Types of Funnels

Different types of funnels can be implemented, depending on the business’s objective.

1.  Lead Acquisition Funnels

Lead acquisition consists of converting a user who visits your website or social media profile, or who views your ads, into a lead — that is, a potential customer.

With this type of funnel, the idea is to procure some kind of information about the user, to be able to capture them again — you want to attract them. A good way to do this is to ask them for data in exchange for a gift. For example, “subscribe to download my book for free.”

In this type of funnel, the first step is impacting thousands of people through ads, blog articles, or site content. Some of these people will feel interested, and enter the website (TOFU). Once on the site, they will be impacted with a banner or pop-up (a notice that suddenly appears on the screen) inviting them to enter their information in exchange for some sort of benefit (for example, 10% off) (MOFU). A smaller number of the original users will supply their information, culminating in acquiring new leads (BOFU).

2.  Lead-Nurturing Funnels

Once you have collected information through this first step, you can create a second short funnel to determine which users are interested in your product/service.

For example, if the person provided their email contact, you can send them an email with some kind of proposal that encourages an action — for example, “check out our new collection of books,” — utilizing a platform that allows you to view openings or incorporate a link to apply a UTM (its a tracker added to the URL used to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, it allows the marketing team to see how many people opened the link by the number of clicks recorded by the tracker) that will allow you to know what the user did when they received the email.

Here, the funnel is simple — if the person opened the email and clicked on the call to action, you can send them another email, because this action implies a clear interest in what you have to offer.

For this to work, the messaging must be clear and include a direct call to action. For example, “click here to learn more.”

3.  Online Sales Funnels

Once you have leads, obtained via the nurturing funnel (i.e. potential customers who have shown interest in your content and website) you can start creating a sales-oriented funnel.

As mentioned above, the starting point in this type of funnel is with users who have already shown interest. An initial step could be to segment those users by, for example, gender and age, and design a tailored message for each specific group, encouraging them to buy something of their interest with an attractive proposal. For example, 30% off the must-have bestseller for young people — “Click here to get yours!”

If pre-qualified users are interested, they will visit the site and make the purchase.

What’s interesting about this type of funnel is that if the users advanced but did not end up making a purchase, you can make a re-marketing campaign — you can impact them again and ask them to complete the process.

4.  Upselling

Of course, an individual customer can generate more than one purchase. Therefore, creating a conversion funnel for already-loyal customers is a great option. 

Upselling campaigns allow you to sell related products or services to customers. There are two ways to upsell:

• Upsell with landing pages. Instead of taking customers who have just purchased to a thank-you page, you could take them to a landing page with an exclusive offer, typically an OTO (one-time offer).
• Upsell with emails. 3-5 days after a user has purchased, reach out to them again and to propose an offer you know they will value.