How to Create a Lead Generation Funnel That Works

A lead generation funnel maps a lead's journey from brand awareness to action and represents the systematic approach salespeople and marketers take to generate quality prospects. Lead generation funnels are therefore broken down into stages that mirror your unique lead generation process, with more qualified leads moving further down the funnel to the bottom. Leads who make it through your lead gen funnel are marked as prospects for further nurturing.

How Lead Generation Funnels Work

Lead generation funnels are typically used to map a lead's online journey but can also be used for manual outreach. Effective lead generation funnels are usually broken down into three broad parts: top-, middle-, and bottom-of-funnel. At each phase, you identify a specific action leads must take to advance to the next step toward qualification. For this reason, lead generation funnels are considered "leaky," with only a small percentage making it from top to bottom.

From a high level, these are the three parts of a lead generation funnel: 

• Top-of-Funnel: The awareness or discovery phase. Usually, businesses create awareness through online activities like organic content marketing and paid or organic social media. But, you may also do this through manual activities like cold outreach. The goal is to get your ideal lead comfortable with your brand and build trust.
• Middle-of-Funnel: The interest and desire phase. This is typically when leads become interested in your value offering through exposure to your content or unique selling proposition (USP) and start to express interest and desire by engaging with your brand. 
• Bottom-of-Funnel: The action and qualification phase. Here, leads move from general engagement to taking a specific action like trading their contact information for something valuable such as a lead magnet or responding to your cold email. This stage also is where the lead is qualified for further nurturing.

Breaking up the funnel into these broad phases is crucial for many reasons. One, it helps you map the lead's journey and identify the desired actions you want them to take as well as the touchpoints required to move them down the funnel. Two, you can track the number of leads in your pipeline who are likely to convert to a prospect, and three, you can evaluate the effectiveness of your lead generation process by tracking the conversion rate of each funnel stage.

There are two main types of lead generation funnels you can create and optimize — online and outbound. An online lead generation journey might look like: online traffic > blog post > lead magnet > landing page > email opt-in form > thank-you page > email nurturing. A sales prospecting journey could look more like: email one > email two > response > discovery call for qualification.

To create your own lead generation funnel, first map the systematic stages necessary to move a lead from awareness to action. Then, identify the actions the lead must take at each step to move down the funnel as well as the touchpoints necessary to spur them into action. With this in mind, let's take a look at the common lead generation funnel stages to help you get started.

5 Lead Generation Funnel Stages

As we mentioned above, there are three main lead generation funnel phases — top-of-funnel, middle-of-funnel, and bottom-of-funnel. However, when mapping your own lead generation funnel, you can break it down further into five stages that better represent the lead journey from awareness to action. Let’s go over these stages and how leads move through each one: 

When a lead is qualified, they've left your lead gen funnel, and next steps depend on your sales process. If you sell products or services that don’t need contact with a sales rep, marketing might nurture them via an automated email sequence. If you sell a B2B product or big-ticket consumer item, a salesperson might schedule a meeting. Or, to invest your time wisely, you might further qualify the lead before spending time selling them.

How to Create an Online Lead Generation Funnel

An online lead generation funnel maps a lead's online journey from awareness to conversion. Typically, awareness is generated through the creation and distribution of free content via social media platforms or search engines. Once interest and trust are built, leads are offered a valuable lead magnet in return for their contact details. From there, marketers typically qualify and pass the lead to a sales rep or conduct ongoing nurturing activities like email nurturing.

Here's an example of what an online lead generation funnel might look like:

To create your own online lead generation funnel, first map the stages of your lead's journey from awareness to interest to action. Then, identify the activities each lead must take to advance to the next stage, including the touchpoints required by your team or brand. From there, devise a lead scoring framework to automatically mark qualified leads as prospects for further nurturing.

Let’s now go over each step in depth:

1. Map Your Lead Journey & Required Touchpoints

Your lead journey is the defined steps a person takes to become a qualified lead and the touchpoints required to move them through each step. These steps will become the specific stages of your lead generation funnel and outline the points of contact between a potential lead and your brand.

To map your lead generation funnel, do the following:

• Determine Your Desired Action: What lead information do you want to collect and what action do you want them to take? For example, do you want to capture their email or have them sign up for a consultative call? This will inform the free lead magnet you'll use to entice them into taking your desired action.
• Define Your Free Offering: What are you going to offer your lead in return for their contact information? This can be anything from a content upgrade like a free template to a discount or free trial and will inform the steps necessary to build trust and promote your offer.
• Outline Required Touchpoints: Next, outline all the required touchpoints necessary to take a lead from brand awareness to desiring your free offering. These touchpoints will become the stages of your lead generation funnel and will map the lead journey from awareness to conversion, ending with qualification.
• Create Qualification Framework: Finally, determine how you'll qualify inbound leads so you're focusing on the prospects most likely to convert. Do this through the creation of a lead scoring framework that automatically assigns scores to leads based on their online engagement.

For example, let's say you want to capture lead email addresses for email nurturing using content upgrades in existing blog posts. You'll also promote those blog posts on Facebook. Your lead generation funnel stages might look something like: Facebook > Blog Post > Free Content Upgrade > Email Capture Form > Thank You Page > Email Drip Sequence.

Each of these steps becomes the stages of your lead generation funnel. Once you've defined your stages, tangibly map them using lead funnel software or CRM software. This way, you can track and manage leads as they move through your funnel.

2. Build Awareness Through Free & Paid Content

Now it’s time to create free content or paid ads that make your ideal customers aware of your brand and act as a gateway to the lead magnet you’ll create in step four. This content should be educational, helpful, and/or inspiring, and it must resonate with your target audience — if these leads like your content, they’ll continue consuming it, which will increase the chances that they’ll eventually want your lead magnet. 

Here are some examples of free content you can offer: 

• Blog posts answering questions like “How do I run 10 miles?”
• YouTube video addressing the question “How do I fix my gutter?” 
• Social media post with an inspiring message

Make sure you're sharing your free content on the platforms your ideal customer uses. For example, you can write blog posts that rank organically for SEO but also can be shared on social media. Similarly, you can create YouTube videos that can also be shared on other platforms.

Paid content, such as social media or pay-per-click (PPC) ads, can also be effective, as it can boost your brand's visibility and build awareness quickly. Regardless of the type of content you choose to create, the more you produce, the higher chance you have of reaching your audience. So start creating and sharing your free or paid content wherever it makes sense for your business. Then, you can start planning out a lead magnet, or content upgrade, to promote along with it.

3. Create Interest With a Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is a free asset that you offer along with — or within — your free and paid content. The lead magnet could be an ebook, guide, discount offer, free demo, or similar item. To receive the lead magnet, your audience must provide their contact information. We talk about how to create one in our article on how to make high-converting lead magnets. 

When creating your lead magnet, make sure it's related to the awareness content you're promoting. For example, if you're writing articles on budgeting, you can create a free Excel budget template. If you're creating videos with free tips on healthy eating, perhaps you promote a consultative call to discuss a lead's eating habits.

For this reason, it's important to plan your awareness content strategy in conjunction with your lead magnet. However, it's possible to create your lead magnet first before actually creating the awareness content that's supposed to promote it. This is especially important if you plan on using paid advertising to send a lead directly to your lead magnet.

Here’s an example of a lead magnet and how to present it well:

4. Increase Desire With Landing Pages & Forms

Once you create a relevant lead magnet, there are two primary ways to offer it to your audience: First, you can create a dedicated landing page with snappy sales copy and an embedded contact form. Second, you can use email capture forms embedded directly within the awareness content itself. There are benefits to both methods, and it might be a good idea to experiment with both.

Landing pages give you more room to explain the value of your lead magnet, and can also be used to promote directly on platforms like social media and Search. For example, you might share awesome free content on Twitter, and then once you build trust, share a direct link to your lead magnet. You can also use it to promote your lead magnet within your awareness content by linking to the page with a call-to-action (CTA).

The benefit of an embedded email capture form is that you can offer your lead magnet directly within your awareness content without forcing the lead to leave the page. This positions you as an expert in your field with high-value content and reduces the number of steps your lead must take. The downside, however, is that you can't share your lead magnet offering directly on platforms like social media when compared to a landing page.

To create a landing page or email form for your lead magnet, check out our articles on the best landing page builders and the best email capture software. You can also create lead capture forms directly on social media using Facebook lead ads and LinkedIn lead gen forms.

Here’s an example of how you might offer your lead magnet:

5. Facilitate Action Using an Opt-in Form

An opt-in form is the embedded form that users must fill out and submit to access the gated lead magnet. This opt-in form can live on a landing page or directly within your awareness content. In the form, include different fields like name, email address, phone number, job title, and/or any other information that will help you qualify the lead’s fit and conduct and personalize your sales messaging later on.

However, you want the opt-in form to be an easy and quick experience for the visitor, so designing a clean form layout and limiting the number of fields to only necessary ones is crucial. Your landing page builder or email capture software should help facilitate this form creation.

Here’s an example of an opt-in form that pops up from the landing page in the previous step:

6. Build a Thank-You Page

To cultivate the best relationship with your leads, build a thank-you page that'll display after filling out the opt-in form. This will not only make them feel appreciated and also tell them how to get the lead magnet. When you’ve successfully encouraged a person to give you their contact information, they’re officially in the bottom stage of the lead generation funnel, but you must show your appreciation and prevent them from slipping out.

An effective thank-you page will have the following: 

• Confirmation and Thanks: Write “Thank you for downloading {lead magnet}” on the page. This will act as a confirmation that the lead did everything correctly. 
• Clear Instructions: If there’s a link on the thank-you page to download the lead magnet, alert them. If the lead magnet goes straight to their inbox, have the page tell them you sent it there to avoid confusion.
• Additional Content Recommendations: Consider finishing up your thank-you page with some other content recommendations related to the lead magnet.

While your thank-you page is used to make a good impression, also use it as an opportunity to motivate the lead to continue engaging with your content, or to spread it. Include invitations to follow your social accounts, social share buttons, or refer-a-friend bonuses. GetResponse wrote an article about 15 thank-you page ideas to help you use your page wisely.

7. Create a Lead Scoring Framework

Before you begin investing marketing dollars or sales time into nurturing these leads, you must qualify them as a marketing qualified lead (MQL). This is usually done through quantitative lead scoring, which takes into account a lead’s demographics and behavior to assign them a score. Only leads with scores above a determined threshold (typically 80/100) are considered MQLs. Read our article on lead scoring to learn how to create one of these systems.

8. Start Distributing Your Awareness Content

Now that you've set up your funnel, it's time to distribute your awareness content so ideal leads can begin to learn about your brand or offering. Sometimes, this is determined by the content itself, like SEO content that ranks organically in Google. Other times, it's an act of sharing content across multiple platforms, such as sharing your SEO articles on social media to build an audience.

There are three main ways to distribute your awareness content:

• Organic Search Engine Traffic: This is free traffic that you receive from search engines. Leads type a query into Google and are taken to a search results page, where your article can rank. For more, check out our guide on SEO lead generation.
• Paid Advertising: Pay to ensure that your content is prominently presented to your target audience on search engines or social media. We've written a guide on PPC lead generation to show you how to do this.
• Organic Social Media: Create social media accounts and post content that your target audience will enjoy. See our guide on social media lead generation for details on which platforms to use and how to get the most out of each.

It’s best to use a diversified approach to drive traffic to your content. That way, you’re reaching people with different web preferences. One potential buyer might love social media, while another only uses Google. Of course, reference the map of your lead journey to see where your highest quality leads are coming from. Which traffic source brings in the most customers? Invest the most into that type of traffic.

How to Create an Outbound Lead Generation Funnel

To make an outbound lead generation funnel, you'll map the interactions your leads have with your brand from initial outreach to qualification as a sales qualified lead (SQL), which typically occurs over a call. This type of funnel is only important to those with an outbound lead generation process — usually B2B or high-price B2C products and services.

Here's an example of what an outbound lead funnel might look like:

To build your own outbound lead funnel, decide on your touchpoints to create awareness and get leads interested in your brand. Then, determine how leads will advance to the next stage and how you'll inspire them to take that action. When they do, have a plan in place to qualify them for nurturing.

Specifically, these are the steps to follow when creating your outbound lead gen funnel:

1. Outline Your Lead Generation Process

First, define how you're going to generate manual leads and the stages necessary to get them on the phone. The two most typical ways to generate outbound leads are via cold calling or cold emailing, but can also include online engagement like LinkedIn.

Once you decide on the methods of outreach, define the required outreach stages. If you're cold emailing potential prospects, this might look like: Cold Email Outreach One > Cold Email Outreach Two > Cold Email Outreach Three > Quarterly Cold Lead Outreach. However, you might include other engagement methods, like engaging with them on social media between cold email two and three.

Once you've defined your lead generation process stages, map those steps in your CRM software. This way, you can tangibly see your lead funnel as well as track and manage leads as they move through your outbound funnel.

2. Create Brand Awareness

The leads in the top stage of your outbound funnel will be those already on your prospecting list. The best way to ensure these people convert is to make them aware of your brand before reaching out directly. You’ll typically already have found their email addresses and phone numbers, either from buying the data from a lead database or from doing manual research.

Here are three ways to increase leads' awareness of your brand:

• Send Marketing Emails: Have marketing send them email campaigns that share helpful content or provide them solutions to problems your ideal customers suffer from. 
• Interact With Them on Social Media: Make them aware of you and your brand by following them on social media and liking, replying to, or sharing their posts. 
• Incorporate Online Lead Generation Strategies: Consider gathering these leads' email addresses using an online lead generation funnel like the one we outlined above. That way, when they’re qualified as an MQL, they’ll already be familiar with your brand. 

After a lead is sufficiently warmed up, shoot your shot with direct outreach. When you introduce yourself and state your company name, they’ll feel comfortable having heard of it, and therefore will be more open to listening to or reading what you have to say in your sales message.

2. Build Interest & Desire Using Direct Outreach

Make the person interested in your product or service by reaching out to them directly. This first touch should focus on mentioning specific problems or frustrations they might be dealing with, and informing them you have a solution to it. 

Here are a few ways to directly reach out:

• Phone: Cold call your leads and plan a time to connect.
• Email: Cold email each lead and schedule a call.
• Social Media: Direct message your leads and continue chatting virtually or plan a call.
• In Person: Meet new leads through business networking and give an elevator pitch.

A specific example of this type of initial outreach might be an email introducing yourself, mentioning three pain points, stating one line about your product, and ending with a CTA for a reply by asking “Are you interested in learning more?”

Building interest and desire may take a few cold outreaches before you get a positive response. So create a cadence of emails and calls that accounts for this. When the lead finally replies positively, it’s time to get them to take action.

3. Inspire Action With Your CTA

After they’ve expressed interest, call the lead to action by requesting a longer conversation. Explain what you hope to accomplish on the call: to learn more about their needs and assess fit.

After they’ve agreed to a time, send them a calendar invite with a message briefing them on what will occur in the meeting or on the call, and consider including any materials you'd like them to review beforehand if they have time. You could also upgrade the CTA by including a way for them to auto-schedule time with you for a short call via Calendly. 

4. Qualify the Lead With a Discovery Call

Now it’s time to ask this lead some questions to assess their level of fit with your product or service. Typically, sellers use a lead qualification framework, like BANT, where they ask questions to uncover details about a lead’s budget, authority, needs, and expected timeline. The lead’s answers are then weighed against those of typical customers. If they match, the lead is converted to an SQL, and they enter into a sales pipeline for further nurturing.

To learn more, read our article on how to conduct a discovery call that effectively qualifies leads, where we give you concrete steps to follow.

How to Optimize Your Lead Generation Funnel

Once you've built your lead generation funnel, be sure to optimize it early and often by testing your funnel and conversions, optimizing your content, and relying on software. Doing so will increase the chances that the hard work you've put into the funnel pays off and results in high-quality leads that are fans of your brand and interested in your product or service. Here are a few specific ways to optimize your funnel:

• Test Your Buyer Journey: Act as a lead and follow the funnel yourself. Ensure that your landing page is clean, your opt-in forms and thank-you page work properly, and your lead magnet is delivered seamlessly. Fix any hiccups that could affect your conversions.
• Optimize Your Content for SEO: If you offer free content to build brand awareness, ensure that your ideal leads see it when they search the topic in Google. Check out our article on SEO lead generation to learn how to do this.
• Use Lead Generation Funnel Software: After you've visualized your buyer journey and the creation of your funnel, choose an all-in-one software to help you build it from the ground up.
• Track Your Conversion Rate: Using your CRM, your lead gen funnel software, or the ad manager of the platform you use to run ads, track your conversions and other metrics that can determine whether your funnel is working properly or it's time to make some tweaks.

When creating and optimizing your lead generation funnel, use software such as a CRM, landing page builder, and/or lead generation funnel software whenever possible rather than doing it all manually. They can help you build the most effective funnel possible and continue monitoring it for potential improvements. Next, we'll look at a few lead generation funnel software options that you can choose from.

3 Best Lead Generation Funnel Software

One of the best ways to build an effective lead generation funnel is to use quality software. The top lead generation funnel tools are all-in-one marketing platforms that help you build landing and thank-you pages, web forms, email drip campaigns, and other key components of a successful lead generation funnel. Some funnel software offer features specific to niche industries, such as abandoned cart management for ecommerce companies.

These are some of the best lead generation funnel software available:

• ClickFunnels: Best for entrepreneurs and small businesses aiming to grow quickly ($97 starting price)
• Kartra: Best for ecommerce businesses looking for an all-in-one platform ($79 starting price)
• Kajabi: Best for sellers of digital products such as online courses, coaching, or memberships ($119 starting price)

To choose the right lead generation funnel software for your business, first plan out your funnel using the steps we've laid out in this article. Then, ensure the software you're considering offers features to help you build and execute each part of the funnel. If you're comfortable with the price, features, and reviews you find online, try out the software, and you'll find that it'll make building your funnel much quicker and easier.

Bottom Line

A lead generation funnel maps the adventure a person takes with your brand on their way to becoming a qualified lead. It outlines where they come from, what content they see and interact with, and how they finally become qualified. A strong lead funnel will supply your salespeople with healthier pipelines filled to the brim with high-quality leads who trust and admire your brand.