Understanding the Buying Funnel

   Before diving into all the different ways to research,group, and choose keywords,you must first  take a step back and examine how people buy products or services,
there are five stages to the buying funnel

• Awareness
• Interest
• Learning
• Shopping
• Buying

Understanding where a keyword falls in the buying cycle can help signal where a consumer is within the buying process so you  can ensure that your ad and landing page match the consumer's shopping phase

While the buying funnel often refers to actual physical products sales, the same principles apply to B2B (business to business ) services,retail,and tother industries

The buying funnel is subset of the broader known buying cycle.The entire buying cycle has two additional  phases known as retention and advocacy.While customer loyalty and lifetime visitor values are important considerations for your entire marketing program, they can be distracting when we initially discuss keywords.Hence , we will only work with the initial aspect of the buying cycle, the sales funnel, during keywords and revisit the full buying cycle in later chapters.

      The shopping cycle is illustrated as a funnel because many searchers will enter the beginning of your product's buying funnel however, as consumers learn more information about your products as compared to others, fewer consumers will transition from one section to the next. As  a marketer, one of your  jobs is to move as many prospects as possible through the funnel so they become customers.