What is a Marketing Funnel?

If you worked at all in marketing, you’ve probably heard the term “marketing funnel.” But what is a marketing funnel and why should you care? A marketing funnel is a customer-focused model that examines the customer journey from beginning to end. With each stage of marketing comes a new way to target your audience. It’s simply a way to help understand the audience that you are trying to attract for your business.  We’re going to discuss marketing funnels and why they’re critical to the marketing process.

Marketing Funnel Stages

Buyers rarely leap straight from seeing to buying. Think about the last major purchase you made—chances are, you didn’t purchase on a whim. You wouldn’t want to go out and buy a $50,000 car without doing your research and determining whether or not that car is going to meet your needs.

Customers typically require some time to think things through, and those in the B2B SaaS space are no exception. They want to be sure that the software they’re purchasing is going to yield a high ROI; they want to be sure it’s the right fit for their business. As such, marketers divide the marketing funnel into stages to account for the entire consumer buying process. Here are the main marketing funnel stages to be aware of.

• High Funnel: When we refer to “high funnel,” we’re talking about potential buyers for your solution or software that may be quite a ways off from actually making a purchase.
• Low Funnel: Lower funnel marketing, by contrast, describes the stage in which high-intent buyers are looking to purchase within the next 30 days or around that time frame, especially in the SaaS industry. At this point in the digital marketing funnel, they’re searching for highly relevant, specific keywords that show a high intent to buy.

How to Build an Organic Marketing Funnel

When designing your organic marketing funnel strategy, it’s important to consider the whole funnel. Some organic searches are related to research. Those at the very top of the funnel, for example, are exploring a topic for the first time and are just trying to get a basic idea of what it entails. Further down the marketing funnel, buyers are looking for specific solutions, like “customer relationship management software.” These are the buyers that know exactly what they want and are nearing the point of purchase. B2B SaaS marketers should aim to appear in organic search results for the entire funnel.

We highly recommend starting at the bottom of the funnel and working your way toward the top. Low funnel traffic is closer to making a purchasing decision, so publishing content here first can attract leads that are quicker to close. Then, you can focus on building out your organic marketing funnel with high funnel content to capture a wider audience beginning their buying journey.