What Is a Marketing Funnel? Complete Beginner’s Guide

A marketing funnel is a way to think about your customer journey. It starts when they discover your brand and tracks through as they become a loyal customer.

This framework helps you map ideal interactions. It identifies drop-off points and guides customers to purchase.

The better your marketing funnel, the more sales you can capture.

A well-designed funnel turns casual browsers into loyal customers while reducing your acquisition costs.

In this guide, you’ll learn:

How a marketing funnel works
Different types of marketing funnels
Step-by-step process to build your first funnel

Let’s start with the basics.

The Marketing Funnel Explained

How many stages a marketing funnel has and what you call them varies. But stages commonly include:

Awareness: People first become aware of your brand, product, or service
Interest: They’re interacting more and seeking information on your product or service
Decision: They’re evaluating and comparing their options
Action: Customers take a desired action, such as making a purchase

It’s natural for people to drop off at each of these stages. Even when you’re successfully attracting a targeted audience. Your goal is to guide the most qualified prospects toward conversion.

Let’s use a practical example to illustrate this.

Imagine you run an online store. Here’s what your marketing funnel might look like:

A wide top shows people who become aware of your product or service.

A narrow bottom represents the people who purchase your product.

For software as a service (SaaS) products, the marketing funnel might look like this:

These examples use the same basic framework. See how it can be customized for different scenarios?

There are a lot of different marketing funnel models you can use.

To help you get started, we’ll explore two of the most common and effective marketing funnels.

We’ll also look at a real-world example of a marketing funnel driving impressive results: The Gazillion Dollar Sales Funnel Experiment.

In this experiment, Matt Giovanisci plans to double his revenue. But he’s not going to launch any new products. He is simply optimizing his existing marketing funnel.

His business, Swim University, sells courses on pool and hot tub maintenance. He generates most of his website’s traffic with SEO and YouTube content.

Let’s see how this example grafts onto the different funnel stages below.

The ToFu, MoFu, and BoFu Funnel

ToFu, MoFu, and BoFu are each stages of the customer journey:

ToFu stands for “top of funnel” and signifies the awareness stage.
MoFu is “middle of funnel,” where the target audience gets familiar with their options.
BoFu, or “bottom of funnel,” is where prospects make a purchase decision.

This framework can help you understand which stage your potential customer is in. That way, you can tailor your content marketing efforts to fit their needs and interests.

Let’s dive deeper into the funnel. And explore the best types of content to create for each stage.

1. Top of Funnel (ToFu): Awareness

The ToFu stage is the entry point to your marketing funnel.

Here, your target audience realizes they have a need or a challenge. But they might not know about your solution yet.

Create content that will grab people’s attention and make them aware of your product or service.

Be informative and helpful. Spark prospects’ interest and get them moving down the funnel to learn more.

Examples of ToFu content that raises awareness:

Social media posts: Share articles, industry trends, or facts your followers will enjoy
Posts on your blog: Write informative blog posts optimized for search rankings
Guest post on other blogs: Contribute to relevant websites to reach a wider audience
Free webinars: Offer informative content relevant to your target audience. Ask for their email when they register.
Infographics: Design visually appealing infographics to simplify complex information and make it shareable
Downloadable ebooks and guides: Offer resources with valuable insights. Have visitors provide an email when they download them.
Interactive quizzes and polls: Create content that fosters a deeper connection with your audience
YouTube videos: Create videos that offer educational tutorials related to your industry

The best ToFu content strategy will depend on your specific industry and audience.

Ultimately, the key is to inspire curiosity and make people remember your brand. That way, they come to you when they’re ready to move further down the funnel.

Let’s take a look at our example.

Swim University Sales Funnel Experiment

As a ToFu strategy, Matt attracts prospects with blog posts and YouTube videos about pool maintenance.

The ToFu strategy works well. His website gets about 400,000 monthly visitors from Google.

Visitors to his site are offered a free cheat sheet on pool care. But they have to provide their email address and opt into his email list to get it. He aims for 1% of his web traffic to subscribe.

2. Middle of Funnel (MoFu): Consideration

In the ToFu stage, your target audience realizes they have a problem. Now, in the MoFu stage, they’re considering different solutions, including yours!

At the MoFu stage, you want to convince them that your brand is the best choice. Do this by creating content that:

Shows how your product can solve their problem (comfy shoes for all-day wear)
Compares your product to others (better arch support)
Provides more information (different materials and styles available)

Here are some examples of MoFu content that drives interest.

Comparisons and reviews: Highlight unique selling points. Explain why your product is the best.
Customer testimonials: Feature positive testimonials on your website, landing pages, or blog
Product tutorials and how-to guides: Showcase the features and benefits of your product
Customer success stories: Show how your product or service helped real customers
Webinars: Host interactive sessions highlighting your product’s features and benefits

Swim University Sales Funnel Experiment

For a MoFu strategy, Matt Giovanisci relies heavily on email marketing.

Remember the 1% of ToFu website visitors who opted in to email so they could download the free cheat sheet?

Matt sends them an introduction to Swim University. Along with it, they get a one-time offer (OTO) of 50% off the flagship pool maintenance course.

If subscribers don’t purchase immediately after seeing the OTO, they start getting the company newsletter. This newsletter delivers MoFu content regularly. That includes blogs about solving common pool problems and case studies with deeper data.

These emails include pitches for Swim University to remind leads of the value it offers.

Ultimately, the key is to nurture prospects by providing valuable information and insights. MoFu content helps them evaluate their options and move closer to a purchase decision.

3. Bottom of Funnel (BoFu): Action

The BoFu stage is the narrowest part of the online marketing funnel. It’s where you convert prospects into clients.

All that marketing effort you put in earlier (raising awareness and building interest) comes down to this point.

Here, you need to address any last-minute hesitations. Showcase the value proposition that will nudge your audience toward the final decision. Like a purchase or signup.

Here are some examples of BoFu content that drives sales:

Product demos: Showcase your product’s features and benefits in action
Free trials: Allow your prospects to experience the product firsthand before committing
Free product samples: If you sell consumer goods, let your prospects evaluate the product’s quality and value
Limited-time offers and discounts: Create a sense of urgency with special offers or discounts. This can incentivize prospects to make a purchase decision sooner rather than later.
ROI calculators: Demonstrate the potential return on investment for using your product. This makes it easier for prospects to justify the purchase.

Swim University Sales Funnel Experiment

Matt’s BoFu strategy is that OTO page with the 50% discount on his flagship pool maintenance course.

The offer creates a sense of urgency. It also reduces friction for interested prospects who haven’t yet purchased.

Here’s how his Tofu, MoFu, BoFu funnel performed:

Blog and video content attracted 193,395 organic website visitors (ToFu)
A free cheat sheet in exchange for opt-in captured 3,402 email subscribers (MoFu)
The OTO converted 2.93% (100 customers) to purchase the course (BoFu)

The BoFu stage didn’t stop there. Matt also included an upsell (a higher-value product offered after the initial purchase). It converted at 25%, so he got 25 additional sales.

Overall, Matt’s BoFu content generated over $12,000 in monthly revenue.

As you can see, the ToFu, MoFu, and BoFu marketing funnel is an effective framework for nurturing leads and guiding them toward conversion.

When you create targeted content at each stage, you build awareness, educate potential customers, and drive sales.

However, there’s another model called the Pirate Funnel that might be a better fit for your business, depending on your specific needs.

The Pirate Funnel

The Pirate Funnel is a framework that can help your business see where you might be losing potential customers.

The name of the framework stemmed from the acronym, AAARRR, which represents the six key metrics it tracks.

The metrics are:

Awareness: How many people know your brand exists?
Acquisition: How many people become users of your product or service?
Activation: How many users have signed up for your product or started using your services?
Retention: How many users come back to use your product or services?
Revenue: How much money are you making?
Referral: How many users recommend your product to others?

How to Use the Pirate Funnel for Your Business

Start by listing out each of the AAARRR metrics and defining how many users you have at each stage. Then, take a look at your funnel and see where you have the largest drop-offs.

Maybe you’re great at letting people know about your product (awareness), but your potential customers drop during the signup process (acquisition).

Go find out why.

Is your signup form too complicated? Do you need to communicate the value proposition more effectively?

By patching these leaks in the funnel, you can increase the number of users who convert into active, paying customers.

In our example below, the largest percentage of users—30%—drop off after the activation stage.

If you address this activation/retention issue, you’ll increase the number of users who continue to engage with your product, boost overall retention, and ultimately drive more revenue and referrals.

Using the Pirate Funnel for Your Business for Preply

Ben Goodey wrote a great case study about Preply, an online tutoring platform that has seen explosive growth over the last few years.

The company’s traffic soared from 0.5M to 3.8M monthly visitors between 2021 and 2024

This is an excellent example of a company implementing the Pirate Funnel to diagnose and fix weak points in their marketing strategy. And, as a result, see rapid growth in user acquisition, activation, and revenue.

Here’s how Preply optimized the customer experience to support each stage in their AAARRR funnel.

1. Awareness: Boosting Brand Visibility

Preply grew its awareness using a scaled content marketing and SEO strategy.

Their blog, which now gets 1.9M monthly visitors, focuses on top-of-funnel content such as “Basic Japanese words” and “How is the Present Simple formed in English?”

These topics help capture a broad audience of language learners and build brand awareness.

They also leverage user-generated content (UGC) through their forums, where tutors answer common language-related questions. It contributes another 850K monthly visitors.

2. Acquisition: Turning Visitors into Users

Acquiring users starts with driving the right kind of traffic to the website. Preply’s focus on keywords with commercial intent, such as “online English teacher” and “Japanese tutor,” contributed to 1M monthly visitors landing on programmatic service pages.

These keywords target users actively looking for a tutor, making it easier to convert these visitors into users.

This strategic approach to keyword targeting demonstrates how the acquisition was optimized by aligning content with user intent.

3. Activation: Signing Up and Starting to Use the Service

Preply’s 60,000 pages already attracted a high volume of traffic. The challenge was ensuring users signed up for tutoring services.

Their activation efforts focused on seamlessly guiding users from content consumption to conversion.

How did they do this?

They made their calls to action (CTAs) dynamic. They changed based on the topic of the post.

With highly relevant CTAs, the transition from browsing to booking a tutor was easy.

4. Retention: Keeping Users Engaged

Once customers start using your service, retention becomes crucial.

In Preply’s forum, learners could ask questions and get answers from tutors. This helps keep users engaged with the platform.

Preply created a community of learners and tutors. This increased the likelihood that users would return to the site regularly.

The community-driven forum content also builds a sense of belonging. This is key to retaining users over time.

5. Revenue: Monetizing the Platform

With 55,000 tutors and millions of learners, Preply’s revenue growth has been impressive.

They capitalized on their increased traffic by creating thousands of bottom-of-funnel service pages. They target specific subjects, like “Maths teacher” or “Online Spanish classes.”

This programmatic SEO strategy ensured they had a page for every tutoring need. The pages capture high-conversion traffic and boost overall revenue.

In just three years, Preply scaled its organic search traffic while increasing its pool of paying customers.

6. Referral: Turning Users into Advocates

Referral is a critical metric in the Pirate Funnel, and Preply’s platform encourages this through its focus on tutor branding.

Tutors are incentivized to answer forum questions and build a personal brand within the platform.

This engages existing customers and also drives new users through word-of-mouth recommendations. Tutors’ names and backgrounds are highlighted, creating a trusted and reliable source for learners.

This referral mechanism helps expand their user base without direct marketing costs.

How to Create a Marketing Funnel

The concept of a marketing funnel with different stages may seem pretty simple.

Using it to create complimentary marketing campaigns that guide potential customers toward a purchase is more complex.

You have to know your target audience well, what interests them, and how much “warm-up” time is required before they’re ready to make a purchase.

Here are some tips to help you create an effective marketing funnel.

1. Map Your Customer Journey

A customer journey map typically covers the entire lifecycle from the moment a user learns about your product (awareness) to the ultimate purchase decision (action).

You list every point of interaction they have along the way.

A well-recorded customer journey map helps you better understand your prospects’ needs and wants. So you can leverage marketing at all funnel levels to maximize conversions.

Before crafting a thoughtful customer journey map, answer the following questions:

By answering these questions, you better understand your customer’s decision-making process. You can make the right kind of content that will guide them seamlessly through each stage of the funnel.

Here’s an example of a customer journey map that you can use for your business. Adjust it to suit your business needs.

2. Plan Out Your Marketing Funnel

Here’s how to translate your customer journey map into a marketing funnel.

Identify the critical stages of your customer journey and map them to the marketing funnel stages.

Let’s say you want to use the ToFu, MoFu, BoFu marketing funnel.

Prospects who are Googling problems your product or service solves are in the ToFu stage. They’re realizing they have a problem they want fixed.

Prospects who are exploring your website, reading your blog, or otherwise interacting with your content are learning about possible solutions. They’re in the MoFu stage.

Prospects who are reading reviews of your business and your competitors are ready to make a purchase decision. They’re in the BoFu stage.

3. Set Goals for Each Funnel Stage

Once you’ve mapped your funnel stages, you should set specific goals for each.

These goals should be SMART:

Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Time bound

At the ToFu stage, set goals that focus on brand awareness and attracting a broad audience.

For example, you could aim to:

Increase website traffic by 20% in the next quarter
Gain 1,000 new social media followers per month
Grow your email list by 3,000 new subscribers by the end of the year

At the MoFu, set goals to nurture leads and build interest. Depending on your marketing efforts, you could aim to:

Achieve a 15% click-through rate on email campaigns
Increase the average time spent on the product page by 25%
Gain 300 webinar sign-ups in the upcoming quarter

BoFu is where prospects turn into customers. To measure your success here, set conversion-focused goals like:

Increase online sales by 15%
Achieve a 1% conversion rate on product demos
Increase the number of free trial signups by 150 in the next quarter

Remember, these are just examples. Tailor your goals to your specific business objectives and target audience

4. Align Your Marketing Efforts with Every Funnel Stage

You’ve identified your desired outcomes for each stage of the marketing funnel. Now, outline the specific marketing strategies and content needed to achieve those goals.

For example, if your ToFu goal is to increase your email subscriber list by 3,000 people, you might want to focus on these strategies:

Use informational blog posts to attract more website traffic through organic search. Then, encourage site visitors to join your email list.
Repurpose newsletter content for sharing on social media. Mention the newsletter in posts and include a link to sign up.
Create YouTube videos with links to your newsletter

Ultimately, decide which marketing content to create to achieve your goals at the ToFu, MoFu, and BoFu stages.

5. Create ToFu Content

To ignite your funnel, craft content that sparks awareness. This is your chance to build trust with potential customers.

Here are some tactics to try:

Write educational blog posts
Share industry trends
Post on social media
Run paid ads
Create video content
Record podcasts
Collaborate with influencers

As an example, Backlinko generates more than 270K traffic monthly with informational keywords only.

This helps generate awareness and attract a wide range of users, from beginner to advanced skill levels.

The goal isn’t to immediately sell something. The goal is to familiarize readers with a brand and move them down the funnel.

Here’s how you can find informational keywords for your website using Semrush:

Open the Keyword Magic Tool. Type in seed keyword. Then, hit “Search.”

Use the “Intent” drop-down to select “Informational.” This will filter the list of keywords for that search intent.

Use the “KD” drop-down to filter for keyword difficulty “Easy.” This will help you find low-competition, informational keywords for your website.

Review the list of keywords. Pick the ones you believe will help you spread the word about your brand.

Our comprehensive keyword analysis guide will show you how to do this step-by-step.

Once you know which keywords to focus on, create high-quality content around them.

Not sure how?

This definitive guide for writing blog posts will help you write content that’s likely to hit Google’s front page.

SEO is just one of many strategies for increasing brand awareness. There are multiple channels you can use.

For example, the team at Beehiiv, a newsletter growth platform, uses multiple social media platforms to promote their brand.

According to Tyler Denk, Beehiiv’s co-founder and CEO, building in public helped them achieve the following:

Worried about the time and effort it takes to create that much content for different marketing channels?

That’s why many brands repurpose content.

It’s about taking content you’ve already created and presenting it in different formats to reach a wider audience.

Example: Imagine you write a blog post. Repurposing could mean turning it into a video script, an infographic, a social media series, or a podcast episode.

This way, you can save time and resources while reaching a wider audience.

6. Create MoFu Content

At this point, the most engaged part of your target ToFu audience becomes more interested in learning about your brand. They’re ready to move to MoFu content.

But how do you build relationships with someone who has just heard about your business?

Through persuasive content.

Here are some tactics to try:

Organize workshops and webinars to share the value of your product
Run nurturing email campaigns to drive interest
Offer free interactive tools and quizzes
Write product reviews and comparisons
Share customer success stories

If you need ideas for where to start, check out your competitors’ MoFu content.

Open Semrush’s Organic Research tool and enter your competitor’s domain name. Select your location with the drop-down. Then click “Search.”

Now, navigate to the “Pages” tab and choose the “Commercial” search intent with the drop-down filter.

This will help you see competitors’ commercial intent keywords. And the content they use to nurture leads further down the sales funnel.

For example, this vinyl record store in New York has a page featuring different used CDs.

If you had a similar store in New York, you could create a better collection page with more details about used CDs. If searchers like your page better, the traffic is yours.

Let’s look at Backlinko again. We leverage email marketing to build relationships with our target audience.

Our welcome email introduces new subscribers to the brand and explains what kind of content they can expect. It also features some of our best blog posts.

It’s also a good idea to list your company on review aggregator websites such as Capterra, G2, and Trustpilot.

Why? Studies show businesses with listings on review websites see a significant 36% revenue increase!

Positive testimonials from past clients act as powerful social proof. They build trust and influence buying decisions.

Take Capterra, for example. Before they can post, reviewers have to share their name, position, industry, their company size, and how long they’ve used the product. This increases the likelihood that the reviews are honest and will be trusted by people.

7. Create BoFu Content

The bottom of the funnel, your target audience has already done their research. They’re ready to make a purchase decision.

Your BoFu content should convince them to buy from you, not someone else. And preferably right now.

Here are some tactics to achieve it:

Encourage people to sign up for free trials and product demos
Provide product samples
Offer discounts and time-limited offers
Create content targeting transactional keywords
Use retargeting

Let’s review some of these strategies in detail.

Transactional Keywords

Transactional keywords are search terms that indicate a searcher’s intent to complete a transaction or make a purchase.

An easy way to find them is by looking at your competitors’ transactional keywords and content. You can easily find them using Semrush’s Organic Research tool.

Another option is to insert your seed keyword into Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool. Then filter the list of suggested keywords by “Transactional” keyword type.

Let’s look at an example.

For the one seed keyword “Paleo diet,” the Keyword Magic Tool generated 19 keyword ideas. They all had transactional and mixed (transactional and informational) search intent.

If you run a website about the paleo diet with a webshop, consider targeting the “Paleo diet snacks to buy” keyword. Users search for this keyword specifically to make a purchase. If your website shows up in search results, you can get clicks and sales.

Aquaplus is an example of a business that did this well. The skincare brand revamped its SEO strategy to align its content with user intent.

Specifically, they included comprehensive product descriptions, highlighted discounted items, featured customer testimonials, compared their offerings to competitors, and incorporated CTAs.

The impact?

A 45% increase in sales from organic search traffic within six months of rolling out the revamped SEO strategy.

Retargeting

If a potential customer visited your website but hasn’t converted yet for some reason, try to convince them again with retargeting.

It’s like a gentle nudge to remind your prospects about your products and services that they’ve seen before. Hopefully, they’ll come back to your site to make a purchase.

Why is it an effective strategy to follow?

Because people who view retargeting ads are 70% more likely to convert.

Here’s an example of a retargeting ad from Max, a TV network, on Instagram.

They also show their retargeting ads across the Google Display Network.

Discounts and Limited-Time Offers

Finally, highlight the limited-time aspect with phrases like “Don’t miss out! This deal ends today!” or “Act now and save!”

This makes the urgency more explicit and compels users to take advantage of a deal before it’s gone.

The Amazon daily deals example is a great illustration of this concept. The limited-time offers create a sense of urgency that can motivate people to buy before the deal disappears.

8. Measure Performance

In prior steps, you set the goals for each marketing funnel stage and identified the content to create for your campaigns.

Now make sure you can measure your progress toward them.

Here are some metrics you can measure at every stage.

You can track most on-site metrics with Semrush, Google Search Console, and Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

9. Test and Optimize for Better Results

Even a perfectly crafted marketing funnel may not deliver the results you expect. At least not right at first.

Luckily, there are ways to identify leaks in your funnel.

Here are a few strategies:

Set up the funnel tracking in Google Analytics 4
Run A/B tests
Conduct usability testing

With Google Analytics 4, you can track goals at each marketing funnel stage. This lets you visualize the funnel and pinpoint where your target audience drops off.

For instance, let’s look at the demo account for the Google Merchandise Store in GA 4. Only 69.1% of users who entered the funnel actually made a purchase.

To improve conversions, consider sales funnel optimization strategies. That could mean testing new CTAs, refining ad copy, or creating more engaging content.

But how do you know what changes will lead to the desired results?

A/B testing eliminates the guesswork. And lets you see what resonates more with your target audience.

For example, Semrush conducted an A/B test to assess the impact of adding search intent-specific keywords to page titles. They found that including phrases like “for sale” in titles led to a 6.8% increase in click-through rate.

Conduct usability testing to get real user feedback about your product pages, email subject lines, or CTAs.

One way to do this? Recruit a small group of individuals that represents your target audience. Ask them to complete specific tasks on your website or app.

Observe their behavior as they complete the task. Listen to their thoughts aloud. Record any challenges they encounter.

TruckersReport did this well. The company increased its landing page conversions by 79.3% after collecting insights from six usability tests and implementing changes on the website.

Every refinement, no matter how small, has the potential to lead to a significant increase in conversions at the bottom of the funnel.

Start Creating Your Marketing Funnel Today

Now that you’re equipped with the knowledge to build a high-performing marketing funnel, it’s time to take action.

Remember, the key is to understand your audience. Provide valuable content appropriate for each part of their journey. And be sure to eliminate any issues that might prevent conversions.

Streamline your marketing efforts and sell more products or services with our Sales Funnel Template.

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