What is a marketing funnel?

What are the stages of a marketing funnel?

The funnel idea is old. It traces back to the AIDA model (attention, interest, desire, action), developed in 1898 by St Elmo Lewis to explain personal selling (Oxford Reference). In Arabic it is often called قمع المبيعات, the sales funnel.

Today most teams use four stages:

• Awareness (top of funnel): people learn you exist.
• Consideration (middle of funnel): they compare you, visit your site, read reviews.
• Conversion (bottom of funnel): they buy, book, install or submit a lead.
• Loyalty: they buy again and recommend you.

Apps and startups often use the AARRR version instead: acquisition, activation, retention, referral, revenue. Same idea, more detail after the first sale.

What is growth marketing and the AARRR funnel?

Which metric and channel fit each stage?

ROAS means return on ad spend: revenue divided by ad cost. A ROAS of 4 means every 1 EGP in ads brought back 4 EGP in sales.

What is ROAS and how do you calculate it?

What does a marketing funnel look like for an Egyptian ecommerce brand?

Illustrative example only. These numbers are made up to show the math, not real client data.

A Cairo fashion store spends 100,000 EGP in one month. Here is its funnel:

The weakest step is checkout to order: 70% of people who start checkout leave. That is close to the global average. Baymard Institute puts average cart abandonment at 70.22% across 50 studies.

Baymard found the top reason is extra costs like shipping and fees (40% of shoppers who left). So the first test here is clear: show delivery fees on the product page, or offer free delivery above a basket size. In Egypt we would also test cash on delivery messaging and a WhatsApp checkout option.

How do you find the leak in your funnel?

1. Define one key event per stage, such as view_item, add_to_cart, begin_checkout and purchase.
2. Build a funnel exploration in GA4. Google shows the abandonment rate between each step (Google Analytics Help).
3. Compare each step to your own past months, not only to industry averages.
4. Split by device, channel and country. A leak on Android in Saudi Arabia may not exist on iPhone in Egypt.
5. Watch real sessions with a recording tool to see why people stop.
6. Fix the biggest drop first, then measure again for two to four weeks.

A common mistake: pushing more budget into awareness when the leak is at checkout. That just makes the leak more expensive.

How did a full funnel work for Blue Bus?

Blue Bus is an intercity bus operator in Egypt. OneKind built its full funnel, from awareness to bookings.

• Awareness: destination content per governorate on TikTok, a video series and two influencer campaigns. One TikTok video reached 4.9 million views.
• Consideration: UGC (real customer content) to build trust, plus a new tone of voice and slogan.
• Conversion: full funnel media buying that pushed people to book tickets.
• Loyalty: on ground branding on buses and stations and a branded travel card game.

In 12 months ticket sales rose more than 30%, with over 100 million video views and engagements.

See the Blue Bus case study

How we build funnels at OneKind

1. Map the funnel stages for your business type: shop, app, real estate leads or B2B.
2. Fix tracking so every stage reports into one dashboard.
3. Set a budget split across stages. A typical starting split for a new brand: about 60% on brand building and 40% on sales activation, the long term balance found in Binet and Field's research for the IPA.
4. Build creative for each stage. Awareness content tells a story. Conversion ads show price, offer and proof.
5. Plan around seasons: Ramadan, Eid, White Friday and back to school change funnel costs a lot.
6. Review stage rates every week and move money to the stage that is limiting growth.

Egypt vs Gulf: in Egypt, price sensitivity makes the consideration stage longer and WhatsApp conversations matter. In Saudi Arabia and the UAE, higher order values make retargeting and loyalty more profitable per customer.

Sources

Oxford Reference, AIDA

Baymard Institute, Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics

Google Analytics Help, Funnel exploration

IPA, The next chapter for The Long and the Short of It

FAQ

What are the 4 stages of the marketing funnel?

Awareness, consideration, conversion and loyalty. Some models add a fifth stage, advocacy, for customers who recommend you.

What is TOFU, MOFU and BOFU?

Top, middle and bottom of funnel. Top is awareness, middle is consideration, bottom is conversion.

What is the difference between a sales funnel and a marketing funnel?

The marketing funnel focuses on attracting and warming up people. The sales funnel focuses on closing the deal. Many businesses treat them as one journey.

How do I calculate funnel conversion rate?

Divide the number of people who reach a stage by the number at the previous stage, then multiply by 100. For the whole funnel, divide final customers by people at the top.

Is the marketing funnel still relevant?

Yes, as a way to measure. Real journeys are messy, but stage metrics still show you where people drop off.