What is a marketing and purchase funnel?

We've all talked about the purchase funnel and, sometimes, we think that everybody understands this phrase but this is not always the case. We're sure that you've heard of it more than once.  

In order to understand each other, we always have to clear up these doubts; that's why, in this article, we'll explain what the marketing and purchase funnel is and its importance in the buyer's journey. 

A purchase funnel is made up of different stages in which the commercial process takes place. The more you study and analyze your funnel, the better decisions you'll make as regards the actions that both the sales and marketing areas have to take. 

Funnels are very related to TOFU content (Top of the funnel), MOFU content (Middle of the funnel), and BOFU content (Bottom of the funnel), which are created according to the buyer's journey.

Below, you'll see what a purchase funnel looks like. 

In the beginning, we said that the more you study your funnels, the better actions you'll take; so, let's discuss an example: if we know for sure that for every 1000 contacts, we have 100 potential customers, and from these 100 customers, we end up with 10 real customers, we can ask ourselves: 

If we want 100 customers, how many potential customers do we need? And how many contacts? We can go even further: How many visitors do we need on our website? 

Coming back to the TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU, they are different content that will be used to draw the attention of your potential customers until they become real customers. Here, you can apply a method known as lead nurturing (which is part of the marketing automation) in which customers are "nurtured" with information according to the stage of contact they are in and their interest in the company until they buy your product or service. 

TOFU 

It's content about a general topic such as "what type of management software tools are there?". What we want to achieve is to attract people that are trying to discover the needs they have. 

This content includes ebooks, guides, webinars, among others. They are generally about a general topic that's very important for a company or that's very popular. 

MOFU 

It's probably the most important content because, with this content, you tell your contact "Since you have this problem, you can solve it with this"; in the case of a software tool, it could be a comparative analysis of the most used management software tools in the market, so you mention your product among them as an alternative solution to their problem.

If you manage to catch your customers' interest with this content, it'll be easier to achieve your goal which is the next and final stage: the BOFU. 

BOFU 

It includes demonstrations, consulting, and everything that has to do with closing sales. If customers get to this stage, we know their interest in purchasing our product or service is high and it'll all depend on your interest in them as contacts. 

In the case of a software tool, scheduling an appointment for a free demonstration of how it works is a clear sign that that customer is interested in buying it. 

This funnel doesn't end here. A company may have several funnels, one for buyer persona A, another one for B, and another one for C, since it's not the same to attract the interest of the CEO of a company or the interest of a sales assistant, not because of their position, but because of their interests (it's probable the CEO cares more about the profitability of the company and the sales assistant is interested in reaching his/her monthly sales goal, for example).  

In our methodology, we apply all this first, before implementing our strategy but that would be the case if you wanted to access our BOFU. 

What do you think about this article? Do you implement this in your company?
What was the result?