What is conversion?
There are all sorts of sales funnels, in which a bunch of prospects enter at the top of a wide funnel and a smaller number of customers exit via a narrow outlet at the bottom. (There are also upside-down “funnels,” but I won’t discuss them here.)
There are umpteen different definitions of the sales funnel, but I tend to gravitate toward the “awareness – consideration – conversion” three-step funnel because it’s the easiest to describe and understand. Two discussions of this three-step sales funnel are provided by Venn Marketing and Walker Sands (the latter of whom throws in things that happen AFTER the purchase, engagement and advocacy).
In the three-step model, conversion is the final step where the prospect converts to a paying customer, having ruled out all the other offerings that the prospect considered.
While this results in money in your pocket, you need to take additional steps after conversion if you want to nurture a long-term relationship (with recurring revenue) with your new customer.
Additional information on conversion
Here is a sampling of what John E. Bredehoft of Bredemarket has written on the topic of conversion.
(6/17/2025) Biometric Marketers: What About WRITER Personas?
But what would happen if someone in a role other than product marketing consultant wrote this content?
- An engineer would emphasize different things. Maybe a focus on the APIs.
- A finance manager would emphasize different things. Maybe an ROI focus.
- A salesperson may focus on different things. Maybe qualification of a prospect. Or eventually conversion.
More at https://bredemarket.com/2025/06/17/biometric-marketers-what-about-writer-personas/
(1/2/2024) (Pizza Stories) The Worst Time to READ A Pizza Post on Social Media
In addition to saying WHEN to post, the gurus also provide authoritative (and often contradictory) advice about WHAT to post.
For example, some gurus assert that you MUST prioritize bottom of funnel (conversion) content over top of funnel (awareness) content because it’s most important to get people to buy.
Ophir Tal disagrees, and has evidence to support his position.
(10/8/2023) Your Prospects Don’t Care About Your Technology
Adopt a customer focus and talk about things that your prospects care about, such as how your product will solve their problems.
- Do your customers struggle to make money (conversion)? Will your technology help them make money?
More at https://bredemarket.com/2023/10/08/your-prospects-dont-care-about-your-technology/
(9/11/2023) The Secret to Beating Half of All Fortune 500 Marketers and Growing Your Business
Getting leads from blogging is nice, but show me the money! What about conversions?
- Marketers who have prioritized blogging are 13x more likely to enjoy positive ROI.
- 92% of companies who blog multiple times per day have acquired a customer from their blog.
Take a look at those last two bullets related to conversion again. Blogging is correlated with positive ROI (I won’t claim causation, but anecdotally I believe it), and blogging helps firms acquire customers. So if your firm wants to make money, get blogging.
(8/11/2023) Blog About Your Identity Firm’s Benefits Now. Why Wait?
On the other hand, if your post talks about how your latent fingerprint station’s high capture resolution benefits your prospects by helping experts to solve crimes more quickly and getting bad people off the street, then your prospects are going to care about your product/service—and will convert from prospects to paying customers.
More at https://bredemarket.com/2023/08/11/blog-about-your-identity-firms-benefits-now-why-wait/
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