Your customer’s journey into your sales funnel happens way before the day they click on an ad. Check out the images below to see what most companies view as the sales funnel, and what the sales funnel in the 21st Century really looks like.
- In a SIMPLE marketing funnel, people go from “browsing” to “shopping;” essentially, people would only window shop – and not click (the digital version of walking onto a car lot to browse) – before they decided to shop. And after they are done window shopping, they’d start clicking on [sites] that had products or services they were interested in learning more about.
- In a REAL marketing funnel, people see your advertisements across search engines, social networks, banner ads and email campaigns…not to mention offline behavior. And sometimes the ad isn’t the right ad or the right time for them to click to learn more. It’s important to understand that seeing an ad has value, but seeing an ad + going to your website/landing page is more valuable.
What does this all mean? It means that your customers are often “born” well before Day 0, and it’s important even at the beginning of your marketing and sales funnel data comprehension journey to see what’s really going on.
