The customer journey and marketing funnel

You will learn what digital marketing and e-commerce roles and departments do within organizations and how they create value. You’ll also be introduced to marketing concepts, like the customer journey and the marketing funnel, that form the basis for much of what these roles do.

Dedication to study

• Videos: 38 min

• Leitura: 2 h 10 min

• Teste: 1 Teste com avaliação

Learning Objectives

• Identify the roles and functions that digital marketing and e-commerce play within an organization.
• Understand the customer journey and the function of journey maps.
• Explain the concept of a marketing funnel.
• Describe how the different parts of a marketing funnel can help drive engagement, conversion, and loyalty.
• Understand why measurement at each stage of the marketing funnel is important.

Content

1. How digital marketing and e-commerce benefit organizations
2. Introduction to the marketing funnel
3. Attract and angage with potential customers
4. Drive sales and build brand loyalty
5. Review: The customer journey and marketing funnel

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1. How digital marketing and e-commerce benefit organizations

Welcome to week 2

Video. Duration: 1 minute

Welcome back. Earlier in the course, you learned how digital marketing and e-commerce are continuing to change the business landscape. You found out a little about careers in these industries including core skills, day to day responsibilities, job titles, and career paths. Finally, you considered some of the skills you already have that can help you advance your career. Now it’s time to explore the ways that digital marketing and e-commerce create value for companies and for their customers. In this part of the course, you’ll learn how companies use digital channels to reach customers and explore foundational concepts that can turn potential buyers into loyal customers. Lastly, you’ll learn why measuring marketing performance is so important to success. Digital marketing is constantly growing and changing. That’s part of what makes it an exciting field to work in. But some things are always important. Like raising awareness, fostering trust, and building loyalty. The methods may change, but learning the fundamentals can help you adapt and grow along with the field. Are you ready? Let’s get started.

How digital marketing and e-commerce create value

Video. Duration: 3 minutes

Did you know that over 60% of the global population is online, and more people are joining them every day? That’s why every business, big or small, needs an online presence to be competitive. But it’s not enough just to have a website. There may be a lot of people online, but there’s also a lot of companies that want their attention and their business. Your target audience needs to know you exist, how you can help them, and what makes you different from the competition. Breaking through this crowded field and actually reaching potential customers— that’s where digital marketing comes in. Now, you might have noticed, I haven’t mentioned anything about selling products yet. That’s because digital marketing is bigger than sales. It’s not that selling products or services isn’t important, but it’s only one piece of what digital marketing can do for companies. Individual sales are easy to measure, but they don’t mean much if your target audience doesn’t trust your brand or your customers don’t come back for a second, third, or fourth purchase. A successful digital marketing effort guides all of the company’s customer interactions. It allows companies to think strategically about how to reach customers through digital channels before, during, and after a purchase. It can be harder to measure the value of these activities, but a well-coordinated strategy allows businesses to thrive online and even grow. Let’s think through an example: Imagine a company that makes running shoes decides to invest in digital marketing. They create some video ads and place them on a popular news site. They create accounts for several social media platforms and start posting content. But their posts don’t get much engagement, and their ads don’t attract many new customers. What’s worse, they don’t even know why they aren’t getting results. They’ve wasted time, money, and resources on a digital campaign that doesn’t work.

Now, let’s think about what could have happened if that same company made an effort to learn about their audience. Instead of posting ads on a news website, they targeted sites that focused on running. Because they did research, they knew where to find their new customers online.

That knowledge also let them create tailored content for their social media accounts that reach the right audience. And, because they researched their audience, they were able to set meaningful goals for their strategy. With clear goals in place, they knew exactly how to measure their success. The information they measured allowed them to adjust their customer communication and improve their video, social, and email campaigns. They were able to recognize opportunities to reach potential customers and engage with them effectively. Yes, sales went up, but their well-planned digital strategy also built awareness, trust, and loyalty. You’ll learn more about how marketers create and execute strategies like this one throughout the program. For now, let’s recap: Digital marketing is more than running ads to drive sales. It’s a set of practices that can affect a company’s customer interactions at all levels and during every stage of the purchase journey. By learning about their customers, digital marketing teams can reach their target audience in a crowded online marketplace and nurture customer relationships over time. Coming up, you’ll learn more about the value digital marketing creates for businesses and some of the challenges marketing teams face when planning and executing strategies for online engagement.

Advantages and challenges of digital marketing

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

Traditional marketing is marketing that isn’t online. Marketers reach potential customers through printed media, television, radio, direct mail, phone calls, or billboards. Digital marketing is marketing that is exclusively online. Digital marketers focus on potential customers who engage with online content, including search engine results, email, video, blogs, or social media.

This reading describes the advantages digital marketing has over traditional marketing and some definite challenges, too.

Digital marketing advantages

Digital marketing has certain advantages over traditional marketing because it:

• Reduces wasteful spending

• Adapts to new technologies

• Reaches target audiences with more precision

Spending

Digital marketing uses content in a variety of formats that can be easily converted from one format to another, making spending more cost-effective. Digital marketing also reduces wasteful spending. For example, television or billboard ads are equally seen by those who have an interest in your company or product and those who don’t. Traditional marketing always wastes some budget on people who will never buy a product or service. In contrast, digital ads can be selectively shown to people who are more likely to have an interest in that product or service. Digital marketing that is more strategically focused on the right people yields a better return on spending.

Technology

Various technologies enable organizations to engage and interact with customers more effectively, which is a big part of digital marketing. Developing a good online relationship with customers makes them more likely to find your business, become loyal customers, and even share their recommendations with others.

Digital marketing tools also enable companies to collect data and measure the results of their marketing efforts more effectively. When marketers receive data faster, they’re able to change direction easily if a marketing effort isn’t producing the results expected. Measuring the success of digital marketing campaigns is key to ensuring that you get the results you want.

Digital marketing adapts to new technologies. There are always new opportunities to reach customers in different ways, especially compared to traditional marketing.

Target audiences

Digital marketing tools and data enable you to expand your customer reach well beyond that of traditional marketing. Ad visibility and audience coverage can be tailored to meet your specific business needs and goals. When you reach the right audiences, you’re more likely to increase sales and develop sustainable customer loyalty programs.

Digital marketing challenges

Digital marketing also has certain challenges that are associated with spending, technology, and target audiences. For each advantage previously identified, there are also associated challenges.

Spending

Advantage: Digital content is easier to create.

Challenge: Organizations engage in omnichannel marketing—the integration or synchronization of content on multiple channels—so customers can have a consistent brand experience. This increases the amount of content required, so even if it’s easier to create digital content, much more content needs to be created overall. Furthermore, it’s not just about the amount of content created, but its quality. Advertising is a crowded space. Content must be distinctive to positively impact customer awareness and change their behavior.

Advantage: Digital marketing is more cost-effective than traditional marketing.

Challenge: If an organization is working towards an omnichannel presence, the cost for marketing on all channels adds up quickly. Getting support or buy-in for extra or additional budget to cover the cost can be difficult.

Technology

Advantage: Digital marketing adapts to new technologies.

Challenge: As a marketer, learning and keeping up with new technologies and tools is a constant requirement. Marketers must also stay up-to-date with and follow all user privacy and data sharing regulations worldwide. Omnichannel marketing also makes it more difficult to track where sales come from. Marketers must rely more heavily on analytics tools to help them do that.

Target audiences

Advantage: Digital marketing tools expand customer reach using specific audiences.

Challenge: The digital space is a crowded field that’s getting even more crowded. It’s harder for marketers to stand out with their advertising, even when they are targeting the right audiences.

Key takeaways

Various technologies make digital marketing more cost-effective and adaptable than traditional marketing. Digital marketing tools also enable more advanced and targeted audience selection for marketing campaigns. However, these benefits come with some challenges. In a digital space that’s both crowded and noisy, it’s harder for a company’s brand and advertising to stand out. Marketing professionals must keep up with technological advances and customer behaviors that change rapidly.

Jen - Diversity in digital marketing

Video. Duration: 4 minutes

Hi, I’m Jen, and I’m a Shopping Specialist here at Google. I work with large retailers to help them improve their marketing performance with Google products. One of the things that I love about my role is that it’s really quantifiable and measurable. The products that I actually bring to market—I can see how they transform retailers’ businesses and how it helps them drive more revenue for their company and meet their bottom line. I was recruited from Howard University, which is a historically Black university, which is really cool because, at the time, there was not as much diversity, I would say, within the tech and e-comm industry specifically. When I think about DEI in the space of e-comm, I really think about how we’re connecting to our customers. We have to remember that we’re representing and we’re trying to reach a diverse customer pool, so our teams also have to be diverse. I would think that we want to shape our teams, our community, our culture to be as open as possible, to reflect society. I came without any e-comm experience, without any digital marketing background. I really think that e-comm is a place where you can come and grow in the role, and most folks that come from nontraditional backgrounds are not classically-trained in e-comm or digital marketing and are able to ramp up and add value to their clients really effectively within a short amount of time. When I think about diversity, equity, and inclusion, I really like to put it in the context of people. Diversity specifically, I think about the breadth as well as the depth of people. So having the same opportunity set. And diversity is making sure that everyone has access to that. When I think about equity in terms of people, I think about compensation. We all want to make sure that we’re being paid at a similar rate for the skill set that we’re bringing to the table. When I think about inclusion, I really think about belonging, and really for me, that has to do with whether my opinion is valued and whether my input is accepted by the team and sparks a dialogue and conversation in the same way that someone else’s would. If we think about society and we think about sometimes how folks are just trying to check the box, sure, we can have a diverse environment around us, but if everyone is not being compensated fairly, or if people don’t really feel like they belong and they are coming from different backgrounds, it’s not really making a dent and not really contributing to the overall goal, which is, again, to be representative of society. It’s important that we have all three because we can have a diverse room, but that doesn’t mean that everyone has an equal voice. The way I make sure folks who may not look like me or talk like me or act like me are heard is sometimes I just like to take a step back and listen. We often can fill up a room with our thoughts, and you miss the input from some of our more quiet, or reserved teammates. So sometimes I just like to take a step back, take inventory of the room and take a couple of meetings to just listen, and that allows other folks to have more room to voice their opinion and to provide their input. And sometimes I even like to ask folks directly who I know may not be more comfortable sharing their opinion directly like, “Hey, X, what do you think about this specific topic?” That’s a way that you can make it open and friendly for someone to contribute without them feeling uncomfortable, kind of cutting other people off who may be a bit more boisterous. I think the goal is for e-comm companies and marketing companies to look just like society. That is the ultimate goal, but the way that we can do that is through action. So rather than using words and saying what we believe we stand for, the way that you can demonstrate that you believe in it is through actions and through creating that change that you want to see.

Inclusive marketing

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

As a digital marketer, being inclusive is an essential part of making deeper connections with your customers. Inclusive marketing is the practice of improving representation and belonging within the marketing and advertising materials that an organization creates.

In this reading, you’ll discover why inclusive marketing is important and how a company can make inclusion part of their marketing and advertising strategies.

Why inclusive marketing matters

In digital marketing, the creative choices a company makes can impact how people view themselves and how they view other people. Sometimes marketing campaigns (especially those that are older or more traditional) can reinforce stereotypes and leave out the perspectives of underrepresented groups of people. Inclusive marketing, on the other hand, seeks to represent a variety of perspectives, particularly those that have been marginalized in the past.

If a company focuses its marketing exclusively on a specific age group, gender, ethnicity, or other identity traits, they’re likely missing out on reaching potential customers. By approaching marketing decisions with a focus on inclusion, a company can positively and authentically market to the diversity that exists in their audience, and the world.

Making inclusive choices and avoiding stereotypes

Digital marketing requires getting to know your audience in a deeper way. With inclusive marketing, you can take this a step further by seeking to understand how parts of your target audience have been excluded, stereotyped, or misrepresented in the past.

Sometimes you might unintentionally overlook certain aspects of diversity, even if you remember to consider others. Here is a list of some identity traits that are helpful to keep in mind when you’re creating marketing or advertising materials for the people you’re trying to reach:

• Race

• Socioeconomic status

• Age

• Ability

• Gender

• Sexual orientation

• Religion

• Geographic location

• Culture

• Political perspective

• Military status

• Languages spoken

Gathering information about your audience’s demographics can help you broaden your perspective. It’s also important to consider the demographics of people who are not currently customers. These people may not use or even know about the products or services your company provides because the company’s marketing efforts haven’t reached them. By understanding their needs and desires, you can find a way to reach this group of people in a manner that matters to them.

As an example, at least one billion people in the world live with a disability. If your product or service isn’t accessible to these people, they likely don’t use or even know about your product or service. And if your company’s marketing efforts don’t feature people with disabilities or address their needs, they may not view your company’s products or services as relevant to them.

That’s why it’s important to think deeply about your audience and their needs and to make sure their perspectives and stories are brought to life through the company’s marketing and advertising materials.

Key takeaways

Whether you’re developing marketing goals, researching your target audience, planning a marketing campaign, or analyzing data, keep in mind the principles of inclusive marketing. Maintaining a broader perspective of your audience will help you establish a deeper connection with your customers.

Resources for more information

You can learn more by reading the inclusive marketing guidelines and principles provided by Google.

• Google Inclusive Marketing: Find tools and resources for inclusive marketing.

Janice - Inclusive marketing

Video. Duration: 2 minutes

My name is Janice, and my role at Google is a Product Marketing Manager on the Grow with Google team. Grow with Google’s goal is to create economic opportunity for everyone, and through inclusive marketing, we can really make sure that we’re representing everyone accurately and authentically. My favorite part about my job is that I get to work directly with people that we impact and serve. On Grow with Google, I get to be the person that partners with non-profit organizations that can directly go up to people and say, “Hey, I have an opportunity for you that will open up doors for a new job and a career that you probably thought wasn’t possible before.” Representation is really important, not just because it is the right thing to do. It’s important that people can see themselves in your work, so that they feel like they matter, so that they feel visible, but it’s also the right business decision. We did a study on inclusive marketing that proved that people who saw themselves represented at work were more loyal to that brand and actually more likely to purchase or use that brand’s products and services. If you’re new to inclusive marketing, there are a few things that you should think about when practicing inclusive marketing. I think the first thing is saying, “Am I representing a group in a way that can be harmful to them?” That is number one. Make sure that you’re not offending a certain group. The second thing is to think about, “Who am I trying to reach, and are they represented in this piece of work?” And then I would also say to ask yourself, “Who’s missing? Who is not in the room? Who are we trying to speak to that we haven’t spoken to before and that we’re not representing in our work?” Understanding your audience is absolutely critical to informing your inclusive marketing strategy. You are not going to be able to accurately represent a group of people unless you truly understand more than just what they look like. You need to understand their environment, you need to understand their actions, their behavior, what influences them. I would start with the research, and then from there, build your idea, build your solution, build your plan, because only then will it be authentic and speak to your users. And so it’s really important to that work up front to understand not just one type of person from this group but many different kinds of experiences from that one group when you’re looking into inclusive marketing.

Xiomara - Inclusive marketing

Video. Duration: 4 minutes

My name is Xiomara. I am a Product Marketing Manager. A Product Marketing Manager works on telling the story about why a product or a feature or some tool that we’re building can be helpful for them. So you might think of that as seeing a commercial or seeing an ad online and why that thing is special for you. An inclusive marketing consultant is someone who reviews creatives or campaigns at the company to make sure they’re being more inclusive. So an example of that is thinking about what users we’re showing and how we’re showing them and if the creative is accessible so we’re creating a website or we have an event and making sure that anyone is able to attend that event, or able to see or hear the website. Being an inclusive marketing consultant fits into my role because I get to use that lens every day when I’m reviewing my creative or reviewing my campaigns. But on top of that, I also get to work with other teams and provide the knowledge that I have about inclusive marketing, so they too can apply those principles. My personal experiences, growing up low income, being a first-generation college student, being part of a family that had small businesses, an immigrant family— all those things come into lens when I think about what stories I want to tell, what users I want to show in our marketing campaigns. And I think in terms of work experiences— definitely being able to be an inclusive marketing lead at the company has also given me the ability to learn about other perspectives that I’m not aware of personally, and then making sure those stories are also being told in the marketing that we put out in the world. We have the influence and the power to tell stories that a lot of people— millions of people—can see. The benefit of having inclusive marketing is that you are building and telling authentic stories in the world. That is not only good for your brand, but it’s good for the people who are seeing it. We’re telling stories that matter to people. We’re making them feel seen and represented in our work. One way you might see inclusive marketing principles being applied is who you show. Are you showing a range of ages, people with disabilities, people from different racial or ethnic backgrounds? Are you thinking about geography? Are you showing people in communities that are in a city versus a rural area? Another way you might see this is if you have a digital ad running and it’s a video, do you have captions? Because not every user has the ability to hear, so they need to read what you’re saying in your campaign. Inclusion can be right from the beginning to the end of your creative. Marketers can think about inclusion early and often, first by starting with their project brief, outlining who their audience is, what the story is that they want to tell, whose perspective might be missing. The next step might be partnering with an agency, an organization, or doing research with a set of users to then make sure that that story is told authentically. Afterwards, when they’re actually working on the creative, is getting feedback early, getting feedback often, again, bringing back a lot of the users’ perspectives may be missing on your team and making sure that that’s reflected in the feedback process. Getting different perspectives from a big group of people may seem daunting in the beginning, but it does become an exercise that’s actually just really important, no matter what you’re working on, whether your intention is being inclusive or not, it’s part of the process. As a marketer, you are always managing a lot of perspectives or opinions from maybe your stakeholders or from your team. Just think of it that same way. Now you actually have another set of users who are also providing a perspective, and you just have to get the themes out of it and back to analyzing data. It’s the same thing. What is the theme that I’m hearing here, and how do I make sure it’s being reflected? In the end, it’s really worth going through all of this because you’ll have really beautiful, successful stories that you’re telling and putting out in the world. There’s always room for learning. If you’re interested in learning about inclusive marketing, a great resource is Google’s All In Inclusive Marketing Guidelines. If you’re learning about a particular audience for the first time, if you want to get research or other insights, or want to learn how to avoid stereotypes or even see really great marketing campaign examples, this is a good resource for you to go to if you’re starting for the first time. Challenge yourself to get other perspectives to continue building your knowledge. We all have biases, and the people we surround ourselves with also help us build certain biases. By putting ourselves out there, by looking at things that were not familiar with, we can challenge ourselves to have other perspectives to start removing the biases we have. That way we build inclusive marketing that’s put out into the world, so we’re always telling authentic stories.

Test your knowledge: How organizations benefit from digital marketing and e-commerce

Practice Quiz. 5 questions | Grade: 100%

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2. Introduction to the marketing funnel

The customer journey and journey maps

Video. Duration: 4 minutes

Welcome back. So far, you’ve learned about some of the things digital marketing and e-commerce can do for e-commerce businesses. You know the advantages of digital marketing and the challenges of reaching customers and a crowded online field. You also know that the first and most important step to any marketing strategy is learning about your customers. Let’s get deeper into that last point. It’s easy to think of a business’ marketing efforts as being all about them— about ways to bring in customers, boost profits, or grow their online presence. But a really effective marketing strategy starts with learning about customers needs and pain points. Pain points are the specific problems customers and potential customers want to solve. Instead of asking, “How do we sell more products?”, the most successful businesses want to know, “How do we help customers address their pain points or achieve their goals?” One is about the company’s goals, the other is about the customer journey. What is a customer journey? Well, think about the last time you recommended something to a friend. It could be a product, like an app or a tool, or a service, like a restaurant or a contractor. Now think about your journey with that product or service. How did you first find it? If you had questions, how did you get answers? What convinced you to try it? How did it help you solve a problem or achieve a goal? Finally, what made you decide to recommend it to someone else? The path you take from learning about that product to getting your questions answered to making a purchase is your customer journey. From your perspective, the goal of that journey wasn’t necessarily to purchase a specific product. It’s just the thing that you ended up purchasing happened to fulfill your needs. Here’s an example: Let’s pretend you’re in the market for a new weather app. Maybe the one you have isn’t reliable and you keep getting caught in the rain without an umbrella, so you search online for best weather apps and find some options. One stands out because the name is familiar. You think a friend might have told you about it recently or maybe it was online ad. You narrow your options to a few candidates and start reading reviews. Two have all the features you want, but you pick the one with the familiar name. It tops several best of lists, and it has a trial subscription. You download the app, but it’s not working right. You go back to the reviews and find out this is a known issue. You contact the support through live chat. They help you fix the problem quickly, which makes you feel good about the company. You start the trial and after a month, you’ve always had your umbrella when it rained. You get an email reminder that your trial is about to expire, and you’re so happy with the app that you purchase a subscription. Now you’re a loyal customer. Each interaction with the brand during this purchase journey is called a touchpoint.

From the search to the customer reviews, online ad, trial subscription, live chat, and follow-up email, every touchpoint had the potential to help or hurt your impression of the brand and its product. A bad experience at any point can mean an abandoned journey, so it’s in a company’s best interests to make sure you get information and answers you need along the way. With enough customer research, marketers can use these touch points to create a customer journey map. A customer journey map is a visualization of the touch points a typical customer encounters along their purchase journey. You can even have multiple journey maps based on the patterns and behaviors of different types of customers. Of course, it’s impossible to know exactly what route each person will take. But journey maps aren’t about predicting the future. They help you understand how and why customers are interacting with your business. When you know how customers are finding you, how they’re learning about you, and what problems they want to solve, you can work to make their experiences better. Better customer experiences ultimately mean greater success for your business. There you have it. By understanding customer journeys, you can create better, more user-friendly experiences. Coming up, you’ll learn how journey maps work along with another tool, the marketing funnel, to target their marketing efforts and encourage potential customers to make purchases.

What is a touchpoint?

Reading. Duration: 10 minutes

You learned that before a purchase happens, each interaction with a brand during a customer journey is called a touchpoint.

Touchpoints are important to monitor because they reveal the kinds of decisions customers are making during their customer journey to purchase your product or service. Touchpoints occur when a customer engages with your website or mobile app. But they also include customer interactions on all media channels before a customer discovers your website.

This reading explains how to classify touchpoints for media channels, and how to use these touchpoints to learn more about your customers.

Touchpoints relate to a specific context or need

When you identify touchpoints, you may be tempted to list social media or display ads. These channels may be the mediums in which touchpoints occur, but actual touchpoints provide much more information. When you identify a touchpoint, think about how the interaction might satisfy a customer need.

For example, instead of classifying social media as a touchpoint, classify a customer’s response to a flash sale announcement on Twitter as a touchpoint. When they click the link, they are interested in knowing what they can purchase at a discounted price.

From the example, notice how much contextual information is lost if you simply lump every social media interaction under a single touchpoint called social media.

Touchpoints have context and reflect customer needs. In the example, the context was curiosity, and the need was saving money.

Touchpoints are customer-centric

Touchpoints should also be customer-centric. Going back to the previous example, imagine if you viewed touchpoints from the perspective of the business instead of from the customer experience. If increasing sales is a business goal, touchpoints can easily become part of a rolling calculation, like a ratio of touchpoints to purchases.

While a ratio of touchpoints to purchases is still informative, notice how a customer-centric versus a business-centric analysis can provide more insights about buyer motivations.

Key takeaways

Use touchpoints to your advantage. To get the most from touchpoints, carefully define them for all media channels. Touchpoints that are customer-centric and relate back to their needs will yield the most useful data about customer motivations, preferences, and behaviors.

The marketing funnel

Video. Duration: 5 minutes

Now that you know about customer journey maps, it’s time to introduce a related concept: the marketing funnel. The marketing funnel, also called the sales funnel or conversion funnel, is an idea that’s older than the Internet. In fact, marketers have used it for over a 100 years. If it’s been around that long, it must be a pretty powerful tool. What is a marketing funnel, and how does it work? A marketing funnel is a visual representation of the process through which people go from first learning about a brand to becoming loyal customers. The funnel is wide at the top and narrows toward the bottom because a lot of potential customers will enter the top of the funnel, but only some of them will reach the bottom to become loyal customers. Of course, people will drop off at every stage in-between, so you want to make sure you’re doing everything you can to keep them moving through the funnel. There are a lot of different versions of the marketing funnel, and you’ll learn about a few of them later. Right now, I’m going to introduce you to a simple version of the funnel that has four stages: awareness, consideration, conversion, and loyalty. At the top of the funnel is the awareness stage. This is when a potential customer encounters a brand for the first time, maybe from an ad or a recommendation. At this stage, the customer probably doesn’t know enough about that company to form an opinion. They’re just aware it exists. Awareness is the widest tier because even though a lot of people might know about a company, only some of them will think about doing business with them. That’s why it’s important to raise as much awareness as possible among target audiences. A target audience is the group of people most likely to purchase a company’s products. They’re the ones whose attention your digital marketing efforts should capture. Things start to narrow at the next stage: consideration. This is when some potential customers from the awareness stage start to think about doing business with a company. At this point, they could be actively browsing the website or comparing different brands, so making a good impression is key. Those who move beyond consideration go to the conversion stage. Conversion is when someone decides to make a purchase and become a customer. To increase the chances of conversion, businesses should demonstrate their value and provide a user-friendly experience. The last stage is loyalty. It takes a huge amount of effort to move potential customers from awareness to conversion. Once a customer completes a purchase, you want to give them reasons to return. Making current customers happy can increase trust and keep them coming back for years to come. If you’re thinking that this all feels pretty similar to a customer journey map, you’d be right. Marketing funnels and journey maps are related concepts, and they’re best when used together. Here’s how they complement one another. First, you know that a journey map traces the customer’s path to purchase along specific touchpoints. But a marketing funnel is part of a business’s plan for moving customers along their journey. A journey map adopts the customer’s perspective, but a funnel considers that same process from the position of the business. Second, the structure of a marketing funnel is simpler than a journey map. Customer journeys are complex because they demonstrate how customers might interact with the brand. Their paths to purchase are unique, and they can repeat or loop back on themselves. In contrast, the funnel is a linear model that breaks this journey into broad stages. It’s not about how specific customers reach consideration or conversion but what a company can do to move lots of customers from one stage to the next. Remember the weather app example? Let’s think about a few of the touchpoints our hypothetical customer encountered and how they might fit into a marketing funnel. The customer was reminded of the app by the online ad in search results, making these awareness activities. The trial membership could be a consideration offering since it helped the customer learn about the product. But it was the reminder email that finally got them to commit, so that’s a conversion tactic. Funnels like this one help businesses focus their goals and marketing efforts, making their path from awareness to loyalty as smooth as possible. They drive engagement and make it more appealing for customers to do business with a company. When used together, journey maps and marketing funnels help marketers understand and serve their customers better than either can alone. Let’s review: Along with customer journey maps, a marketing funnel is a powerful tool that allows businesses to focus and coordinate their marketing efforts. To get the most out of a funnel, they should try to optimize their work at each stage. From awareness to consideration, conversion, and loyalty, a carefully- planned funnel can help businesses succeed online. Coming up, we’ll explore a few different versions of the marketing funnel and discuss how they evolve through e-commerce. Meet you there.

The traditional marketing funnel to the digital marketing funnel

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

A marketing funnel is a powerful way for businesses to focus and coordinate their marketing efforts. To get the most out of a marketing funnel, businesses must optimize their work at each stage of the funnel to reach desired outcomes.

The marketing funnel video in this course introduced you to a simple and generalized funnel design with four stages:

• Awareness

• Consideration

• Conversion

• Loyalty

You also learned that there are multiple versions of marketing funnels. Marketing funnels have been revised over time to reflect changes in business, technology, and even customer behavior. This reading provides a brief history of the funnel’s evolution.

Evolution of the marketing funnel

How is tofu related to a marketing funnel? Actually, ToFU (not the bean curd product) is an acronym for Top of Funnel. There’s also MoFU and BoFU which stand for Middle of Funnel and Bottom of Funnel, respectively. When using any funnel, the aim is to get the most desirable outcomes for ToFU, MoFU, and BoFU. As you read about different funnel designs, you can also think about how the desired ToFU, MoFU, and BoFU outcomes for each are similar or different.

Traditional sales funnel

Funnels probably took shape first as sales funnels. A simple sales funnel has awareness, interest, decision, and action stages as depicted in the following graphic.

Desirable outcomes for a sales funnel, like the one shown in the graphic, might be:

• Awareness (ToFU): The customer has a general awareness of your brand, product, or service.

• Interest (MoFU): Your brand, product, or service comes up as a top choice when the customer researches, comparison shops, or thinks about options.

• Decision (MoFU): The customer chooses your brand, product, or service over your competitor’s.

• Action (BoFU): The customer purchases your brand, product, or service.

Combined marketing and sales funnel

Most likely, combined funnels for marketing and sales grew out of sales funnels. One example is shown below.

Desirable outcomes for a combined sales and marketing funnel, like the one shown in the graphic, might be:

• Awareness (ToFU): The customer has a general awareness of your brand, product, or service.

• Interest (MoFU): Your brand, product, or service comes up as a top choice when the customer researches, comparison shops, or thinks about options.

• Desire (MoFU): The customer has motivation or an incentive to purchase your brand, product, or service.

• Action (BoFU): The customer purchases your brand, product, or service for the first time.

• Conversion (BoFU): The customer makes regular purchases and a customer relationship is established.

Digital marketing funnel

As business and technology evolved, more specialized funnels were then developed, as in the case of a funnel entirely dedicated to digital marketing. An example of a specialized digital marketing funnel is shown below. Note that the Remarketing stage of the funnel is only for customers who engaged with your brand, product, or service at least once before and didn’t previously convert. New customers can proceed directly from the Consideration stage to the Conversion stage.

Desirable outcomes for a digital marketing funnel, like the one shown in the graphic, might be:

• Awareness and engagement (ToFU): The customer has a general awareness of your brand, product, or service, and engages in online activity to learn more.

• Consideration (MoFU): Your brand, product, or service comes up as a top choice after the customer has engaged.

• Remarketing (MoFU): The customer who didn’t convert is re-engaged to consider your brand, product, or service again.

• Conversion (BoFU): The customer purchases your brand, product, or service for the first time.

• Retention (BoFU): The customer makes regular purchases and a customer relationship is established.

Other marketing funnel variations

Today, specific funnels exist for many individual areas of marketing. Examples include an e-commerce marketing funnel, a social media marketing funnel, and even a content marketing funnel.

E-commerce marketing funnel

An e-commerce marketing funnel can include the following stages that focus on attracting and retaining customers:

• Awareness: Build awareness of your e-commerce business.

• Consideration: Build the brand.

• Differentiation: Stand out in the business category.

• Purchase: Reach shoppers most likely to purchase.

• Brand readiness: Increase the potential for shoppers to make return purchases.

Social media marketing funnel

A social media marketing funnel can include these stages that turn a customer with brand awareness into a customer who is an advocate:

• Awareness: Attract potential customers unaware of your brand, product, or service.

• Consideration: Stand out among your competitors so potential customers have a good impression of your brand, product, or service.

• Action: Convince potential customers to act and make a purchase.

• Engagement: Keep customers engaged after they make a purchase so your brand, product, or service remains top-of-mind and in the spotlight.

• Advocacy: Build trust with customers so they recommend your brand, product, or service to others.

Content marketing funnel

A content marketing funnel can include these stages to help marketers organize and focus their content:

• Awareness: Build web pages, blogs, social media posts, infographics, and podcasts.

• Evaluation: Focus on surveys, email, webinars, and educational events.

• Conversion: Provide customer success stories, webinars, specifications, and demos.

Key takeaways

The key takeaways for funnels are:

• There isn’t a single funnel that fits all needs.

• Funnels are created for general sales and marketing needs.

• Funnels are also created for specialized areas of marketing.

• Effective marketing efforts incorporate funnels to optimize desired outcomes.

Finally, as a reminder, although this reading introduced a variety of funnels, the marketing funnel that you will refer to often in this program is the one shown below.

Test your knowledge: The marketing (and sales) funnel

Practice Quiz. 5 questions | Grade: 100%

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3. Attract and angage with potential customers

The top of the funnel: Awareness and consideration

Video. Duration: 4 minutes

Hello again. Earlier in the course, we went over the concepts of the customer journey and the marketing funnel. Now, let’s explore the funnel in a little more detail starting at the top with the awareness and consideration stages. We’ll consider some of the things teams can do to get attention from potential customers and drive engagement effectively. First awareness, you already know that awareness is when a potential customer encounters your brand for the first time. This may seem like a simple idea, but how do you make sure your brand gets in front of the right audience? The first step is research. Finding out who your customers are and where they are online can help you focus your marketing efforts in the right places. Getting to know your particular audience allows you to pick the channels that have the best chance of reaching them. There are a lot of different tactics a business can use to reach customers. One way is to improve their rankings and search engine results. They can do this by optimizing website content around specific search terms or paying to place digital ads on websites, social media, email or video platforms. Forming promotional partnerships with other brands or influencers can also help raise awareness. You’ll learn more about each of these tactics later in the program. For now, just remember that a strong top of funnel marketing strategy takes advantage of multiple channels and creates a consistent experience across all of them. It’s also important to keep in mind that awareness isn’t a onetime event. Once someone knows about your business, it can take days, weeks or even longer for them to get to the consideration stage. So, once you’ve reached a potential customer, the goal is to get them to remember you. Say your company sells refrigerators. That’s a big purchase and not one that you make every day. So, even if a potential customer knows about your business, they might wait until their old fridge breaks to start thinking about a new one. Maintaining a consistent online presence can remind them that you exist when the time is right. That way, they’ll think of your business when they do need your services. Now, let’s move on to consideration. You know that consideration is the getting to know you stage. It’s when people start exploring your business and finding out what makes you different from the competition. During this stage, the goal is to increase the chances that a potential customer will eventually make a purchase. They might be reading online reviews or actively browsing your website by now, so you need to give them reasons to stick around or to come back if they’ve already left. At this stage, some potential customers will become leads. A lead is a potential customer who has interacted with a brand and shared personal information, like an email address. Let’s take that refrigerator example again. Imagine that customer goes to your website and checks out a few different models, but they don’t make a decision right away. Maybe they need more time to think about it or want to compare different brands, or they could have just gotten distracted. You can engage that person again by serving them ads based on the products and pages they visited. That makes it more likely they’ll return to make a purchase. Once a potential customer is on your site, you should aim to educate them about your offerings and explain how specific products or services address their pain points. That can mean offering engaging, useful content like blog posts, newsletters or webinars free samples, tools or trial memberships can let potential customers test out your services before committing. The goal is to start building trust in the quality of your products and give customers what they need to make an informed choice. To recap, the top of the funnel boosts awareness and customer engagement. At the awareness stage, marketers use a variety of tools and channels to connect with potential customers and stay fresh in their minds. During the consideration stage, they should make it clear what they’re offering and how they can meet customers needs. When executed carefully, awareness and consideration tactics can lead to more people eventually becoming customers. Coming up, you’ll learn more about marketing funnels and discover some ways to measure awareness and consideration success.

Case study: How MERSEA structures its marketing funnel

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

Previously, you learned about the different stages of the marketing funnel. In this case study, you’ll learn the marketing strategies that the Lenexa, Kansas based e-commerce company, MERSEA , uses to attract potential customers, turn them into paying customers, and eventually repeat customers. This process represents MERSEA’s approach to the marketing funnel.

There is no standard approach to building a marketing funnel. The various marketing funnel models often share similar strategies and structures, but vary based on the needs of the business.

Company background

In 2013, Lina Dickinson and Melanie Bolin founded MERSEA, a lifestyle brand located in Lenexa, Kansas, offering clothing, accessories, and home fragrances. MERSEA’s products are rooted in the joy of travel and the tranquility of seaside escapes. Initially, Lina and Melanie focused on selling through retail partners, placing MERSEA in over 1,200 stores.

The challenge

After having a solid presence in retail stores, MERSEA’s founders wanted to increase their e-commerce sales. The challenge MERSEA faced is like many other e-commerce businesses: acquiring new customers online and turning them into repeat customers. This is the core of its marketing funnel.

Imagine the perspective of a business owner. You have a functional online store. But, how can you get potential customers to visit the online store? And, after attracting customers, how can you encourage those customers to revisit the store and become repeat customers?

The approach

To get the MERSEA brand and product offering in front of its ideal customers, Lina and Melanie used a mix of marketing strategies such as online paid advertising, email marketing, social media marketing, and text messaging.

It’s important to note that MERSEA is not implementing all these strategies with its own employees. They hired an outside marketing company to assist with Google Ads. Working with a marketing company outside of the business allows the founders and its employees to focus on what they’re best at, creating outstanding products.

For busy business owners, it may be beneficial to hire outside of the company to complete tasks, particularly for marketing strategies that require more technical skills. For example, Google Ads requires a knowledge of its platform and how to interpret its metrics.

Organized by marketing funnel stages, here are some marketing strategies MERSEA uses:

Awareness

For the awareness stage, MERSEA uses online ads including Google Ads and Facebook Ads.

There are several types of Google Ads MERSEA uses. For example, the company uses Search ads for brand name and product searches. It also uses Shopping ads for specific types of products, such as “kimono sweater.” For the Facebook Ads, MERSEA advertises to potential customers from lifestyle-based targeting.

Both of these ads help get the MERSEA brand and products in front of those searching and interested in their type of products.

Consideration

During the consideration marketing funnel stage, MERSEA continues to apply online advertising, and also uses social media marketing and email marketing.

For online advertising, a marketing strategy MERSEA uses is delivering ads to people who previously visited their website. This is called remarketing. After the customer visits the website, they then receive ads specifically for the products they viewed. This type of advertising is in the consideration stage because the remarketing ads build interest in the potential customer.

For social media marketing and email marketing, MERSEA tells stories about products and introduces potential customers to the brand.

Conversion

MERSEA is continually working to improve the conversion stage of its marketing funnel. One strategy it uses is following up with customers who have abandoned their carts. An abandoned cart is when a customer adds an item to their cart in an online store but does not make a purchase. If the customer enters their email during the checkout process, but doesn’t make a purchase, MERSEA automatically sends follow up emails reminding the customer about the product in their cart. This follow-up leads to an increase in the conversion rate.

Loyalty

During the loyalty stage, MERSEA turns its paying customers into repeat customers.

After making a purchase, the customer receives emails about additional and newly released products they may be interested in. These emails are typically sent twice a week: one during the week and another during the weekend.

In addition, one unique strategy MERSEA uses to build loyalty is through text messaging. It has success with sending text messages for order delivery confirmation and updates. When done well, this texting strategy creates a more personal relationship with customers.

The results

While MERSEA’s success starts with its quality and fashionable products, its well-functioning marketing funnel approach contributes to its success. Within two years of focusing on e-commerce and building an online marketing funnel, MERSEA increased its online sales from 10% to 45%.

Additionally, because of the satisfied customers and the well-developed loyalty stage of its marketing funnel, around 50% of MERSEA’s customers are returning customers.

Conclusion

There is no one correct way to structure a marketing funnel. A key to a successful funnel is trying and testing new ideas. MERSEA has been successful with its online marketing efforts because it didn’t simply set up an e-commerce store. MERSEA built a marketing funnel to complement it.

A well-made product is important, but a well-rounded marketing approach helps sell the product. A mix of the right marketing strategies drives customers through the funnel. The customers go from unaware of the brand to interested to first-time customers to repeat customers.

Measuring success at the top of the funnel

Video. Duration: 4 minutes

So far, you’ve learned about some ways to raise awareness and engage with potential customers. You know that selecting the right channels to reach a target audience is one of the most important things businesses can do to market products online. But we haven’t gotten to the most important part: how do you know if the tactics you’ve chosen are working? Are there ways to improve on what you’re already doing or do you need to start again with a whole new plan? To answer all of these questions is measurement. The fact is, no matter how much research you do or how carefully you plan a marketing strategy, none of it matters unless you can measure your success. Measuring outcomes at each stage of the funnel allows you to find out what you’re doing right, what you’re doing wrong, and where you can improve. In this video, we’ll discuss some of the metrics companies use to measure success at the top of the funnel. A metric is a quantifiable measurement used to track and assess progress toward an objective. Marketing metrics can gauge different aspects of campaign performance and effectiveness, which can help businesses make improvements for the future. For example, to measure awareness of their ads, marketers use tools to track things like impressions, reach, and frequency. Impressions are the total number of times an ad appears on people’s screens. That number includes users who encountered the ad more than once. If an ad is encountered 200 times by 100 people, the number of impressions is 200, since it’s been shown 200 times. In contrast, reach is the total number of unique individuals who encounter an ad across their different devices. No matter how many times a person gets that ad, they’re only counted once. The reach of an ad that’s encountered 200 times by 100 people would be 100. Frequency refers to how many times each individual encounters the ad in a given timeframe. So if each of those 100 people gets the ad twice in a week, their frequency would be two. These are just a few of the metrics you can use to gauge awareness. You’ll learn more about tracking and analyzing awareness measurements later on in the program. The goal of the awareness stage is usually to get ads in front of the right people at the right times. By analyzing impressions, reach, and frequency, marketers can find out how big of an impact their ads are having. If the numbers are below the company’s goal for awareness, they may decide to re-evaluate their ad strategy. But businesses can also have more specific awareness goals like getting a certain amount of visitors to a page on a website. Exactly what you choose to measure depends on what you’re trying to achieve. That’s why it’s important to set goals for each stage of the funnel. At the consideration stage, there are different ways to measure success, but they all come down to one idea: Engagement. How much, how often, and for how long are potential customers engaging with your content. Analytics tools can track things like how often customers search for your business online, the number of first-time visitors to a site, the number of pages per visitor, and how long visitors spend on a page. Signing up for emails or newsletters is another good measurement of engagement, and getting customer contact information will make it easier to remind them you exist, and demonstrate your value later on. It may seem like more engagement is better, but that isn’t always the case. If the goal is for customers to find what they need quickly but customers spend a long time completing tasks, it may mean you need to re-evaluate the layout of your website. Measuring website interactions can give you a lot of insights. So knowing which numbers are important and what they mean for your goals is crucial. Even with clear goals and accurate information, measuring awareness and engagement is often more challenging than measuring bottom-of-the-funnel concerns, like sales. Later in the program, you’ll learn how to interpret this kind of information and how businesses use it to improve their tactics for moving leads from consideration to conversion. Let’s review. Measuring awareness and engagement is the most important things brands can do to ensure success at the top of the funnel. Marketing teams use analytics tools to measure awareness through numbers of impressions, reach, and frequency. Consideration can be measured through website engagement, including page visits, detailed views, and email sign-ups. Knowing what to measure in order to reach your goals is an important part of marketing success. Coming up, you’ll learn more about the funnel and what to do at the conversion and loyalty stages.

Test your knowledge: The marketing funnel

Practice Quiz. 6 questions | 100%

Reflect on memorable campaigns

Discussion Prompt. Duration: 10 minutes

Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign with Colin Kaepernick

I found Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign with Colin Kaepernick to be very memorable. I saw this campaign while researching online. Reading Blog posts and learning about it helped me understand why it was successful after taking some of the last lessons of this course.

Several factors contributed to the success of the campaign. Colin Kaepernick knelt during the national anthem to protest racial injustice. Nike took a clear stance on the issue. This aligned them with a cause and sparked conversations and media coverage.

Besides, Kaepernick, a popular figure, made the campaign more authentic and credible. His story and his willingness to stand up (or kneel, in this case) for what he believed in resonated with many.

The campaign also used social media, videos, and influencers to spread its message. Nike asked customers to share their stories and experiences with the hashtag #Just Do It. This turned customers into brand advocates.

In short, the Nike campaign with Colin Kaepernick succeeded by tackling an important problem. It also used an influential spokesperson and connected with consumers in different ways. This created a feeling of community and purpose. This is a great example of how digital marketing can be effective. It works by connecting with its audience on important social issues

Research resource:

• Read the article: Colin Kaepernick becomes the face of Nike’s Just Do It campaign

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4. Drive sales and build brand loyalty

The bottom of the funnel: Conversion and loyalty

Video. Duration: 3 minutes

Welcome back! In the last lesson, we covered the awareness and consideration stages of the marketing funnel. We discussed some of the things businesses should do and measure to raise awareness and boost customer engagement. Now let’s get into the conversion and loyalty stages of the funnel. We’ll consider what teams can do to drive sales and keep customers coming back again and again. You know that the conversion stage, also known as the decision or purchase stage, is when someone makes a purchase and becomes a customer. Not everyone who considers a purchase will convert. And potential customers make purchases when they think that one company’s solution fits their needs better than others. So, it’s essential that they do everything they can do to demonstrate and deliver value at this stage. You want customers to trust you and feel confident in their decision to buy your product. The goal of the conversion stage is simple: It’s to turn potential customers into buyers. But how different companies go about making that happen depends on their products and audience. It’s also important to keep in mind that different customers can get from consideration to conversion through different touchpoints. But it is possible to identify trends in customer behavior so you can personalize content and improve target areas. You’ll find more about identifying these trends later in the program. To set themselves apart at the conversion stage, businesses should provide clear and useful content and experiences. That includes everything from accurate product descriptions to a smooth checkout process and a clear returns policy. Well-placed, product-focused ads, and a clearly-organized website can be persuasive, too. Whatever the methods, making it easy for leads to find answers and take action makes conversion more likely. Now, some marketing funnels end after the customer makes a purchase. But building and maintaining customer loyalty can be just as important as converting them in the first place. Successful businesses balance customer acquisition with retention because once you’ve made the effort to build a relationship with a customer, you want to keep that relationship going. Customer loyalty depends foremost on the quality and value of your product. But even if a customer loves their purchase, that’s no guarantee they’ll come back for more.

Building loyalty is about creating a great customer experience during and after purchase. Many companies use things like follow-up emails, rewards programs, or social media engagement to nurture relationships with customers on an ongoing basis. Those interactions should always be purposeful and thoughtful. For example, email coupons can encourage repeat purchases, but sending a coupon for something a customer just bought—they probably won’t be too happy about that. When companies focus on creating a positive post-purchase experience, they can drive future sales. And when customers who aren’t just brand loyal but devoted fans. And that’s it! Let’s review: At the bottom of the funnel, businesses focus on converting potential customers and encouraging those customers to return in the future. During the conversion stage, they demonstrate value through quality content and experiences. After a purchase, they build loyalty by continuing to engage customers and build relationships. By optimizing these results at each stage, businesses can thrive in a crowded online marketplace. Coming up, you’ll review what you learned about marketing funnels so far and find out some things businesses can do to measure success at the bottom of the funnel. Meet you there!

Explore: The marketing funnel

Ungraded Plugin. Duration: 10 minutes

Review marketing activities throughout the funnel

Select the label in each infographic to learn more about the stages of a marketing funnel.

1. Awareness

The awareness stage is a consumer’s initial interaction with your brand (for example encountering an ad or social media post). Make these touchpoints memorable; consumers can wait weeks or more before shifting to the consideration stage.

2. Consideration

Once consumers shift to the consideration phase, the funnel narrows as your brand demonstrates its unique value. As they navigate your site, make sure they find useful, informative content like blog posts or sample tools.

3. Conversion

Not every visitor makes it past consideration, but a smooth customer experience helps maximize conversions. Accurate product descriptions, images, and well-placed ads can encourage potential customers to make purchases.

4. Loyalty

Build brand loyalty by giving customers a reason to return. Creating a positive purchase experience and fostering customer relationships through follow-up emails and rewards programs can keep customers coming back

Measuring success at the bottom of the funnel

Video. Duration: 3 minutes

By now, you’ve learned a lot about the marketing funnel and how businesses use it to raise awareness, increase consideration, encourage conversion and build loyalty. You know some of the things they measure at the top of the funnel and understand why tracking this information is key to success. In this video, we’ll explore some ways to measure success at the bottom of the funnel in the conversion and loyalty stages. Let’s go! The most basic thing you can measure at the conversion stage is the number of conversions. A conversion happens when a potential customer takes the desired action, in this case, when they make a purchase. Seems simple, right? The number of conversions is crucial information, but it’s not the only thing you can measure at this stage. Tracking time to conversion, cost per conversion, the average number of touchpoints before conversion, or the average order size can provide valuable insights into how customers interact with your brand. These insights also allow you to address drop off issues like abandoned carts. Cart abandonment is when a customer adds an item to their cart but doesn’t complete the purchase. Believe it or not, it’s estimated that nearly 70% of online carts are abandoned. So finding out where customers drop off in the checkout process can help you improve procedures and increase your conversions. Okay, it’s time for the last stage of the funnel, loyalty, how a business chooses to measure loyalty depends on their target audience and particular goals. Some common things to measure include the rate of repeat purchases, the length of time between purchases, the number of orders per customer and the rate of account activation after sign-up. The level of engagement with rewards programs is also another indicator of customer loyalty over time. Loyalty metrics allow businesses to assess and refine strategies to keep customers, boost sales, and save money. But they also reveal where they can manage customer relationships more effectively. In the end, customer loyalty is the truest test of how well the entire funnel served customers and meets their needs. We’ll get further into how conversion and loyalty measurements are used later in the program. For now, just remember beyond completed purchases, conversion measurements also tracked behaviors like time to conversion and order size. These measurements provide valuable information that can enable teams to curb drop offs and increase sales. Loyalty measurements track things like account activation, time between purchases, and orders per customer. By measuring loyalty, businesses can improve retention rates and build revenue over time. And there you go, measuring results throughout the funnel is the best tool brands can use to optimize their effort at each stage. And a well-planned funnel means they can nurture leads effectively throughout their purchase journeys. Coming up, you’ll explore some ideas of where the E-commerce industry might be headed in the future.

Test your knowledge: Drive sales and build brand loyalty

Practice Quiz. 5 questions | Grade: 100%

The future of e-commerce

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

Since the web first ushered in a new era of e-commerce, marketplaces, payment services, and massive scaling of shipping and distribution networks have made e-commerce successful. This reading considers how e-commerce might change over the next decade.

Future trends for e-commerce

No one can say for sure which innovations today will be used tomorrow. However, a few e-commerce trends stand out:

• Specialization of smaller retailers

• Immersive customer experiences

• Distribution and delivery innovations

Specialization of smaller retailers

Large online marketplaces and retailers will still probably account for most online purchases. Smaller retailers may increasingly become more specialized by offering highly customizable products, niche product categories not offered by the larger retailers, and more personalized service.

Immersive customer experiences

Today, many customers still like to go to a physical store because they want to handle or try on an item before they buy it. Virtual and augmented reality can provide immersive experiences online so customers feel like they’ve handled an object or tried on a garment without actually making a trip to the store.

Virtual reality (VR) is fully immersive.

By putting on a VR headset, users are able to view a simulated physical world with audio-visual feedback. Imagine putting on your headset and going to the virtual dressing room to try on clothing items before buying them. That is an example of a VR experience.

Augmented reality (AR)

AR is semi-immersive. Users may not need to enter a simulated physical world. AR adds audio-visual feedback to your existing world. What if you could automatically view sunglasses in your shopping cart overlaid on a virtual image of yourself on your phone? What if it saved items from any e-commerce store so you could “try them on” again? This would be an AR solution to shopping at different stores in person.

Chatbots

Chatbots are computer programs designed to simulate conversation with human users. They can ask you if everything is fine and if you need help. This would be an online version of a sales associate asking you the same questions in a physical store. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning by chatbots using data from actual conversations may improve the overall experience for shoppers.

Distribution and delivery innovations

You might have heard or read about the possibility of drones or self-driving vehicles making the last-mile trip between a warehouse and a residential home or office. These methods of distribution and delivery may be commonplace in the next ten years.

Key takeaway

No matter which technologies end up being adopted over the next ten years, e-commerce will continue to grow, and our daily lives and habits will change, too.

Reflect on positive e-commerce experiences

Discussion Prompt. Duration: 10 minutes

I recently had a good experience with a popular online store. The website’s interface was seamless and easy to use, making this experience memorable. It was easy to navigate, find products, and make a buy. The whole process was quick and easy, from looking at their big list of products to paying securely.

I liked this brand because they are dependable and have great customer service. I bought things from them before and always got good stuff on time. The brand’s good track record made me trust it more, so I’ll likely buy from them again. Their support team is fast and their return policy is clear, so they are reliable.

I think that in online shopping, customers stay because of good website experience, reliable delivery, and helpful service. This brand’s commitment to these principles has certainly earned my trust and loyalty.

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5. Review: The customer journey and marketing funnel

Wrap-up

Video. Duration: 1 minute

You did it. Congrats on finishing this section of the course. You’re that much closer to starting or advancing your digital marketing or e-commerce career. Before we move on, let’s reflect on what you’ve already learned. In this part of the course, you learned that digital marketing is more than just creating ads to drive sales. An effective digital marketing strategy can affect every interaction a brand has with its customers. You explored the idea of the customer journey and how businesses use journey maps to understand their customers’ needs and motivations. You also found out how customer journey maps can work together with marketing funnels to focus marketing efforts where they’ll be most effective. Then you learned more about the top of the funnel and the tactics businesses used to reach and engage with potential customers in the awareness and consideration stages. You explored the bottom of the funnel and some ways to turn leads into loyal customers. Finally, you discovered the importance of measuring success throughout the funnel, and how the insights businesses gain can help them improve the customer journey. By learning customer journey maps and marketing funnels, you’re beginning to understand how to use digital channels effectively to reach customers. In the next section of the course, we’ll find out what goes into building a digital marketing strategy and learn more about some of the tools and tactics you can use to carry one out. Meet you there.

Glossary terms from module 2

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

Terms and definitions from Course 1, Module 2

Awareness stage: The first stage of the marketing funnel, when a potential customer first becomes aware of the product or service

Consideration stage: The second stage of the marketing funnel, when a potential customer’s interest builds for a product or service

Conversion: The completion of an activity that contributes to the success of a business

Conversion rate: The percentage of users or website visitors who completed a desired action, such as clicking on a link in an email or purchasing a product

Conversion stage: The third stage of the marketing funnel, when marketers capitalize on the interest people have already shown

Customer journey: The path customers take from learning about a product, to getting questions answered, to making a purchase

Customer journey map: A visualization of the touchpoints a typical customer encounters along their purchase journey

Frequency: How many times an individual encounters an ad in a given timeframe

Impressions: The total number of times an ad appears on people’s screens

Inclusive marketing: The practice of improving representation and belonging within the marketing and advertising materials that an organization creates

Lead: A potential customer who has interacted with a brand and shared personal information, like an email address

Local search: A search query that generates local-based search results

Local SEO: Optimizing content so that it displays in Google’s local search algorithms

Loyalty stage: The fourth stage of the marketing funnel, when customers become repeat customers and brand advocates

Marketing funnel: A visual representation of the process through which people go from learning about a brand to becoming loyal customers

Omnichannel: The integration or synchronization of content on multiple channels

Pain points: Problems customers want to solve

Reach: The total number of unique individuals who encounter an ad across their different devices

Target audience: The group of people most likely to purchase a company’s products; often defined as the combination of customer personas

Touchpoint: Any interaction a customer has with a brand during their purchase journey

Terms and their definitions from previous module(s)

A Agency: An outside partner that fulfills a company’s digital marketing and advertising needs

B Business-to-business (B2B): Refers to when businesses sell products or services to other businesses (when businesses purchase from each other)

Business-to-consumer (B2C): Refers to when businesses sell products or services to consumers (when consumers purchase from businesses)

C Consumer-to-business (C2B): Refers to when individuals (consumers) sell products or services to businesses (when businesses purchase from consumers)

Consumer-to-consumer (C2C): Refers to when individuals (consumers) sell products or services to other consumers (when consumers purchase from each other)

D Digital channel: Any communication method or platform a business can use to reach their target audience online

Digital marketing: The practice of reaching consumers online through digital channels with the aim of turning them into customers

E E-commerce: The buying and selling of goods or services using the internet

Engagement marketing: (refer to experiential marketing)

Experiential marketing: The process of encouraging consumers to not only purchase a brand or product, but to experience it

I Influencer marketing: The process of enlisting influential people to endorse or mention a brand or product to their followers on social media

In-house: Within a single company

S Social media marketing: The process of creating content for different social media platforms to drive engagement and promote a business or product

T Transferable skills: Skills from other areas that can help someone progress a career in marketing

Module 2 challenge

Due, Oct 22, 11:59 PM WEST | Quiz. 10 questions | Grade: —

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END! - Week 2 - Course 1