What Is a Marketing Funnel: Stages & Targeting Strategies

Finally, the buyer has decided on their solution strategy, method, or approach. This phase often includes customer service interactions, loyalty programs, upsell opportunities, and encouraging brand advocacy through referrals and reviews. The customer’s journey focuses on building loyalty, satisfaction, and long-term relationships; it’s about turning buyers into repeat customers and, hopefully, brand evangelists. The customer’s journey, however, represents the entire experience a customer has with a brand after making a purchase, including onboarding, support, retention, and advocacy. Usually, prices are fixed (with the exception of discounts, sales, or loyalty programs) and clearly communicated upfront to consumers. Conversely, the B2C buyer’s journey takes a more rigid, non-negotiable approach to pricing and negotiation.

This can include industry segments, but you cannot intentionally solicit from customers who are more likely to provide more positive reviews. For many sales reps, it can feel like this erosion of trust between sales and prospects has accelerated over time. We recently surveyed 700+ consumers for our State of Consumer Trends report.

Analytically, focus on click-through rates and the type of prospects interacting with your targeted content. Make yourself more visible across marketing channels by publishing blog posts, landing pages, ebooks, infographics, guides, and social media posts. Here are some content ideas for each stage of the buyer journey and how you can use data to supplement your efforts. You must monitor that content to ensure it’s performing and meeting expectations. Once you understand who your ideal customer is, you need to create a content journey that correlates with your sales funnel and/or sales pipeline. This, in turn, leads to more effective marketing materials and a more effective buyer journey.

A closing agent will oversee this process, which typically takes place at a title company, management firm, escrow office or your home. Once you find a home you want to buy, it’s time to make an offer. You can look online to find listings in your price range, but your agent will probably find options for you, too.

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When buyers experience strong alignment between a supplier’s website and their conversations with sales representatives, they’re 2.8 times more likely to close a high-quality deal. For example, executives who made substantial initial purchases were more likely to double down and commit even more resources by the third decision point — despite earlier setbacks. Today’s buyers do most of their research independently (often using AI) and are typically 50–70% through their decision before speaking to sales. Stick around until the end, where I’ll walk you through a step-by-step guide on how to define your buyer’s journey using HubSpot’s customer journey analytics tool. In this article, I’ll dive into the latest buyer’s journey statistics and unpack actionable insights you can apply directly to your business strategy. Collected information is used to be personalize X services, including X trends, stories, ads and suggestions.

They are now evaluating different approaches or methods to pursue the goal or solve their challenge. How do buyers describe their goals or challenges in the context of our business? Because of this, sales folks must approach potential buyers with sensitivity, not sales pitches. Simply put, buyers don’t want to be prospected, demoed, or closed when they’re not ready. In this case, be sure to conduct a few interviews with customers, prospects, and other salespeople at your company to get a sense of the buying journey.

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• I understand that these countries may not have the same data protection laws as the country from which I provide my personal information.
• A demand generation framework is a strategic process for creating awareness and interest in your product, ultimately driving new business.
• He said, “I don’t think selling will ever go away in the sense that there are no more individuals responsible for helping guide people throughout the customer purchasing process.”
• A central theme in the report is “value clarity.” That refers to a buyer’s understanding of how a product or service improves outcomes within their specific role and business context.
• This research will help you understand not just what prospects do at each stage, but why they do it — crucial insight for mapping how the traditional Awareness, Consideration, and Decision stages play out in your specific market.
• I’ve invested countless hours in staying up-to-date with the latest industry trends.

Then, target those keywords with valuable content that naturally draws potential customers to your business. Start your inbound marketing strategy by finding the keywords your prospects search for. The post includes a step-by-step cleaning guide and tips—not a hard sales pitch. This level of detail helps you create highly targeted content and interactions that directly address buyer needs. Next, catalog every possible interaction point between your prospects and your business. Your map should capture each touchpoint where prospects interact with your business, from initial awareness through consideration, decision-making, onboarding, and beyond.

No Cold Calls is a sales strategy that replaces unsolicited calls with warm outreach to prospects who have already demonstrated interest. Persona-based marketing uses fictional customer profiles, or personas, to create targeted messaging for specific audience segments. Sales enablement content refers to the materials and tools that empower your sales team to engage prospects and close deals more efficiently.

What the Buyer's Journey Looks Like for Consumers in 2025

With business.com+, members get dedicated support, exclusive deals and expert advice. The customer journey includes onboarding and implementation, adoption and use, ongoing support and success, and renewal or advocacy. If you use a CRM, tag leads by stage so you can see where they drop off. Then create a one-page onboarding checklist that explicitly delivers on the promises you made during sales.

What types of content should I create for each stage of the buyer’s journey?

One of the best ways to find keywords is with our free keyword tool. By reaching prospects earlier and more frequently, you increase the chance they ultimately buy from you. When you know what websites and channels are involved in the buyer’s journey, you can try to engage your prospects through them more effectively. The data you gather will help build realistic buyer personas for existing and prospective audiences. To create effective buyer personas, you need to conduct audience research. Buyer personas are fictional profiles that represent different types of prospects.

The buyer’s journey is the path customers take from recognizing a problem (awareness) to researching options (consideration) to making a purchase (decision). Think of it as your shortcut to clarity — no jargon, no guesswork, just a practical way to connect with your audience and guide them to “yes.” By registering, you confirm that you agree to the processing of your personal data by Salesforce as described in the Privacy Statement.

For example, if most leads disappear after the consideration stage, you may need different messaging. Your highest-quality leads will reach the end. • Purses/Backpacks / Bags are prohibited unless they fit the guidelines below. JOURNEY features founder Neal Schon (lead guitarist), Jonathan Cain (keyboards, backing vocals), Arnel Pineda (lead vocals) Jason Derlatka (keyboards, vocals), Deen Castronovo (drums, vocals) and Todd Jensen (bass). Presented by AEG Presents, Journey’s final tour launches February 28, 2026 at Giant Center in Hershey, PA and will span 60 cities across North America including stops in Austin, buyers journey Atlantic City, Montreal, Vancouver and more before wrapping up the first leg in Laredo, TX.