The Customer Journey Funnel: A Key to Sustainable Growth

The Customer Journey Funnel: A Key to Sustainable Growth

Would you believe that the concept of a customer journey funnel has been around for over a century? The well-known AIDA model, which stands for Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action, was first introduced in 1898. While we now consider it a basic framework, it was a groundbreaking way to understand and segment the customer journey back then, and it remains widely used today.

The world we live in now is vastly different. Consumers increasingly trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations and often perform thorough research before making a purchase. Most adults check platforms like Facebook and email daily, highlighting how the customer journey has evolved in the digital age. Understanding this modern customer journey funnel is crucial for effective marketing strategies, such as those used by Simple Fast Funnel.

Why the Traditional Sales Funnel No Longer Works?

The original sales funnel was created for a completely different era, one where advertising operated in ways that are no longer relevant to today's consumers and marketers. Yet, even now, many companies continue to display versions of this outdated model prominently in their strategies.

There are two main issues with how the sales funnel is applied in organizations today:

Oversimplification. While simplicity is often effective, reducing the customer journey funnel to a basic format can cause more harm than good. When companies water down the funnel, they skip essential steps in understanding their customers. The customer journey funnel should encompass a more detailed process that reflects the complexity of modern buyer behavior.
The Destination. Traditional funnels end at the "action" stage, meaning a single purchase. But today's businesses need loyal, long-term customers, not just one-time buyers. A sustainable relationship with customers is crucial, and focusing solely on converting leads overlooks the broader picture. It’s about guiding customers through a journey that fosters loyalty and advocacy, not just a one-off transaction.

The traditional sales funnel reflects an outdated marketing mindset—one focused on volume and attrition. It pushes leads through impersonal tactics, such as cold calls and ads, in hopes they turn into prospects and eventually customers. However, the customer journey funnel, like those employed by Simple Fast Funnel, shifts the focus to understanding the customer’s perspective, ensuring that their experience is at the core of the process.

The Complexity of the Customer Journey Funnel

The mindset behind the traditional funnel isn’t the only issue; its structure is outdated for today’s market. While it broadly summarizes the basic steps a customer takes toward making a purchase, it fails to capture the complexity of the modern buyer’s journey.

Consider this: a buyer’s experience with your brand begins long before they decide to become a customer. With the advent of television, the Internet, and the 24-hour news cycle, people now have unprecedented access to information. Consequently, if your brand is visible, potential customers are forming impressions long before they consider making a purchase.

This is why the traditional sales funnel, which emphasizes pushing people toward a purchase, is no longer effective for sustainable growth. Today’s consumers do not actively seek out ads or salespeople; instead, they embark on a journey of self-discovery, aiming to find the right product for their needs at the right time.

To effectively engage these modern buyers, organizations must adopt the customer journey funnel, which encompasses multiple stages. Each step offers an opportunity to connect with potential buyers, providing them with a unified and integrated experience that fosters not just customer acquisition but also the development of brand advocates.

The Customer Journey Funnel

As you may have guessed, the modern customer journey funnel is not limited to four steps and does not abruptly end at the purchase. It is designed to address the complexities of the entire customer experience, from prospect to buyer and beyond.

There’s much to discuss at each stage of the customer journey funnel, but let’s start with a brief overview:

The customer journey funnel provides a framework for creating an immersive experience across various channels and devices, enabling you to interact and engage with potential buyers and ultimately convert them into advocates who can attract more buyers to your brand.

Now, you might be eager to see it in action. Before we delve into each section, it's important to note that this graphic is not exhaustive, it has been slightly simplified to cover the essential elements of turning leads into customers. A truly comprehensive customer journey funnel would be extensive and continuously evolving. With that in mind, let's explore this framework and its potential to enhance your business and increase revenue.

Start With a Plan

The first thing to note about the customer journey funnel is that it doesn't begin where the old funnel did. Before you can create a new, immersive experience for your customers, thorough planning is essential.

This type of planning isn't something you can complete in just one afternoon. It involves significant thought and requires extensive research and multiple documents. This applies to both new and existing businesses. However, it's important to recognize that you won't be able to anticipate every possible outcome on paper before executing your ideas. Instead, focus on getting the essentials in place, launch your initiatives, and then refine them as you gather feedback and insights.

Story Alignment

This is your Why the fundamental reason your business exists. Simon Sinek provides a valuable perspective on this concept: Starting with the Why isn’t merely about crafting a feel-good narrative to sell a product; it's about how you build your company and a growing user base, influencing every aspect of your business, beginning with the essentials.

Here’s what those essentials look like in the context of the customer journey funnel:

Examine your product/market fit based on your ideal buyer and your Why, making necessary adjustments.
Evaluate your People for a growth mindset, commitment to the Why, and capability.
Explore the Growth Team concept and develop a plan for filling those roles.
Review your current Processes and Platforms to identify needed changes, setting a timeframe for implementation.

Without a strong product/market fit, you won’t attract customers. Take a thorough look at your ideal customer, digging deep into what they truly want and need, and ensure that you can deliver on those expectations.

This list also includes the 3Ps. Within the framework of the customer journey funnel, you have your People, Processes, and Platforms but remember, you can only begin to address these after you’ve identified your Why and engaged in the work of StoryVesting.

People

Your People must be invested in the Story of your company. They should be brimming with ideas and enthusiasm. With the right People in the right roles, you can transform small ideas into something significant. Everything ultimately revolves around your People, so dedicate the time needed to ensure you have the right team members on board as you navigate the customer journey funnel.

Processes

Once you have the right People, establish the Processes that will effectively and efficiently accomplish your goals. While it may be tempting to settle for what currently works, doing so can be costly in both time and money later on. It's better to make mistakes with a mailing list of 20 than with one of 20,000. Focus on perfecting your Processes from the outset and review them regularly as you navigate the customer journey funnel.

Platforms

Utilize the right Platforms to save time and money while preventing your People from unnecessary frustration. It’s essential to distinguish between strategically opting for a free or low-cost alternative that meets 90% of your needs and compelling your People to use a makeshift solution that demands significantly more time and energy without delivering real results.

The truth is, you won’t make progress without proper planning. You need to address the critical WHY and get your People, Processes, and Platforms (3Ps) aligned because everything else depends on it. Without planning, you can’t advance to the next level, let alone optimize your site, personalize a campaign for specific prospects, run A/B tests, or engage in the other advanced strategies that many leading digital marketers frequently discuss.

You must start where you are. You need to plan adequately and use the customer journey funnel framework to guide your actions. You simply can’t conduct an A/B test until you have an audience. I understand how overwhelming it can be to build a modern digital marketing plan, which is why I emphasize taking a step back to prepare for all subsequent actions.

Attracting an Audience

Before we move on from planning, it's important to acknowledge that you will never truly finish planning. Planning is an ongoing process, not a one-time event. It plays a crucial role in creating a customer journey funnel that operates smoothly and generates revenue. This process is continuous, but at a certain point, you can begin to move forward. Remember that you will need to regularly revisit and reassess your plan by adjusting what isn’t working, integrating new Platforms that can outperform the old ones, replacing People as necessary, and ensuring that your findings regarding the customer journey funnel remain relevant. Over time, your ideal customer may evolve, and their needs will change as well.

Now, you can begin to create and distribute valuable content specifically tailored for your ideal customers. This stage of the customer journey funnel can appear complex because it involves more than just publishing a company blog.

This section consists of various elements that make up an inbound content marketing engine, the system that delivers content to your customers. While you might not use all these components, they should be considered when developing your inbound strategy.

The Value of Inbound

Outbound marketing, which includes advertisements and popups that interrupt users during their research, still has its role, but the real strength of inbound marketing lies in its ability to reduce ad spend while directly connecting with individuals most likely to engage in the customer journey funnel. According to HubSpot, around 50% of companies report higher ROI with inbound marketing compared to just 15% for outbound marketing.

So, what makes inbound marketing more effective? The value it provides to the user.

When you have a question, what do you do? You Google it. You take out your phone, tablet, or laptop, type your query into the search bar (for example, “How to remove scratches from a wood table”), and scan the results.

By producing the type of content that addresses user needs, companies can effectively draw you into their customer journey funnel. Even if a purchase isn’t on your mind, you’re attracted to the valuable content they offer, regardless of whether they provide a local service or product.

This highlights the importance of aligning your content marketing with the customer journey funnel. By starting with your customer’s needs and creating relevant content, you provide value at every stage of their experience. Your customers who are informed, savvy, and connected can interact with your brand at each step. By crafting content that resonates with them, you not only make their lives easier but also encourage them to share that content with others.

Get Started With Inbound

So, how do you get started with creating your own content for the customer journey funnel? Here’s a quick primer:

Make a list of your existing content assets: Include everything from e-books and infographics to blog posts, white papers, worksheets, and social media posts. If you’ve dedicated time to creating a resource, add it to your list of content assets.
Map your existing content to buyer personas: Consider how your content aligns with each of your buyer personas to ensure it addresses their specific needs.
Evaluate what’s missing: Identify the information your ideal customer requires that you currently do not provide. Compile a list of questions your ideal customer frequently asks, and determine how you can answer these with authority and credibility.
Review your existing content for repurposing opportunities: Check if any of your existing content can be adapted to fill in the gaps you’ve identified.

This isn’t the only area where you’ll need content for your customers. As you progress through the various stages of the customer journey funnel, content continues to play a crucial role. In fact, content drives digital marketing, influencing every part of the funnel and all channels you engage with. Once you start creating and distributing this content, ensure you have processes in place to monitor the results: track views, visitors, inbound links (which indicate how useful people find your content), downloads, and more. This helps demonstrate that your efforts are worthwhile in terms of time and resources.

Grow Your Users

Once you’ve attracted an audience to your blog, mailing list, or other platforms, it’s crucial to nurture those relationships within the customer journey funnel.

After your ideal customer discovers your existence, it’s essential to prove your value by consistently delivering on that initial promise. This requires you to continually refer back to the foundational Why you established at the beginning.

Nurturing your prospects can be challenging, especially in a crowded industry with fierce competition. The typical cycle for a B2B service or SaaS product can be lengthy and complicated. Certain purchases—like selecting insurance or choosing a new smartphone—may involve even more steps. Therefore, it’s vital to create valuable content for your prospects and track metrics to identify what resonates and what does not.

Consider what you value in your relationships—both personal and professional. New relationships require special attention. You wouldn’t start a friendship by asking for favors, so don’t pressure your ideal customer to make a purchase too soon in the customer journey funnel. Instead, focus on improving the relationship with your ideal customer through the following strategies:

Education

This involves much more than simply detailing what your product can do. Your emphasis should be on the pain points of your ideal customers. What challenges do they want to resolve? How can you assist them? Explore various methods to disseminate this useful, informative content effectively.

Research

While you likely have a good grasp of your customers’ pain points, it’s essential to delve deeper. Investigate how your solutions align with their challenges and how they relate to your brand's value. Be open to adjusting your approach based on your findings.

Evaluation/Consideration

Many leads entering your email list, social media, or other channels are likely exploring other options alongside yours, comparing elements like price and convenience. This is where your brand begins to play a pivotal role in the overall experience. What strategies can you implement to assist your customers in their decision-making process? Is your pricing structure transparent? Do you have direct competitors that you can easily outshine, which can be illustrated through a feature comparison matrix?

Decision Justification

Help your customers understand why choosing your brand is in their best interest. Find innovative ways to guide them toward a purchase. Illustrate how your pricing is justified by the value of your products. Provide social proof that reinforces their research and consideration, demonstrating that the experience they will gain is more significant than the price tag.

Above all, ensure that every piece of information you share provides value to your audience. This value is what attracted them in the first place, and it’s essential to keep them engaged and prevent them from turning to competitors for better answers to their questions.

To achieve this, it’s important to build, test, and refine a set of processes tailored to this stage in the customer journey funnel:

Optimize SEO and SEM Tactics

Test and refine your SEO and SEM strategies to ensure that your content is highly visible to the right audience. Although SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing) may seem similar at first glance, they serve different purposes SEO is your inbound strategy, allowing your website content to connect organically with customers through search engines, while SEM typically involves paid advertising through platforms like AdWords and other PPC options. Regardless of whether you rely on SEO or SEM to generate leads, neither can substitute for high-quality content. If your content does not answer questions or address pain points, you risk losing engagement. The primary SEO tactic is to continuously offer fresh, valuable content while adhering to search engine best practices to connect with interested users.

Leverage Relevant Audiences

Whenever possible, tap into large, relevant audiences to make your content visible, shareable, and easily accessible on the social media channels where your ideal customers are active. Expanding your reach can be simple: consider guest posting on high-profile sites within your niche, engaging in LinkedIn or Facebook groups relevant to your market, and sharing quality content that resonates. By investing time in researching these avenues and making new connections, you can nurture your prospects and deliver value that sets you apart from the competition.

Segment Your Database

Segmenting your database is crucial for delivering the most relevant content to your ideal customers. By categorizing customers into distinct, homogeneous groups based on characteristics such as gender, age, location, education, purchasing behavior, and spending patterns, you can tailor messages that resonate with each segment. Targeted messaging increases the likelihood that each individual user feels personally addressed, enhancing their engagement. Moreover, segmentation helps identify your most and least profitable customers, allowing for more efficient marketing spending. Reward loyal customers with special offers and improved service while focusing resources on segments with higher purchasing potential.

Automate Processes

Automation is no longer a luxury in business; it is a necessity. Once you’ve established the right systems within the customer journey funnel, automation helps maintain a positive feedback loop. Consider when and how to engage your prospects and customers using surveys or automated emails. For instance, if an ideal customer hasn’t visited your site recently, follow up with a check-in message that includes your latest content and an exclusive offer. Additionally, utilize social proof, such as testimonials in videos, to highlight the benefits of your solutions.

Notice how your marketing strategy is intricately linked with your business strategy, sales, customer service, and every other aspect of your operations. It is crucial to keep the buyer's experience at the forefront. Optimize your website to load quickly, as users dislike waiting for slow pages. Ensure a seamless mobile experience since users prefer using whatever device is available. Stay attuned to your users’ wants and needs, especially in a landscape where they have numerous options and your competitors are just a click away.

This phase of the customer journey funnel is incredibly important. With the right people, platforms, and processes in place, you'll set the stage for success.

If you have invested the time in planning and development, this is when you can leverage various tools and technologies to enhance the buyer experience and drive growth. However, rushing into this phase without proper groundwork can lead to failure or stagnation. It's essential to start where you are and build your business with a focus on growth from the ground up.

Convert Users to Customers

This is the stage where your efforts truly come to fruition. By now, users are ready to make a purchase. Your goal is to ensure that you don't lose this opportunity.

The success of your planning is evident here. If you’ve established effective processes that simplify the buying experience eliminating unnecessary steps and confusion—customers will feel inclined to proceed with their purchase.

Even those who decide not to buy can provide valuable insights. Understanding their reasons for not purchasing allows you to adjust your offers and strategies to win them over in the future.

During this stage of the customer journey funnel, gradually guide your ideal customers toward conversion by delivering targeted value to specific segments of your audience. Make offers that resonate with those segments and demonstrate how your offerings meet their needs.
When a user clicks the “Buy Now” button, you must ensure that the buying process is straightforward. The button should be prominently displayed and once clicked, avoid asking for excessive information. Limit the requirements to essential details like name, email, address, and payment information. Surprising customers with unexpected fees at this point can lead to lost sales; instead, provide clear estimates for shipping and taxes upfront.
Utilize retargeting strategies to keep your brand in front of interested users. Retargeting involves using a pixel to track visitors to your site, allowing you to show ads on other platforms, such as social media, targeting users who have already shown interest.
Leverage analytics to understand user motivations and inform your decisions. The right tools enable real-time adjustments to your approach, allowing you to test changes effectively and potentially boost sales.
Engage with users to understand their reasons for leaving the site and identify obstacles to purchase. Simultaneously, inquire about the motivations behind completed purchases to replicate that success in future sales.
Experiment with various post-purchase and thank-you pages to find which options effectively encourage repeat visits to your site. Automate customer communications to ensure ongoing engagement with your products or services.
Converting users into customers is more than just maintaining visibility; it involves streamlining the buying process to meet evolving consumer expectations. Brands that embrace an end-to-end customer experience are positioned for higher returns on investment.

Consider the phases following the purchase and plan your interactions accordingly. This includes:

Adoption

Onboarding is crucial, particularly for SaaS companies that must manage churn rates. Evaluate first impressions of your product and provide clear documentation or walkthroughs to assist users.

Retention

Establish trust and ensure that the customer experience aligns with expectations. Your brand’s purpose must resonate with the customer’s needs, fostering brand loyalty.

Expansion

Once trust is established, customers are more likely to explore additional offerings, leading to upsells and cross-selling opportunities.

Advocacy

As satisfied customers begin to share their positive experiences, they can become brand ambassadors. Develop data-driven strategies to engage these advocates effectively.

Converting users into customers is just the beginning. Your next objective is to cultivate these customers into advocates for your brand.

Turn Customers into Brand Advocates in the Customer Journey Funnel

At this stage, you've invested significant time and energy into converting prospects into customers, so it’s crucial to leverage this momentum.

When customers have a positive experience, they often share it with others. For instance, consider the shoe company that repaired a cherished pair of heels or Amazon's prompt refund for a lost package. These experiences foster word-of-mouth marketing, which can be more powerful than traditional advertising. Your satisfied customers are in an excellent position to recommend your brand to their friends, many of whom may fall within your target market. Remember, recommendations from friends carry more weight than those from the brand itself.

Here are steps to turn your customers into brand advocates:

1) Identify True Advocates: Look for those who genuinely love your brand. Use social listening tools to monitor conversations about your brand on social media. This helps you spot your biggest fans.

2) Connect Personally: Once you identify these advocates, engage with them personally. Consider inviting them to join ambassador programs that offer discounts or early access to new products. Use surveys to understand what resonates with them and update your buyer personas based on these insights.

3) Create Amazing Experiences: You don’t need a big budget to make your advocates feel valued. Simple gestures, like sending a handwritten note or a branded gift, can make a lasting impression. Use feedback from these customers to improve your emails, landing pages, and other marketing materials.

4) Encourage Sharing: Make it easy for your customers to share their experiences. Add “share” buttons on your website and consider creating an affiliate program. Small tokens of appreciation, like a free t-shirt, can also go a long way in encouraging them to spread the word.

5) Exceed Expectations: Remind your customers why they chose to purchase from you in the first place. Continue to offer value and strive to exceed their expectations, creating a cycle of loyalty that encourages them to advocate for your brand.

By focusing on these steps within the customer journey funnel, you can turn your customers into enthusiastic advocates for your brand.

Drive Growth through the Customer Journey Funnel

Each stage of the customer journey funnel includes your People, Processes, and Platforms. As illustrated in the funnel graphic, each stage consists of several cogs, which represent individual micro-machines within the broader digital marketing system.

The advantage of slightly shifting your perspective and viewing each micro-machine as an individual unit that contributes to the larger whole is that you can concentrate on these components one at a time as you build. While they all need to function smoothly together, allowing the entire system to operate efficiently, you can prioritize focusing on your blog before tackling your SEO, for example.

This may seem like a matter of semantics, but it’s a shift that will be beneficial when you’re months into implementing a new team or platform and feeling overwhelmed. Referring back to this framework will help you direct your energy and efforts toward the most effective results. By recognizing each micro-machine's importance, you'll be able to optimize each one, enhancing the overall efficiency of your customer journey funnel to drive growth and revenue.

Evaluating Your Customer Journey Funnel Health

Now that you understand the importance of building and refining your customer journey funnel, how can you assess its effectiveness? A significant part of this involves conducting a thorough inventory and analyzing your metrics. If you collect enough of the right data, you'll gain insights into your strengths and weaknesses.

You may find yourself in one of two common situations:

You're part of an established company that struggles with change.
Your startup is starting to scale and aims to learn how to grow while future-proofing the business.

Consider the phases following the purchase and plan your interactions accordingly. This includes:

Neither of these scenarios is straightforward. Larger companies might have resources for new initiatives, but gaining buy-in and successfully implementing change can be challenging. On the other hand, smaller organizations can adapt quickly, but may lack the capital or experience for effective execution.

In both cases, a comprehensive audit of your customer journey funnel is essential. However, self-auditing can be tricky. Those closest to the organization might overlook critical gaps in the overall strategy. Additionally, the data gathered must be reliable, impactful, impartial, and clearly illustrate how customers navigate the funnel, highlight shortcomings in the organization and processes, and identify new opportunities worth pursuing.