Purchase funnel In Digital Marketing

Understanding consumer journey has been always a hard task to do for a digital marketer. This complexity is due to the improvement of information technologies. This improvement affects the consumer behavior when they are shopping online as they no longer rely on advertising messages when they are determining what to purchase. Instead, choosing to educate themselves by reading product reviews and recommendations leaving behind countless of data points every day. Well, it is true that information help to improve the shopping experience, yet it made a complicated task for a digital marketer to follow their consumer path. However, with implementing and using specific software, such as Google Analytics, to measure and analyze consumer journey makes following the journey a smoother task to absorb.

In this blog, I will provide an explanation about consumer purchase funnel, from where it starts and where and when it ends. But, before digging into more details, I encourage you to check this YouTube Video:

What is a Purchase Funnel?

"The purchase/purchasing funnel is a model which describes the theoretical customer journey from the moment of the first contact with your brand to the ultimate goal of a purchase. This model is important when marketing your business as it provides a method of understanding and tracking the behavior of an average customer throughout the sales process."(1)

Purchase Funnel

I am sure that you have seen this chart many times in your life, and sometimes you feel confused because it seems complex to understand the process and steps involved. But, this Purchase Funnel process is summarized below:

• Awareness: The customer is aware of the existence of a product or service. Awareness is based on a communications message, word of mouth or independent discovery. Thus, Companies must market themselves and create awareness before they can even hope for sales. There are many ways to increase a brand awareness; for example, writing blog posts about the products or services, posting a video or a picture, and email newsletters. 
• Consideration: the main goal is to increase customer acquisition. The consumer thinks about it and asks around, but a lot of it happens online. Once a customer is aware of your product, they will consider your offering. 
• Research: The customer Use mobile phones, tablets, laptops and desktops to find more information about specific product or service 
• Comparison: The customer Compares similar products, prices, demonstrations and testimonials in the search engine. 
• Action: The customer buys, joins, sign ups, etc. 
• Review: The customer goes online on social networks to review and share their experience.

Using Google Analytics to create a Funnel Visualization report:

Google Analytics offers Funnel Visualization reports which help you to understand your consumer behavior starting from placing an item in a shopping cart, entering payment information, reviewing the final order to clicking on the confirmation. The Funnel Visualization report helps to measure the KPIs and optimize the website pages to increase the conversion rates.

To set up a goal funnel in Google Analytics in more detailed explanation, check out this article: Understanding the Funnel Visualization in Google Analytics

It is obvious that consumers start on one social media platform in the beginning of their purchase journey and then shift to another. As digital marketers, we are looking for the way to meet consumers on every touchpoint they are on to serve them the right information at the right time to guide them toward the final step in the purchase funnel. The modern customer journey begins with self-education about a product or service to discover what is the best features, compares the price and looks for the best offer before deciding on buying it. Customers research about the brand on social media, read product reviews and compared prices. Once buyers have narrowed down his/her choices to a specific brand, they will consider buying that products or service. Finally, after the purchase, a brand should carry on fostering the relationship between the brand and customers by preparing campaigns for upselling and cross-selling and boosting loyalty.