduces products and services without pressuring consumers to purchase. After all, Edelman’s 2022 Trust Barometer notes that providing high-quality information makes for the best method of building brand trust.

An excellent example of this tactic in practice comes from Transparent Labs. Since the company sells supplements, the brand heavily invests in awareness-stage marketing to reach new audiences. With a rich blog section covering a wide variety of fitness-related topics, the company makes it super-easy for potential customers to “stumble upon” its content.

Still, the most stand-out feature in Transparent Labs’ approach is how it prioritizes value over product promotion in the content it publishes.

For example, in its 8-Week Guide to Body Recomposition guide, the brand provides readers with a host of helpful advice on how to lose fat and build muscle. Most noteworthy about this article is that out of the 4,000+ words, only three sentences discuss Transparent Labs products.

Source: transparentlabs.com

As you can see, this is more than enough to enlighten readers about relevant solutions for solving this specific pain point. But it doesn’t pressure web visitors to make a purchase.

Instead, it focuses on creating product awareness. It also ensures that consumers form a positive opinion of Transparent Labs and begin to trust the brand as a dependable source of genuinely helpful information (whether they currently plan on buying a supplement or not).

2. Provide actual, actionable solutions in your content

Successful content marketing at the top end of the sales funnel is about providing value. It’s about educating potential customers and giving them expert insight into your world.

When you use your expertise to help them overcome a real-world pain point, you’re buying enormous goodwill and credibility for your brand.

Some companies even go as far as offering insight that could be seen as a threat to their core product. These companies understand that at the very top of the sales funnel, talking about what you can do for your audience isn’t as important as being seen as a helpful friend, guiding them towards a solution.

If you look at Scott’s Cheap Flights’s guide to finding cheap flights , you’ll notice just how deeply the brand’s marketing team has bought into this principle.

The post is a 3,600-word masterclass in breaking a complex issue down for an audience that loves traveling but may struggle with technology.

There are two consequences:

Firstly, the post fulfills its primary purpose of giving readers a solution to a complex problem. And, secondly, it sketches a very clear picture of how much time and effort the reader would save if they did subscribe to the company’s service.

Although, the post never actually spells out the latter point. It very smartly lets the reader come to this conclusion by themselves.

Source: scottscheapflights.com

3. Segment visitors by the content they read

Top-of-funnel marketing allows you to reach new consumers who belong to your target audience. But, it also gives you the unique opportunity to optimize the lower stages of your sales funnel to ensure the best possible results.

It does this by allowing you to segment your audience based on the content they have interacted with.

Essentially, when you know what blog posts certain web visitors have read, you can retarget them with relevant product ads and create dedicated landing pages optimized to address their pain points and areas of interest.

There’s a reason why this is so important for your sales funnel.

According to research, most web visitors don’t convert on their first visit to a website . So, no matter how exceptional your awareness stage marketing is, you will have to work hard to create opportunities for additional touches.

With retargeting, you can do this rather effectively. On the one hand, it allows you to keep your solutions at the top of your potential audiences’ minds by delivering interest-specific ads to remind them of your products.

On the other hand, it gives you the opportunity to continually invest in brand awareness, even after web visitors have left your site without making a purchase or subscribing to your newsletter.

4. Give audiences a reason to follow and interact with your brand

When building a sales funnel—especially in the awareness stage of your funnel—ensure that your marketing strategies encourage consumers to connect with your company.

One of the best spaces to do this is, of course, social media.

According to Statista , many internet users use social media to engage with brands and branded content. In fact, 31.1% of people browse social media for entertainment, 29.3% do so to keep up with trends, 27.7% seek inspiration for things to do and buy, 26.2% perform product research, and 22.7% go online to see content from their favorite brands.

Source: statista.com

These statistics prove how impactful social media can be for getting more out of your awareness stage marketing efforts.

Essentially, you can use social media to distribute content that your target audience will find attractive and entertaining. And even if people don’t know much about your brand (yet), they are likely to develop a deep familiarity as long as you plan your content strategy in a way that builds connections and consistently provides value.

An excellent example of a brand that works hard to create great top-of-funnel content comes from Farrow & Ball . Knowing that most people aren’t particularly passionate about paint and wallpaper, this company decided to turn its Instagram presence into a one-stop shop for design inspiration that helps people get more out of their spaces.

Source: instagram.com

With posts like the one above, the brand gives followers content that is more than just aesthetically pleasing. It also provides actionable tips and value, keeping consumers coming back for more, even when they’re not necessarily in the process of decorating their homes.

Nonetheless, thanks to this awareness-stage marketing strategy, a large percentage of Farrow & Ball’s followers will go to the brand’s Instagram page the next time they think of painting their walls. This maximizes their chances of moving down the sales funnel and becoming the brand’s customers in the future (be it near or far).

Mindbodygreen does something similar, also on its Instagram account. Even though it’s a business that focuses on health coaching and education, the brand understands the role of social media in building an efficient sales funnel.

The brand creates beautifully designed social media posts, constantly providing Instagram users with new and valuable information. Then, once it has successfully grabbed user attention (and cemented its trustworthiness), it directs followers to its website, where it takes them further down the sales funnel, aiming to capture leads and nurture them into paying customers.

5. Humanize your brand voice

People want brands to be “human.” So, one tip that can help you optimize the top end of your sales funnel is to make your brand voice as approachable as possible.

In 2019, Sprout Social surveyed 1,000 consumers to discover what they thought about social media and how brands use it. The results revealed that 78% of people looked to branded social posts to experience a connection. What’s even more interesting is that the key to building consumer-brand relationships turned out to be authenticity delivered through material that humanizes brands.

Source: sproutsocial.com

So knowing that your audience wants to understand your brand beyond just what it sells, it’s not a bad idea to look for ways to humanize your voice.

One way of doing this is to be more vocal about the values that drive your business.

GILI Sports , for example, does this on its homepage, where it expresses its intention to give a portion of each board sold to ocean and sea life charities.

Source: gilisports.com

Source: facebook.com

Transparency is another way to humanize your brand voice and improve the effectiveness of your top-of-funnel marketing. Show potential customers that your organization is a relatable entity working hard to become its best self.

The Body Shop provides buyers with information about its packaging and future plans on its website. It doesn’t sugarcoat facts. For example, it states that 68% of its packaging is only technically recyclable and that the organization is working towards developing products that will be fully recyclable. The brand is also open about its current refill scheme only working for eight products.

Source: thebodyshop.com

This approach to transparency is great for awareness stage marketing as it allows the brand to connect with eco-conscious consumers without making promises that it’s unable to fulfill.

And the end result is not just a branding win for The Body Shop. By taking this transparent route to top-of-funnel marketing, the company also attracts consumers thinking about long-term investments, ensuring that each new customer acquired has the highest possible chance of becoming a loyal buyer and vocal brand advocate.

6. Promote your blog posts across multiple channels

One of the main objectives of awareness stage marketing is to reach as many potential customers as possible. So, your sales funnel needs to employ strategies that help you get your content to these audiences as effectively as possible.

One way to do so is to widen your reach by investing in promotion on multiple channels. Publishing content on your blog is a great way to attract consumers. However, it’s not necessarily the fastest way to secure conversion.

Instead, try cross-posting on social media networks populated by your target audience ( PEW Research is an excellent resource for finding social media usage statistics based on demographics data). Then, to maximize the chances of your content being seen by your target audience, you can invest in paid promotion, like Hubspot did for its latest content marketing templates .

7. Highlight your USP and company values with sales copy

As you invest in and optimize your brand’s inbound marketing, remember that getting people to your website or social media pages isn’t enough. You also have to ensure that they’re blown away when they reach their destination.

To do this, work hard to guarantee that your unique selling proposition and company values are represented by well-written sales copy, like the one used by Cocoon Tea Artisans .

Source: cocoonteaartisans.com

The following are some copywriting best practices you should stick to when building landing pages for the top of your sales funnel:

• Keep your value propositions clear and simple.
• Highlight the benefits you offer to consumers.
• Encourage web visitors to act with conversion-optimized CTAs.
• Explore multiple formats. For example, survey data shows that 73% of consumers prefer to learn about products through explainer videos than text.
• Find opportunities to express your brand’s values and mission with website copy.

8. Build a community that focuses on problem-solving rather than sales

Nowadays, people have to sift through a lot of options before they find the perfect solutions for their needs. And more often than not, the process is time and energy-consuming. So, many buyers choose to listen to peers, influencers, and industry experts when making purchasing decisions.

Now, there are multiple ways you can use this knowledge to improve the effectiveness of your awareness stage marketing. But one tactic that marketers usually overlook is the creation of communities that utilize your brand’s expertise to solve consumer problems without creating pressure for members to invest in your products.

For example, Aura does this with a Facebook group where it teaches Amazon sellers how to boost conversion on the sales platform, completely free of charge.

Source: goaura.com

What’s great about the approach is that the tips and advice shared in this group hugely benefit Aura’s target audience. But, they also prove that Aura is a trustworthy brand that is capable of solving several consumer pain points (even some that the Facebook group members might not even be aware of yet).

Top-of-funnel marketing that works

Even though consumers are spending an increasing amount of time online, reaching audiences in the top segment of your sales funnel can prove to be difficult (or expensive). Especially if your awareness stage marketing tactics aren’t optimized to deliver results while minimizing costs.

Fortunately, the top-of-funnel marketing tactics described in this guide make for an excellent start when building brand awareness.

Take the time to choose the tips that will work best for you (or even better, combine as many of these strategies as you can), and you’re guaranteed to see excellent results.

Of course, these results won’t happen overnight. But that’s all right. If you’re after quick gains, your best bet is to follow these steps and invest in paid promotion.

Sure, it may not be the cheapest way to get the word out about your company. But it will ensure that the impression you leave con your audience guarantees a bright future for your business.

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Exploring generative ai at harvard.

Jessica McCann

Harvard Correspondent

Leaders weigh in on where we are and what’s next

The explosion of generative AI technology over the past year and a half is raising big questions about how these tools will impact higher education. Across Harvard, members of the community have been exploring how GenAI will change the ways we teach, learn, research, and work.

As part of this effort, the Office of the Provost has convened three working groups . They will discuss questions, share innovations, and evolve guidance and community resources. They are:

• The Teaching and Learning Group , chaired by Bharat Anand , vice provost for advances in learning and the Henry R. Byers Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. This group seeks to share resources, identify emerging best practices, guide policies, and support the development of tools to address common challenges among faculty and students.
• The Research and Scholarship Group , chaired by John Shaw , vice provost for research, Harry C. Dudley Professor of Structural and Economic Geology in the Earth and Planetary Sciences Department, and professor of environmental science and engineering in the Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science. It focuses on how to enable, and support the integrity of, scholarly activities with generative AI tools.
• T he Administration and Operations Group , chaired by Klara Jelinkova , vice president and University chief information officer. It is charged with addressing information security, data privacy, procurement, and administration and organizational efficiencies.

Klara Jelinkova, Bharat Anand, and John Shaw.

Photos by Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer; Evgenia Eliseeva; and courtesy of John Shaw

The Gazette spoke with Anand, Shaw, and Jelinkova to understand more about the work of these groups and what’s next in generative AI at Harvard.

When generative AI tools first emerged, we saw universities respond in a variety of ways — from encouraging experimentation to prohibiting their use. What was Harvard’s overall approach?

Shaw: From the outset, Harvard has embraced the prospective benefits that GenAI offers to teaching, research, and administration across the University, while being mindful of the potential pitfalls. As a University, our mission is to help enable discovery and innovation, so we had a mandate to actively engage. We set some initial, broad policies that helped guide us, and have worked directly with groups across the institution to provide tools and resources to inspire exploration.

Jelinkova: The rapid emergence of these tools meant the University needed to react quickly, to provide both tools for innovation and experimentation and guidelines to ensure their responsible use. We rapidly built an AI Sandbox to enable faculty, students, and staff to experiment with multiple large language models in a secure environment. We also worked with external vendors to acquire enterprise licenses for a variety of tools to meet many different use cases. Through working groups, we were able to learn, aggregate and collate use cases for AI in teaching, learning, administration, and research. This coordinated, collective, and strategic approach has put Harvard ahead of many peers in higher education.

Anand: Teaching and learning are fundamentally decentralized activities. So our approach was to ask: First, how can we ensure that local experimentation by faculty and staff is enabled as much as possible; and second, how can we ensure that it’s consistent with University policies on IP, copyright, and security? We also wanted to ensure that novel emerging practices were shared across Schools, rather than remaining siloed.

What do these tools mean for faculty, in terms of the challenges they pose or the opportunities they offer? Is there anything you’re particularly excited about?

Anand: Let’s start with some salient challenges. How do we first sift through the hype that’s accompanied GenAI? How can we make it easy for faculty to use GenAI tools in their classrooms without overburdening them with yet another technology? How can one address real concerns about GenAI’s impact?

While we’re still early in this journey, many compelling opportunities — and more importantly, some systematic ways of thinking about them — are emerging. Various Harvard faculty have leaned into experimenting with LLMs in their classrooms. Our team has now interviewed over 30 colleagues across Harvard and curated short videos that capture their learnings. I encourage everyone to view these materials on the new GenAI site; they are remarkable in their depth and breadth of insight.

Here’s a sample: While LLMs are commonly used for Q&A, our faculty have creatively used them for a broader variety of tasks, such as simulating tutors that guide learning by asking questions, simulating instructional designers to provide active learning tips, and simulating student voices to predict how a class discussion might flow, thus aiding in lesson preparation. Others demonstrate how more sophisticated prompts or “prompt engineering” are often necessary to yield more sophisticated LLM responses, and how LLMs can extend well beyond text-based responses to visuals, simulations, coding, and games. And several faculty show how LLMs can help overcome subtle yet important learning frictions like skill gaps in coding, language literacy, or math.

Do these tools offer students an opportunity to support or expand upon their learning?

Anand: Yes. GenAI represents a unique area of innovation where students and faculty are working together. Many colleagues are incorporating student feedback into the GenAI portions of their curriculum or making their own GenAI tools available to students. Since GenAI is new, the pedagogical path is not yet well defined; students have an opportunity to make their voices heard, as co-creators, on what they think the future of their learning should look like.

Beyond this, we’re starting to see other learning benefits. Importantly, GenAI can reach beyond a lecture hall. Thoughtful prompt engineering can turn even publicly available GenAI tools into tutorbots that generate interactive practice problems, act as expert conversational aids for material review, or increase TA teams’ capacity. That means both that the classroom is expanding and that more of it is in students’ hands. There’s also evidence that these bots field more questions than teaching teams can normally address and can be more comfortable and accessible for some students.

Of course, we need to identify and counter harmful patterns. There is a risk, in this early and enthusiastic period, of sparking over-reliance on GenAI. Students must critically evaluate how and where they use it, given its possibility of inaccurate or inappropriate responses, and should heed the areas where their style of cognition outperforms AI. One other thing to watch out for is user divide: Some students will graduate with vastly better prompt engineering skills than others, an inequality that will only magnify in the workforce.

What are the main questions your group has been tackling?

Anand: Our group divided its work into three subgroups focused on policy, tools, and resources. We’ve helped guide initial policies to ensure safe and responsible use; begun curating resources for faculty in a One Harvard repository ; and are exploring which tools the University should invest in or develop to ensure that educators and researchers can continue to advance their work.

In the fall, we focused on supporting and guiding HUIT’s development of the AI Sandbox. The Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching’s annual conference , which focused exclusively on GenAI, had its highest participation in 10 years. Recently, we’ve been working with the research group to inform the development of tools that promise broad, generalizable use for faculty (e.g., tutorbots).

What has your group focused on in discussions so far about generative AI tools’ use in research?

Shaw: Our group has some incredible strength in researchers who are at the cutting edge of GenAI development and applications, but also includes voices that help us understand the real barriers to faculty and students starting to use these tools in their own research and scholarship. Working with the other teams, we have focused on supporting development and use of the GenAI sandbox, examining IP and security issues, and learning from different groups across campus how they are using these tools to innovate.

Are there key areas of focus for your group in the coming months?

Shaw: We are focused on establishing programs — such as the new GenAI Milton Fund track — to help support innovation in the application of these tools across the wide range of scholarship on our campus. We are also working with the College to develop new programs to help support students who wish to engage with faculty on GenAI-enabled projects. We aim to find ways to convene students and scholars to share their experiences and build a stronger community of practitioners across campus.

What types of administration and operations questions are your group is exploring, and what type of opportunities do you see in this space?

Jelinkova: By using the group to share learnings from across Schools and units, we can better provide technologies to meet the community’s needs while ensuring the most responsible and sustainable use of the University’s financial resources. The connections within this group also inform the guidelines that we provide; by learning how generative AI is being used in different contexts, we can develop best practices and stay alert to emerging risks. There are new tools becoming available almost every day, and many exciting experiments and pilots happening across Harvard, so it’s important to regularly review and update the guidance we provide to our community.

Can you talk a bit about what has come out of these discussions, or other exciting things to come?

Jelinkova: Because this technology is rapidly evolving, we are continually tracking the release of new tools and working with our vendors as well as open-source efforts to ensure we are best supporting the University’s needs. We’re developing more guidance and hosting information sessions on helping people to understand the AI landscape and how to choose the right tool for their task. Beyond tools, we’re also working to build connections across Harvard to support collaboration, including a recently launched AI community of practice . We are capturing valuable findings from emerging technology pilot programs in HUIT , the EVP area , and across Schools. And we are now thinking about how those findings can inform guiding principles and best practices to better support staff.

While the GenAI groups are investigating these questions, Harvard faculty and scholars are also on the forefront of research in this space. Can you talk a bit about some of the interesting research happening across the University in AI more broadly ?

Shaw: Harvard has made deep investments in the development and application of AI across our campus, in our Schools, initiatives, and institutes — such as the Kempner Institute and Harvard Data Science Initiative. In addition, there is a critical role for us to play in examining and guiding the ethics of AI applications — and our strengths in the Safra and Berkman Klein centers, as examples, can be leading voices in this area.

What would be your advice for members of our community who are interested in learning more about generative AI tools?

Anand: I’d encourage our community to view the resources available on the new Generative AI @ Harvard website , to better understand how GenAI tools might benefit you.

There’s also no substitute for experimentation with these tools to learn what works, what does not, and how to tailor them for maximal benefit for your particular needs. And of course, please know and respect University policies around copyright and security.

We’re in the early stages of this journey at Harvard, but it’s exciting.

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