Understanding the AIDA Marketing Funnel
The marketing funnel represents the customer journey with your business, representing the buying stages that people go through once they become aware of your business/prouct/service.
Why is it a funnel?
The shape of the funnel shows that the audience narrors as the journey progresses towards purchase. You don’t want to actively kick people out the of the funnel, but it is natural for people to exit at each stage. Only your highest-quality leads will make it through the funnel.
This is a simplified way of looking at the buying journey, it is rarely this straightforward, but it is useful to help you understand your audience and tailor your approach accordingly, catching the weaknesses in the customer journey and contextualising your marketing results.
The stages of the funnel
The most common stages of the funnel, and the stages of the funnel that I use are called the AIDA model: Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action. There are other models that get more complex but I try to stay away from making things overly complicated to the point where I confuse myself and my clients.
A - Awareness: Potential customers become aware of your brand/product/service
I - Interest: They express interest by engaging with your content, clicking on to your website, following your socials etc
D - Desire: They begin to evaluate your offerings and compare them with other alternatives.
A - Action: They make the desired action - conversion, signing up, reaching out etc
Basically…
Awareness - What is it?
Interest - I like it.
Desire - I want it.
Action - Right, I’m getting it.
BUT you can simplify the funnel even further if you would like too, into these three stages:
Top of funnel (ToFu): people become aware of the problem that you are able to solve.
Middle of funnel (MoFu): People want a solution and begin considering their options
Bottom of Funnel (BoFu): They decide on a solution and become your customer.
Awareness
This involves getting your content in front of your target audience, before grabbing their attention and engaging them. This is where your new audience will start to become curious about you and your business. In this stage the goals should be around brand awareness and consistent, effective messaging.
Interest
So, they’ve seen your content and they’re interested, now they want to know more. Here, your content needs to tell them about your brand, why you are the solution to their problem and how you could potentially work with them. Awareness is capturing their attention, interest is about holding it. You’ll want your content to be persuasive and engaging.
Desire
The desire stage is all about establishing trust with your new friends. Here, you want to serve them content that encourages them to interact with you more - ask them to sign up to your newsletter, follow you on your other socials, download your freebies etc. The more they interact with you and your brand, the more they’ll be able to trust you.
Action
Time to act. You’ve created the right content, you’ve built these relationships and now it is time for them to add to cart or engage your services. Have a clear call to action here.
Things to remember..
Not every customer journey is this straight fowrward. Someone might get to the interest stage but decide to go with someone else, BUT they come back to you because of a poor experience with them. Don’t forget the non-linear buying journeys.
Impulse purchases or emergency purchases will see the buying journey go from 0 - 100 real quick.
The funnel is not a complete marketing strategy, but it is a good place to start.
If you want to understand the marketing funnel more, or want a hand to create yours, book a social media consulting session with EJG Creative now!
