Online marketing funnel

An online marketing funnel represents the journey that potential customers take online before they decide to purchase a product or service. You can compare it with a customer journey. 

In an online marketing funnel, you convert prospects (in the form of cold leads and warm leads) into customers. This makes the online marketing funnel an important part of lead generation. 

A marketing funnel consists of different phases with marketing actions at each contact moment. There are various marketing actions you can apply in a marketing funnel, the best known of which is AIDA. AIDA stands for awareness, interest, desire and action. In online marketing, this can be translated into awareness, consideration and conversion. 

Sometimes two more phases are added, namely the retention and loyalty phase. In the retention phase, you increase customer satisfaction, which is important for upselling. In the loyalty phase, you try to get customers to come back, for instance by using social media, a newsletter via e-mail marketing or by creating valuable content.