Digital marketing funnel examples
Four funnel shapes for different business types, and a calculator that works backwards from a customer target to the enquiries, sessions and impressions it actually requires. Working forwards from a budget hides whether a target is reachable at all; working backwards makes the binding constraint obvious, which is usually reach rather than the landing page everyone wants to optimise.
- EXAMPLE
- XLSX
- FREE
- Best for
- Anyone whose target looks reasonable until you do the arithmetic
- Includes
- Excel calculator + four worked funnel shapes (PDF)
- Time to use
- 20 minutes
Free to download and use in your own client work. No email address required.
Created by Alston Antony 15+ years in search and digital marketing Updated
Most funnel work starts at the bottom, optimising the landing page. That is the easiest stage to change and often not the one losing you the most.
The useful move is arithmetic: work backwards from the customers you need to the reach that actually requires.
Working backwards
Take a target of 10 customers a month, with rates that are unremarkable:
| Step | Calculation | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Customers needed | The target | 10 a month |
| Qualified leads | 10 ÷ 25% close rate | 40 |
| Enquiries | 40 ÷ 40% qualification rate | 100 |
| Sessions | 100 ÷ 2% conversion rate | 5,000 |
| Impressions | 5,000 ÷ 3% click-through rate | ~166,700 |
This is where plans quietly become impossible
Against 1,200 sessions today, that target needs a 4.2× increase in reach. That is the honest finding — and no amount of landing-page work substitutes for it. Doubling the conversion rate, which would be an excellent year’s work, still leaves you needing more than twice the traffic.
The calculator does this from your own five rates, and tells you the multiple you need rather than leaving you to eyeball it.
Preview of the file
The six stages
| Stage | The question it answers | Metric | Drop measured by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reach | How many people see us? | Impressions / reach | — |
| Click | How many come? | Clicks / sessions | CTR |
| Engage | How many get far enough to care? | Key page views | Bounce / page depth |
| Enquire | How many ask? | Conversions | Conversion rate |
| Qualify | How many are worth talking to? | Qualified leads | Lead quality |
| Buy | How many pay? | Customers | Close rate |
The qualify stage is the one most often missing from a funnel, and its absence is expensive: lead volume looks like success while the sales team quietly wastes time on enquiries that were never going to buy.
Four funnel shapes
Where to work first differs completely by business type.
| Business type | Funnel shape | Where to work first |
|---|---|---|
| B2B services | Narrow and slow. Few enquiries, high value, long qualification | Qualification and close rate — one extra won deal beats a hundred extra sessions |
| Ecommerce | Wide and fast. Reach matters, small conversion changes compound | Conversion rate and repeat purchase. Reach is the easy part to buy |
| Local services | Short. High intent, tiny reach, decided in one session | Capture, not nurture. Be findable and answer the phone |
| SaaS free tier | Two funnels stacked: signup, then activation | Activation. Signups are vanity if nobody reaches the point of value |
These are illustrative
Composites used to show how the shape changes what you should do. The rates are not benchmarks — use your own, or the calculator will confidently mislead you.
Then turn it into a budget
Once you know the sessions you need, the budget template converts that into the media spend required — and tells you whether a customer would cost more than they are worth, which is the point at which the target needs changing rather than funding.