Do you want more of your website visitors completing some desired action on your website? Would you like to track the steps one would take before taking that action? If so, you should be creating and using marketing funnels!

In this blog article, I will define what marketing funnels are, why they are essential, and how you can set up your own basic marketing funnels.

What Are Marketing Funnels?

Before you can begin creating marketing funnels, you need first to define specific actions you would like your website visitors to take on your website.

Maybe you want them to sign up for your newsletter, request a quote, or complete some other type of form. When a website visitor does something you want them to do, it’s known as a conversion.

A marketing funnel is the steps a website visitor must take before they reach a conversion.

Let’s look at a simple marketing funnel we have at digitalJ2:

• Visit digitalJ2’s blog
• Viewed newsletter sign up form
• Submitted the newsletter sign up form

By setting up a simple marketing funnel, as shown above, we can easily track the percentage of visitors who go through each step and reach the desired conversion.

This is why this process is called a marketing funnel. There is a large group of people who take the first step. Then, as the website visitors continue through the next steps, the visitors begin to drop off and narrow.

The top of the funnel is generally people visiting your site. Only the most interested prospects will move further down your marketing funnel.

If you have many different potential conversions on your website, you should create marketing funnels for each conversion to see how your website visitors move through the specific step.

Once you can begin gathering this type of data, you’ll be able to determine friction in your funnel and start to draw assumptions on how to optimize your funnels for more conversions!

Why Marketing Funnels Are Beneficial

Marketing funnel reports provide you the data to determine where you’re losing leads and customers.

For example, let’s say you want to increase your B2B’s website’s request a quote form (this is your conversion/goal). You then create a marketing funnel in Google Analytics with the following steps:

• Visited your site
• Viewed a service page
• Submitted your request a quote form

With this funnel data, you can start to determine roadblocks in your funnel. Let’s say, for example, that once a visitor views one of your service pages, around 30% of them submit your request to quote form. However, only 2% of your website visitors visit a service page.

Why is that? Is it hard to find your service pages? Are there roadblocks to getting your visitors to take the next desired step in your marketing funnel?

You now have some tangible data on where you should focus your efforts to increase your B2B’s website lead generation.

How Google Analytics Marketing Funnels Work

To get started on creating your own marketing funnels, Google Analytics provides an excellent free method. See the video below to get started!

Here’s another excellent resource Neil Patel has put together on how to set up a conversion funnel in Google Analytics.

So, How Do I Get Started With Marketing Funnels?

Let’s run through a quick recap on what you need to know.

• When a website visitor does something you want them to do (i.e., sign up for your newsletter, request a quote, or complete some other type of form), it’s known as a conversion.
• A marketing funnel is the steps a website visitor must take before they reach a conversion.
• You can create and use marketing funnels to track the steps that lead up to a conversion. For example, they visited your site, viewed the newsletter sign up form, submitted the newsletter sign up form.
• You can use a marketing funnel report to view where your website visitors are dropping off.
• Google Analytics has a great free software to create your own marketing funnels.

Now with this new-found knowledge, write out all of your desired actions you want your website visitors to take. Once you do so, write out the steps those visitors will need to take to complete that desired action (conversion). Now, head over to Google Analytics and set up your marketing funnels!

Start tracking and optimizing your funnels for your marketing success!