What is a sales funnel in digital marketing?

Simon Edward • 26 February 2025

In digital marketing, how do you convert leads into sales? Find out how a sales funnel can grow your brand.

Every business needs to turn strangers into paying customers – loyal customers if possible. To do so, they need to get the potential customer's attention, nurture it and convert it into action.

This process sometimes gets referred to as a "sales funnel". It's a process of conversion – from someone thinking your product is cool, interesting or useful to a person willing to give you money for it. In the language of marketing, this is known as "converting a lead into a sale".

Traditionally, sales funnels were linear. Let's say you sold fancy dress costumes. You would send direct mail catalogues. You would put up signs in your shop window. Perhaps you'd pay for TV ads. These would contain all the information a person needed to know about what you offer.

Done well, this kind of marketing created a straight through-line from curiosity to cash. But today, the landscape is altogether different.

On average, a person may see 10,000 ads a day. These ads are no longer coming from a handful of sources – TV, mail catalogue, shop window. They're now also coming from social media, emails, website pop-ups… The linear through-line of old has become a crazy squiggle.

New ways of doing things call for new methods. But all too often, businesses find the digital side of things hard to grasp. They know the internet is a vital marketing tool. But they're never quite sure if they're doing it right.

In this article, we take a closer look at the sales funnel – and how we can help you maximise it.

What are the stages of a sales funnel?

At the top of the sales funnel is awareness. People need to be aware of your products or services. But more importantly, they need to be captured.

Capturing leads is all about gathering data. You've unleashed your beautiful, compelling marketing campaign – but how are you going to keep track of people who've opened the email, expressed an interest, signed up to the mailing list, and so on?

Picture of an email on a computer screen.

This is a crucial first step. Without knowing your leads, you can't nurture them – the next step on their journey from "interested" to "invested".

Nurturing leads is all about making your offer clearer and more attractive. Do you offer a discount on first sales, for instance? Are you highlighting products and services in emails? Are you using multiple channels to pitch your products?

Above all, is your content minty-fresh or a little faded at the edges? How's the website looking? Are you harnessing SEO to drive traffic to your site with blogs and other copywriting that's good for humans as well as search engines?

We get it – it's a lot. But it's only by keeping all these plates in the air that you can be confident people will stick around for more.

It's important to remember that everyone is busy. You could say that modern life is one long abandoned cart as we flick from tab to tab. It's a harsh reality but not one that should defeat you. The answer is to nurture leads creatively and in a way that feels persuasive but not pushy.

The other important thing to bear in mind is that the sales funnel is a process of refinement. At the top of the funnel is a mass of interested people. At the bottom are those few who put their money where their mouth is.

Some businesses find this thinning-out dispiriting. But by funnelling and focusing on the dedicated few, you're more likely to get loyal customers.

In a way, this is the ultimate conversion: from one-time customer to old faithful. To achieve this, the sales funnel can't end with a sale. It's an ongoing process of communication.

Why is a sales funnel useful?

In the world of business, it's often useful to visualise processes. Gantt charts, pie charts and other visualisations are popular for one simple reason: they're worth a thousand words.

A sales funnel doesn't have the blinding clarity of a well-made pie chart. But it does take an abstract journey and turn it into a visual process that can be tracked and managed more easily.

Once you can see the process clearly, you're in a better position to bring your sales and marketing into focus. You can see what's working and where there's room for improvement. You can see which leads are falling away and which are sticking around for more.

This brings you closer to the holy grail of digital marketing: data-driven decision-making. No more shots in the dark. No more "Well, let's see how it goes". Just thoughtful, thorough, manageable marketing that captures, nurtures and converts those precious leads.

That's the what and the why of sales funnels. But how about the how? That's where we come in.

How we can help

If you've set up a business, you're probably a smart cookie. Chances are you're juggling multiple tasks, so why not add a sales funnel to your agenda?

There are two ways of looking at this. One is that you're already a multi-tasking business beast. You've got the brains and the willpower to capture, nurture and convert leads. Why bring in outside help?

The other way of looking at it is that sales funnels are time-consuming. They involve managing multiple channels and a truckload of data. In a sales funnel, details count for a lot. If you're already tied up with product development and branding, say, you might find digital marketing the straw that breaks the camel's back.

If this sounds like you, we can help. At My Digital Hero, we offer bespoke digital marketing packages for businesses of all shapes and sizes.

Our services include beautiful, intuitive website design, lead generation, Google Ads, SEO and high-quality video marketing.

So, if you're looking for help with people-focused digital marketing, get in touch. We'd love to help you turn those leads into sales.

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