The Funnel in the Sand-Mill Model

The Funnel in the Sand-Mill Model is composed of the contents produced by the company and made available online.

It is immersed in the Sea of Micro-moments and allows to attract traffic, generate leads and accompany them on a path of profiling and mutual knowledge.

This path guides users at the time of purchase or allows to pass qualified users to the sales department, at the right moment.

The concept of Funnel is a pillar of inbound marketing and is already successfully applied by many companies.

In the Sand-Mill Model, the Funnel describes only the first part of the Customer Journey and is followed by users entering the Repurchase Wheel.

But what are the other characteristics of the Funnel in the Sand-Mill Model?

Let's analyze them together in this article.

 

The stages of the Funnel in the Sand-Mill Model

The path aimed at transforming a stranger into a customer is composed of three macro-stages that anticipate the moment of purchase.

Each of them corresponds to different levels of consumer awareness and different search intents.

Let's see them in detail:

• Top of the Funnel (TOFU): Unaware or aware of a problem

  In this stage, people are not aware, except for perceiving the symptoms of a problem that has not yet been framed but prevents achieving a specific goal and they do not know the brand.

• Middle of the Funnel (MOFU): Awareness of the solution

  In MOFU, users start framing the problem and therefore looking for possible solutions.

• Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU): Product awareness. In BOFU, users delve into the solution offered by the brand.

  They evaluate its characteristics and try to understand how it can help them achieve a specific goal: they are determined to purchase the best solution to ensure the complete resolution of the problem.

Different people move from one phase to another at different speeds and may even enter the Funnel at advanced stages such as MOFU and BOFU, without necessarily starting from the Top of The Funnel.

Only after going through the BOFU stage, users will be able to convince themselves that they have the best solution for their needs and then move on to the Purchase Moment.

The goals of the Funnel in the Sand-Mill Model

The Funnel allows us to guide unknown visitors to the moment of their first purchase, offering them a personalized experience in line with what they are actually looking for.

An effective Funnel should be able to:

• Attract potential customers at all stages of their decision-making process with content.
• Capture their contacts and basic information at any occasion (different stages may correspond to different scoring).
• Qualify them progressively, collecting segmenting information through reading digital body language and progressive profiling.
• Guide them through the funnel stages with lead nurturing, accompanying them at the moment of purchase.

The Funnel Elements

To allow the Funnel to fulfill these tasks, for each stage we will strategically establish:

• Content:

  They are the true engine of the inbound approach, the substance that attracts traffic and makes the Funnel valuable for users.
  
  

• Entry points:

  The Forms (and pop-ups containing a form) are the entry points that allow a contact to voluntarily enter our CRM. From the moment of entry, leads  will be able to receive our communications, according to the rules set in our Marketing Automation software.
  
  

• Lead magnet:

  They represent the incentive that drives unknown visitors to enter their data at an entry point. Different intents correspond to different stages and therefore an interest in different lead magnets.
  
  

• Automated communications:

  The automations, based on the mechanism of event-condition-action, allow us to send the right message, at the right time, to the right person.
  They are a powerful tool to stimulate progression from one phase to the next.

A Funnel in the Sea of Micro-Moments

The funnel of the Sand-Mill Model is entirely immersed within the Sea of Micro-Moments.

This is because it is not possible to consider the Funnel as an isolated element, with a single entrance and exit: on the contrary, users navigating in the Sea of Micro-Moments are engaged in continuous customer journeys and can enter (and exit) at any stage of the path.

The contents that make up the Funnel generate touchpoints in the Sea of Micro-Moments.

These manage to intercept Customer Journeys and channel them inside the Funnel, directing them towards a path specifically built by the company.

 

Contacts can enter (and exit) at any stage

Attractiveness is a fundamental characteristic of the entire Funnel: it must characterize the content developed for each of the 3 phases, not only TOFU content.

Being conveyed on platforms such as social media and corporate blogs, all content will be reachable through searches using appropriate keywords.

Therefore, users with a detailed view of the issue they are facing may search and find MOFU content useful. Users who, instead, show an intention to purchase from the beginning, may conduct searches that lead them to discover the company directly through BOFU content.

The exit from the Funnel is granted through the “unsubscribe” button which allows immediate unsubscription from the mailing list.

The fact that not all users who enter the Funnel make a purchase is physiological.

Moreover, this is precisely what gives rise to the funnel shape.

But it doesn't necessarily mean that it represents a disadvantage for the brand and that it is necessarily a negative circumstance.

Offering value to a user with material that proves to be actually useful in the micro-moment when they turn to the Network can still lead them to have a positive opinion towards the brand, which will translate into a positive sentiment.

This can lead to generating a positive word of mouth that helps create touchpoints in the Base of Advocacy.

Aligning the sales path and the buying path

            The fundamental function performed by the Funnel is to define a path to guide the customer, allowing for alignment between their buying path and the company's sales path, ensuring that they are sufficiently motivated and educated on the subject to fully understand the value of each subsequent communication.

Once attracted to the Funnel and understood the macro-phase of the buyer journey they are in (awareness, consideration, decision), it becomes necessary to place them in an aligned and coherent sales path.

Alignment of sales path and purchase path to the three stages of the funnel.

When the sales path and the purchase path are aligned, users will receive the right content at the right time, experiencing an engaging brand experience.

 

A Sticky Funnel

For the brand, it is essential to maintain internal alignment and limit user exit from the Funnel.

To do this, it is necessary to create relevant touchpoints, using tools such as:

• Automated emails:

  Scheduling a series of emails triggered by potential customer behaviors and customized based on their interests is essential to ensure relevance.

  This way, we have the opportunity to carry out a lasting, personalized, and automated relationship with each user.

• Retargeting activities:

  Show users who have browsed our site relevant content (thanks to Google's display network or Facebook ads), offering them the opportunity to access content designed for the next phase of the Funnel, continuing the educational path.

This way we have the opportunity to make our Funnel "sticky", capable of keeping users inside it, helping them discover valuable content. It remains essential to do this by building a positive and personalized experience based on user behaviors and interests.

This way we will have more paths alternatives within the Funnel, built tailored to data and segmentation.

 

Turning Contacts into Customers

The Funnel in the Sand-Mill Model is just a part of the whole, the first part of a journey with the goal of accompanying unknown users to their first purchase.

Let's now analyze what happens after the BOFU contents, when the user is in the actual purchasing phase in B2C (indicated by the Moment of Purchase) or in negotiation in B2B (indicated by the Commercial Pipeline).

The moment of purchase

The moment of purchase (MoP) is a crucial moment in e-commerce: this is where adding to the cart and the check-out process take place.

For various reasons, a user may get stuck at the Moment of Purchase and here too Marketing Automation comes to our aid.

We can contact leads who have abandoned their carts via email, push notifications, and SMS to create a touchpoint that reminds them they can still purchase those products.

Even retargeting at this stage is crucial.

Through Google display campaigns and Facebook and Instagram ads, we can reach those who had shown a clear intention to purchase on our site but did not complete it.

Email automation maintains its importance even after the Moment of Purchase, with the aim of making the relationship lasting and mutually profitable for the parties in the Repurchase Wheel.

 

 

The Sales Pipeline

If in B2C we have rather rapid steps to convert Bottom of the Funnel users into customers, often we cannot say the same in B2B.

Many B2B markets (but also some B2C worlds, such as insurance) have a sales process that involves meetings, quotes, clarifications, and a dialogue with the sales force that plays an active and fundamental role in closing the deal.

In cases like this, the MoP is accompanied (or replaced) by the Commercial Pipeline, a flow that follows specific logics composed of numerous points of contact between the prospect and the Sales Agents.

The Funnel will aim to generate leads to accompany in a path of profiling and mutual knowledge.

This way we will only bring into the Pipeline those contacts qualified to meet the sales force at the right time.

 

Conclusion

The Funnel in the Sand-Mill Model is the element that allows to generate new contacts and convert them into customers.

An effective Funnel is attractive and sticky: it manages to attract users in all its phases and keep them inside with interesting and automated communications.

If the Funnel allows us to generate new buyers, it is thanks to the Repurchase Wheel that we can maximize their value over time.

 

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