I like to try and keep things simple, but, this topic is difficult to do that with.

I'm sure you have heard the term web traffic and then a bunch of unclear things following that. In its simplistic form. it is a visitor or inquiry to your website, web page, blog, or social media. Most statistics now reflect a single visitor during a single episode or visit on the site. Sometimes it means a single visitor for a period of a month.

Like good baseball statistics, web traffic has a ton of metrix that can be used to measure traffic.

But, I like to think of a single unqualified visitor (illustrated here as inquiries) clicking something that at a minimum moves them off our main or splash page. As the visitor clicks things, they are getting better qualified. Now, if they click a button for more information or they move to a form to get on your emailing list and request something that way, they become a suspect. If it is for more information and they take an action like getting more information they have become a prospect, and, then a customer when they order.

That scenerio is how the funnel works. And, it illustrates one trafficer headed to one thing or suite of things as the customer.

Now what we want, in the way of qualified traffic, is someone already having decided what they want when they enter our pipeline.

This is where advertising enters the picture. You place an ad on a social media site for something. A person clicks on your ad and enters your pipeline qualified by the subject of the ad.