What Is A Brand Funnel? (6 Stage Conversion Model)

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The Brand Funnel Template (Stage Examples)

As with any funnel model or customer journey mapping model, there are different stages to the brand funnel model.

The first step is to understand how your customers move along the journey and the stages they go through along the way. 

The next step, however, is where the real value of the brand funnel lies that is; analyzing where and why larger portions of customers are failing to transition from one stage to the next.

Here are the stages of the brand funnel.

Awareness

Consideration

Preference

Purchase

Loyalty

Advocacy

Let’s have a closer look at each of the brand funnel stages in a bit more detail.

Awareness

The awareness of your brand is the percentage of people in the market who recognise your brand name when prompted.  

In other words, how many people have heard of your brand and how does this number compare with your competitors or against the overall market size?

Your marketing strategy plays a big role in increasing your brand’s awareness and the more people or market percentage you have at this stage of your funnel, the better positioned you are to become a competitive player in your market.

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Consideration

The consideration stage of the brand funnel measures how many people or the percentage of those who are aware of your brand, would actually consider making a purchase.

Only brands that have a compelling offer which aligns with and can deliver on the goals of the target market will be considered.

Preference

The preference of your brand within your chosen market measures how your brand compares to your leading competitors as the preferred choice in the market.

Although this doesn’t represent actual purchases, it’s a very good gauge to measure your brand’s perception and likelihood of purchase in the buying decision.

Purchase

The purchase stage of the brand funnel is pretty self-explanatory.

This is the measurement of those who have actually purchased the brand’s products at least once.

They’ve considered all the other options in the market and have made that critical buying decision to disregard the competitors and make a purchase.

Loyalty

Brand loyalty is the measurement of those who have made both an initial purchase and subsequent repeat purchases.

Ultimately, this group of people have shown they had a positive experience with the brand, enough to make more than just one purchase.

The extend of these repeat purchases indicates the level of brand loyalty achieved.

Advocacy

And lastly, we have the final stage of the brand funnel, the holy grail of branding which is brand advocacy. 

This stage measures how many people would recommend the brand to others based on the experience they’ve had. 

This stage specifically speaks to the level with which the brand delivers on its promise and helps customers to achieve their goals.

Marketing Funnel vs Brand Funnel

There are many different types of funnels when it comes to business.

Two of the most well-known funnels are the sales and marketing funnels.

While there are many variations of each of these, ultimately, both map the customer journey and the transitions from one step to the next based on actual funnel metrics.

While they provide real-time statistics of what’s happening with the brands traffic and sales, they do little to paint a picture of the brands perception in the market. 

The brand funnel on the other hand, measures the brands perception in the market, the level to which people are aware, whether or not they would choose the brand over it’s competitors and whether or not they would recommend it to a friend.

Brand funnels therefore, bring some metrics into the world of branding helping brand managers and leaders to analyse the  health of their brands.

How To Create A Brand Funnel That Works

Creating a brand funnel provides a visual perspective of the steps customers go through to become a brand advocate.

But the brand funnel isn’t just a pretty picture. It provides brand leaders with insights on where customers need help to transition from one stage to the next, ultimately moving as many customers as possible towards brand advocacy. 

Here is how you create a brand funnel that works.

Step 1: Initial Awareness

The first challenge of creating a brand funnel that works is getting people into the actual funnel. To do that, the brand needs to raise awareness in the market through a brand awareness campaign.

This forms part of the overall marketing strategy which aims to put the brand name, it’s content, products or all the above, in front of the market to create awareness about the brand.

Step 2: Awareness to Consideration

Once a brand achieves awareness, it has placed itself on the map (At least for the group of people who are aware the brand exists.

The next goal is to put the brand in contention for consideration.

If a brand has a high level of awareness but low comparative levels of consideration, chances are they haven’t targeted the right people.

It’s easy for brands with endless resources, to purchase as much ad space as they can to raise awareness, but unless those ads are targeted to the exact people who want or need what the brand has to offer, their consideration levels will be low.

KEY TO TRANSITION: Create a focused target market.

Step 3: Consideration To Preference

Once your brand is in the mix for consideration and that critical buying decision, how can you then edge your brand to the top of the pile as the preferred brand of choice.

In this scenario, your brand is being compared directly to your competitors.

How enticing your offer is presented, the tone of voice and personality of your brand and the emotional connections you make with your audience all play an instrumental role in becoming the preferred brand of choice.

KEY TO TRANSITION: Compelling offer and messaging

Step 4: Preference To Purchase

When your brand becomes the preferred choice, it’s in pole position to make the sale, though that sale hasn’t happened yet, remember, this it’s just a preference.

Different people become ready to buy at different times based on many factors  depending on the category.

The name of the game here is brand salience.

Whether you’re leveraging email sequences or remarketing, providing value and staying in front of your customer is key. Considering your brand is already the preferred choice, staying top of mind will seal the deal.  

KEY TO TRANSITION: Stay top of mind.

Step 5: Purchase To Loyalty

Once your customer has made a purchase, the effectiveness of your product or service in delivering on its promise comes into full focus.

But even delivering on a promised outcome is not always enough to achieve brand loyalty. 

The entire end-to-end experience from the experience of checkout to the wait time for deliver to the ongoing communication and customer support throughout, all plays a role in turning buyers into brand loyalists.

KEY TO TRANSITION: Overdeliver on your promise.

Step 6: Loyalty To Advocacy

Each stage of the brand funnel consists of colder customers or prospects than the proceeding one.

For example, a prospect considering your brand is warmer than one who is simply aware of it.

Or a customer making a repeat purchase is warmer than one who has made a single purchase.

In other words, when a customer has demonstrated their willingness to not only purchase, but to come back for more, they as close as they’ll ever be to becoming an advocate. 

These are happy customers and chances are, a large portion of them would be willing to tell others why they’re so happy. Brands simply need to make this as easy as possible for them with a brand advocacy program, communication and incentives. 

KEY TO TRANSITION: Make it easy with advocacy systems

Over To You

Building a brand is about more than sales and marketing.

In fact, sales and marketing will amount to nothing without a focus on brand-building.

There are many tools to measure marketing metrics but few to measure brand performance.

The brand funnel helps brand leaders to understand their brand’s health in the market, measure brand performance, and create a process to guide cold prospects to raving brand advocates.