The purchase funnel is a continuous cycle that helps businesses understand how customers make decisions. It consists of four stages: knowledge, evaluation, purchase, and enjoyment. Each stage has a specific purpose in the customer journey, and the content presented to the customer at each stage should be tailored to meet their needs. In the awareness phase, businesses should aim to make potential customers aware of their company and its products or services.
This is done by marketing to a wide universe of potential customers and letting them know that you have a solution to their newfound problem or desire. The consideration and intention phase is when potential customers are provided with useful information on how you can solve their problem. At this stage, businesses should track conversion rates to measure how many consumers ultimately end up buying. The conversion phase is when prospects who are ready to make a purchasing decision enter the funnel.
Content generation and meaningful and engaging touchpoints are critical at this stage of the process. It is important to clearly identify points of differentiation and be identifiable. Finally, businesses should extend the marketing funnel beyond the purchase phase as it is much cheaper to retain existing customers than to look for new ones. To understand how content fits into the overall customer journey from discovery to purchase, businesses may want to create a map of the customer journey.
This will help trace each stage of your customers' decision-making process and plan the steps they want to take at each stage.
