A marketing funnel describes the path a person takes from first contact with your offer to a purchase, as a series of stages, and the most useful marketing funnel examples are the ones you can actually click through. Many arrive at the top, the interested stay in the middle, a few decide at the bottom. The usual three stages are top of funnel (TOFU) for attention, middle of funnel (MOFU) for interest and trust, and bottom of funnel (BOFU) for the decision. The model only becomes useful once every stage has exactly one next step and a metric that shows how many people take it. Then you see where prospects drop out.
I'll show the stages on my own funnel as well, as far as you can click through it on kevinwelter.com: from a blog post via a free resource and my newsletter to my community. The ads for the community are built and evaluated by Susi, my AI employee for Meta ads.
Three neighbouring topics stay short here: ways to find new clients are in Finding New Clients as a Freelancer, the pricing question in Skool Community: Free or Paid?, and growing a Skool group in How to Grow a Skool Community. This one is about the model behind them.
Marketing funnel stages: what each one is for
The crowd gets smaller towards the bottom, and each stage answers a different question. Not everyone enters at the top, though: someone who was referred to you often starts near the bottom.
Many versions add a fourth stage, retention: onboarding, repeat purchase, referral.
AIDA and the funnel: the same picture from two sides
AIDA stands for attention, interest, desire, action. It describes what happens in a person's head; the funnel describes the steps you build and measure. Attention is TOFU, interest the middle, desire sits between middle and bottom, where proof works, and action is BOFU: one action, not three.
AIDA is usually attributed to E. St. Elmo Lewis, around 1898. A 2024 study by Akinori Iwamoto in the Japan Marketing History Review considers that attribution weakly supported and names Arthur Frederick Sheldon as the originator.
Marketing funnel examples, part 1: mine, live on kevinwelter.com
Top: posts that answer a question. My website has a blog in German and English, and almost every post ends at the community. Sebastian, my AI employee for SEO, writes the posts and measures them; Ralf builds the website. Visitors from search have a question, not an intent to buy, so the post answers first.
Middle: a resource for an email address. On the team pages, for example Susi's, there is a box with my task catalog: ten tasks for her role, plus 130 for the other thirteen, as a PDF. Signing up also brings my newsletter “From the Engine Room”, every week, including notes on my trainings and offers. You get an email with a confirmation link right away and are only subscribed once you click it. My German pages go one step further: several free resources there have their own page with no menu, where the only links lead to the legal notice and the privacy policy.
Bottom: the community. At the end is my AI Employee Framework community, and the community page leads to one action: becoming a member. For a conversation with a person, the website footer offers a 20-minute strategy session. After that comes retention: every week there is a live Q&A call, and how the first days after joining can look is covered in Skool Onboarding: The First Seven Days.
Three things you can copy from this:
- Every stage has one step. The post answers, the resource box asks for one thing, the community page leads to one action.
- The resource matches the offer at the bottom. A task catalog for AI employees attracts exactly the people the community is for.
- Every stage can be measured. Every link to the community carries its own parameters per placement, and since 19 September 2026 I measure, cookie-free, which button on which page gets clicked on kevinwelter.com.
Marketing funnel examples, part 2: a small business
An example, not a case from my own work: say you run a joinery and want more orders for made-to-measure fitted wardrobes.
A typical mistake is a missing middle: from the workshop video straight to “Book now”. Someone who has only just had the idea won't book yet; the checklist catches them. How to build the page for it is covered in Create a Landing Page: Guide and Tools. If you don't want to build it yourself: Hiring a Landing Page Designer: Steps, Cost.
Metrics for each stage: where your funnel leaks
A high click-through rate at the top is worth nothing if nobody signs up in the middle.
The stages multiply: double the sign-up rate while the rest stays the same, and what arrives at the bottom doubles too. So look for the weakest stage first, before you buy more visitors at the top. How to improve a single stage is covered in Conversion Rate Optimization: Steps and Tests. Whether ads pay off at the bottom is shown in ROAS Formula: Calculation and Worked Examples.
About opens: Apple says Mail Privacy Protection in its Mail app “prevents senders from seeing if you've opened the email message they sent you.” According to Apple, the protection does not extend to links, so clicks are the more reliable number. To know where someone came from, every link needs a marker. How that works with UTM parameters has its own article. Google Analytics offers a funnel exploration with up to ten steps and distinguishes open funnels, which users can enter at any step, from closed funnels, which they must enter at the first step.
The middle also has a legal limit. In Germany, advertising by email without the recipient's “prior express consent” counts as an unacceptable nuisance under section 7(2) no. 2 of the Act against Unfair Competition (UWG); other countries have their own rules. That's why serious newsletters use a confirmation email. This is not legal advice, it's the operator's perspective.
Where an AI employee takes over parts of the funnel
In my business, Susi is in charge of the ads. I give her a goal, such as community, webinar or retargeting, and she comes back with a complete campaign: competitor research in the Ad Library, a map built from real audience wording, copy following a fixed four-step structure, images, and a campaign already set up in the Meta account, forced into paused status by design. I'm the one who flips it live.
For the funnel, her evaluation matters most. She tests for at least three full days or 3,000 to 4,000 impressions and then decides by fixed if-then rules: kill, scale by 20 percent, or keep running. The kill threshold is set before launch. And she keeps the stages apart: purchases are attributed through Hyros, not through Meta's own attribution, while CPM, click-through rate and hook rate from Meta only diagnose delivery. Seen at the top is not bought at the bottom.
For your business, you replace the offer, audience, conversion goal and thresholds, for example for a webinar registration, a lead magnet or a local offer. The process is described in Creating Meta Ads With AI: A Guide, testable copy in Ad Copy With AI: Creatives You Can Test.
What stays with me is giving the assignment, approving the result and deciding what goes live: in a funnel, mostly the offer, the price and the ad budget.
Frequently asked questions
What is a marketing funnel?
A model of the path from first contact to purchase, with fewer people left after each stage. It helps you set one step and one metric per stage.
What is top of funnel?
The top stage, TOFU for short. This is where people meet your topic or you for the first time, through a blog post, a video or an ad. The goal isn't a sale but the next step, such as getting a free resource.
What is the difference between a marketing funnel and a sales funnel?
Often the terms are used interchangeably. Where they're separated, the marketing funnel ends at an interested contact and the sales funnel runs from conversation to closing. What an AI can prepare in that second part is covered in AI in Sales: From Call to Proposal.
How do I build a marketing funnel?
From the bottom up. First decide on the action, such as a purchase, trial or appointment. Then work out what someone needs to know or have before that, and offer exactly that in the middle. The content at the top comes last. You don't need dedicated funnel software for this: a page with a form, an email tool with a confirmation email and click measurement are enough.
How to carry on
Draw your current funnel from the bottom up: the action at the end, what comes before it, where people come from. Next to each stage, write the next step and the metric you already have. The stage with no step or no number is where you start.
Susi is available as a ready-made template in Premium, in my AI Employee Framework community, together with the rest of the workforce. Bring your funnel to the weekly live Q&A call and look for its weakest stage with others.
