Funnel.
aka marketing funnel, sales funnel, conversion funnel
Lots of people look. Fewer click. A handful buy. That shape is the funnel.
What it actually means
A funnel is the path people take from first hearing about a product to buying it, drawn as stages that get narrower: awareness, interest, consideration, purchase. Each stage loses people, and the funnel shows where and how many.
The classic stages are awareness (they know you exist), interest (they click, read, follow), consideration (they compare, sign up for a trial, add to cart) and conversion (they pay). Some versions add retention and advocacy at the bottom, because a customer who comes back and tells friends is worth more than one who buys once.
The point is the drop-off between stages. If 10,000 people see an ad, 400 click, 60 start a trial and 12 pay, the funnel tells you the click rate is fine and the trial-to-paid step is where the money leaks. Marketing teams live inside this shape because it turns “sales are down” into “stage three is broken”, which is a problem someone can actually fix.
Where you'll hear it
Top of funnel is up 40% from the TikTok campaign, but conversion from trial to paid dropped to 8%. We’re filling the bucket faster than it’s leaking, barely.
Translation: more people are arriving, the wrong ones or the right ones meeting a bad onboarding. The next fix is lower down, not more ads.
You will hear “top of funnel” (TOFU), “middle” (MOFU) and “bottom” (BOFU) in content planning: a viral explainer is top-of-funnel, a pricing comparison is bottom. Sales teams use the same word for their pipeline, which causes friendly arguments about where marketing’s funnel ends and sales’ begins.
The pop-culture version
Millions watch the trailer. Some of them look up showtimes. Fewer actually buy a ticket. A small group loves it enough to buy the hoodie, and an even smaller group drags friends back for a second viewing.
That is a funnel, from trailer to hoodie. The studio watches every step. A huge trailer audience with weak ticket sales means the trailer promised a different film. Great ticket sales and no repeat viewings means the film was fine but forgettable.
Every business has the same shape. The job is never just making the top wider. It is finding the step where people quietly walk out of the cinema.
This is why “we need more traffic” is often the wrong answer. If the funnel leaks at checkout, doubling the top doubles the leak. Fix the narrowest point first.
Say it like you mean it
“Top of funnel is healthy; the drop-off is trial to paid, 8% versus our 15% benchmark.”
Names the stage, the number and the comparison. Anyone can act on that.“Our funnel isn’t working.”
Which stage? A funnel is a set of separate conversion rates; saying the whole thing is broken tells nobody where to look.Quick habit: always say funnel numbers as stage-to-stage conversion rates, not totals. “400 clicks” means nothing; “4% of viewers clicked” is something you can compare and improve.
Every stage of the funnel, the metrics that matter at each one and the content that moves people down it.
Decoded next
Decoded by the Kurums editorial team. Kurums Decoded translates the language of business for people who are new to it. Definitions are kept short on purpose; the serious version above goes deep. Nothing here is financial, legal or career advice.
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