Just recently, I was at a baseball game, and I swear the peanuts guy was walking up and down the steps yelling, “Funnels, get your funnels — fresh hot funnels!”
Obviously, I’m kidding, but lately, it does feel that way. Each time I log into Facebook, there are no less than five ads from gurus ready to sell me a funnel.
Building a “funnel” means so much more than receiving a lead from an infographic and emailing them every other day for the rest of eternity. All leveraged forms of engagement should contribute to the same funnel, from the time your brand is introduced all the way through the sale.
Businesses with long sales cycles typically include more touch points than their counterparts with short sales cycles, but the thing is, building the funnel is only half the battle.
I’ve worked with several businesses that had funnels or had an idea for the direction that they wanted to take their funnel but struggled with an important part of the process: measuring the funnel.
Funnel metrics are designed to give you visibility into:
Ultimately, the purpose of creating a funnel is to drive sales. In order to convince a prospect to purchase, you have to meet their needs.
Instead of thinking about the ideal path that we’d like the prospect to take, we think about the ideal path that the prospect would like to take. We then ask what information they need and how they want to receive that information.
Depending on the business type and the length of the buyer’s journey, the funnel length can vary greatly, and touch points and goals each business employs will naturally differ.
While the exact buyer journey looks a little different for each company, generally it breaks down to this:
Typically, a long buying journey means multiple channels are leveraged in order to engage and re-engage prospects. This make it even more important that there is one unified funnel with metrics defined.
The most effective goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely — or, as I’ll refer to them here, SMART. I’ve provided some examples of general, measurable themes below. You’ll notice they aren’t SMART as is. In order to make these goals SMART, each advertiser should customize the goals to ensure they are also attainable, relevant, timely and specific, according to their needs.
In order to confidently invest in high-funnel channels, it’s critical to be able to tie performance back to goals. High-funnel tactics tend to get a bad rap because “awareness” can be difficult to measure.
As much as I’d like to preach on the ability to attribute sales value to top-of-funnel campaigns, it’s a complex issue, without a doubt. (If interested, see the deck from my presentation on full-funnel attribution at SMX East last year.)
Still, each channel and tactic should be accountable to a goal, both for the sake of justifying the time and money and also to give the channel a chance to prove itself.
Naturally, the first step is to set a goal. I’ve worked with clients that hoped to achieve the following high-level goals:
The next step was to make them SMART goals, and part of that was determining how we would measure each.
Some metrics can be helpful in measuring top-funnel effectiveness, including high-funnel lead generation, such as leads from top-funnel content; clicks; click-through-rate; the number of pages viewed or which specific pages were viewed; time on site; social engagement; impact on branded search volume; impact on building audiences.
Depending upon your sales cycle, tactics and level of attribution sophistication, you may even be able to measure the long-term impact on sales from the top of the funnel.
Although impressions are a performance metric, I cringe when they are the primary goal. I consider impressions to be a secondary metric, or sometimes even a health goal. It’s a concern if impressions plummet for no reason — but not for the sake of impressions — for the sake of missing out on opportunities to achieve a more important goal.
Here are some examples of the ways the metrics mentioned above were used to measure progress toward goals. They are just examples, and this is no way a comprehensive list; many of these goals could be measured in several different ways.
Mid-funnel leads are those that have an interest in the brand and solutions but haven’t decided yet.
For B2B companies, these are leads that have shown interest but are not yet marketing qualified leads (MQLs). Prospects in the middle of the funnel are aware of the problem at hand and are actively seeking out solution options.
Mid-funnel goals can include:
The middle of the funnel can be measured by mid-funnel lead generation, such as people that engage with mid-funnel content, existing lead engagement with mid-funnel content, funnel progression and lead score increases.
The middle of the funnel is most easily measured with technology, such as a customer relationship management (CRM) or marketing automation platform. It can also be measured creatively with audiences and micro-conversions. Applying high-funnel audiences as observation (or even targeting) to mid-funnel campaigns can add visibility into mid-funnel tactics.
For example, the above goals could be measured as such:
Low-funnel metrics are arguably some of the easiest to track, as these tend to correspond with the primary goal of the marketing strategy: sales.
Example goals at the bottom of the funnel could include:
Low-funnel metrics should be reflective of the action(s) you ultimately want your prospects to take. In many cases, advertisers track phone calls, demo requests and online sales in order to benchmark low-funnel performance. In-store visits, lead-to-sale conversion rate, sales volume and sales revenue are great data points to capture as well.
Your funnel doesn’t have to end with the sale. In fact, I hope it doesn’t! There’s still a lot of data goodness to be mined in order to shape your marketing strategy.
Here are few examples of goals that my clients have set for themselves:
These goals can be measured in a number of ways, including:
Beyond measuring performance at each stage of the funnel, there are some additional metrics that are worth keeping an eye on. Those could include but aren’t limited to:
Attribution plays a key role in understanding cross-channel impact as well.
The purpose of having a funnel is to create a pathway that leads prospects through the buyer journey. In order for this to be effective, advertisers need to:
Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.