Customers = people reached × visit rate × booking rate × joining rate
12,000 × 4 percent × 15 percent × 25 percent = 18
Why picture customers as a funnel at all?
A single result hides where it went wrong. "We got 18 new members from $900" says nothing about whether the ad, the website or the follow-up let people down. Counting each step separately does. The idea is older than the internet: it is usually traced to E. St. Elmo Lewis's AIDA model (attention, interest, desire, action) from the late 1890s, a description of how a salesperson moves a buyer along.
The guide linked on this page walks through each stage of winning customers in detail. This entry is the picture and the sum.
What does a Launceston yoga studio's funnel look like? (example figures)
A yoga studio in Launceston runs a Meta campaign for a free first class and tracks one month from ad to membership.
The studio paid $12.50 for each free class booked and $50 for each new member. A member on a $35 weekly plan pays that back in under a fortnight of gross profit, so the funnel works. The question is which step to improve.
Which step should you fix first?
The cheapest one to change, because every step multiplies. Lift any one of the three rates by a fifth and the studio gets about 22 members instead of 18, whichever step it was. Lifting the top means more ad spend or better ads. Lifting the visit rate means a better ad or a faster page. Lifting the last step, from free class to member, costs nothing in ads: a teacher who learns the newcomer's name, and a joining offer handed over in person at the end of the class.
So most small businesses should work from the bottom of the funnel up. The bottom is where the owner has the most control, and every improvement there makes the ad spend above it worth more.
Which steps of the funnel can CoraVision see?
CoraVision reads most of the steps once your accounts are connected: impressions and clicks from Google Ads and Meta, visits by channel and key events (such as a booking) from Google Analytics 4, and purchases and revenue where the sale happens on your website. It reads them every night. The last step often happens at the front desk or in booking software, so that count comes from you; once it is added, every step of the funnel has a number against it.
Questions
How many stages should a funnel have?
As many as you can count reliably, and no more. Four is plenty for most owner-led businesses: saw you, visited, enquired or booked, bought. The longer guide on this site uses five, adding the step where a customer comes back.
What do top, middle and bottom of the funnel mean?
Marketers' shorthand for where a person is. Top means they have just come across you, middle means they are weighing you up, bottom means they are ready to buy. An ad for the top introduces the business; one for the bottom makes an offer.
Is a funnel the same as a sales pipeline?
They overlap at the bottom. A funnel counts people at every step, mostly anonymously. A pipeline lists named people you are actively selling to, with a value against each, and usually starts where the funnel's enquiry step ends.