A marketing funnel is easy to draw.
It's much harder to measure.
Most teams already have the diagram. Awareness at the top, conversion at the bottom, a couple of stages in between.
Then the campaign goes live, and nobody can say which stage is actually working.
So is the marketing funnel still a useful model?
Yes. But only if every stage produces a number you can trust.
That's what this article is about. Not how to draw a marketing funnel. How to measure one.
What a marketing funnel actually is
A marketing funnel is a model of the steps someone takes between hearing about you and becoming a customer.
The labels change from company to company.
I use four:
- awareness: someone discovers your product;
- consideration: they read more, compare options or ask questions;
- conversion: they buy, book a call or sign up;
- retention: they come back, renew or recommend you.
That's it.
You can add more stages to a marketing funnel. Most teams don't need to.
The marketing funnel has a credibility problem
Let's start with the argument against it.
Real people don't move through a marketing funnel in a straight line.
Someone sees a post and leaves. A week later they read your newsletter. Then they search for your name and buy.
Which marketing funnel stage gets the credit?
The diagram doesn't say.
That criticism is fair. A marketing funnel is a simplification, and it can hide more than it shows.
I don't think the right answer is to throw the model away.
The better answer is to treat the marketing funnel as a measurement map. Each stage gets one question: did people take the next step, or not?
That only works if you can see the step.
Why marketing funnel data goes missing
Your analytics tool can usually tell you that someone arrived.
It often can't tell you why.
A referrer gets stripped by an app. A link gets copied into a private chat. A printed flyer sends traffic with no source at all.
The result is predictable.
The visit lands in Direct, in the same bucket as someone who typed your domain from memory.
Your marketing funnel now has a hole in the middle. And the hole is labelled "unknown".
That's a problem if you're trying to decide where your marketing funnel budget goes next month.
Clicks vs. conversions
There is an important difference between these two things.
A click is measured at the link.
A conversion is measured at the destination.
Link tracking tells you that someone opened a link you distributed. A URL shortener with analytics can show you clicks, countries and devices for each link.
Your website analytics or CRM tells you what happened next. A sign-up, a demo request, a purchase.
Keep those two apart.
A click tells you someone was interested. It doesn't tell you they converted.
Mixing the two is the fastest way to make a marketing funnel report lie to you.
Map one action to each marketing funnel stage
Before I create a single link, I decide what I want people to do at each marketing funnel stage.
For example:
- awareness: read a guide or view a product page;
- consideration: compare plans or join a mailing list;
- conversion: purchase, book or request a quote;
- retention: open onboarding or take a follow-up offer.
One main action per asset.
If a flyer, an email and a social post all point to the same page, each placement still gets its own link.
Otherwise you can't compare them later.
The whole marketing funnel collapses into one number.
Short links make every marketing funnel stage countable
Every marketing funnel campaign needs links. And campaign URLs get long fast once you add tracking tags.
Compare:
https://example.com/guide?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=spring_launch
with:
zee.gl/spring-guide
The visitor sees the short URL.
The destination still carries the campaign information your marketing funnel report needs.
And the redirect gives you another point where you can measure the click.
A custom URL shortener also lets you choose the ending. zee.gl/spring-guide tells people what they're about to open. That matters when someone has to type it from a poster or hear it on a podcast.
People searching for "link shortener free" usually want more than a low price.
When I pick a free link shortener for a marketing funnel, I check three things:
- does it keep the UTM tags intact through the redirect;
- does it give you link analytics for each link;
- can visitors see where a link goes before they open it.
ZA.GL is a free URL shortener and custom link shortener that does all three. You pick the alias, add UTM fields, and every link gets click analytics with countries and device types.
There is one limit worth knowing.
On the free plan, link analytics are kept for 7 days. Pro keeps them for 90 days and lets you export them to CSV.
If your marketing funnel runs over several weeks, that matters. Either way, your website analytics should stay the long-term record.
QR codes are the offline part of the marketing funnel
Printed materials are the classic blind spot in a marketing funnel.
Think of:
- a poster;
- a menu;
- product packaging;
- an event badge.
Someone scans the code. Your marketing funnel report sees Direct.
Most people who open a QR code generator just want to create QR code images from a URL.
That works.
But a plain URL to QR code conversion gives you no data. You get a picture, not a signal.
The fix is simple. Turn a link to QR code, but make it a link you can measure.
Here's the workflow I use:
- Create a separate short link for each placement.
- Generate the code from that short link.
- Print it and watch the link analytics.
ZA.GL returns the QR code together with the short link. PNG on the free plan, SVG and PDF on Pro.
Scans open the short link, so they show up in the same analytics as clicks. That's QR code tracking without a separate tool.
It's also why each placement needs its own link. If the same code is printed everywhere, you only see the total.
So if you're comparing a free QR code generator or QR code maker, ask one question.
Does the code point to a trackable QR code destination, or straight to the final page?
Only the first gives you a QR code with analytics.
What about a dynamic QR code?
A dynamic QR code is a code whose destination can change after it's printed.
Because the ZA.GL code points to the short link, changing where the link goes changes where the printed code goes.
Editing the destination of a live link is on the Pro plan. On the free plan you can edit the title and description.
UTM tracking gives every marketing funnel stage a name
A UTM builder adds campaign tags to your URL in a consistent format.
You'll also see it called a UTM generator, a campaign URL builder or a Google campaign URL builder.
Same job.
A UTM link for a QR code on a spring event flyer could look like this:
https://example.com/spring?utm_source=event_flyer&utm_medium=qr&utm_campaign=spring_launch
The UTM source identifies the placement. The medium describes the channel. The UTM campaign groups everything under one name.
UTM parameters are part of the URL itself.
They don't depend on the browser sending a referrer.
That's why they're one of the most reliable ways to label traffic at every marketing funnel stage.
Good UTM tracking comes down to discipline:
- pick your naming rules before launch;
- use lowercase;
- don't switch between
email,newsletterande-mailfor the same channel; - never put personal data in UTM tags.
ZA.GL lets you fill in source, medium, campaign, term and content when you create the link. It appends them to the destination for you.
Where tracked links fit in a marketing funnel
There are several places where I would always use one.
1. Printed materials
This is the easiest one to justify.
Once it's printed, you can't change it. The short link is the only part of that marketing funnel step you still control.
2. Emails and newsletters
Email clients don't always pass a useful referrer.
A short link with UTM tags carries the campaign into the next marketing funnel stage.
3. Pages you don't own
You can't install analytics on a marketplace listing, an app store or a partner site.
But you can control the link people click before they get there. That click is still part of your marketing funnel.
ZA.GL can fire your Google Tag Manager container before the redirect, so click tracking arrives as events in your existing setup. Custom GTM tracking is a Pro feature.
When a tracked link is overkill
There are also plenty of situations where a short link adds little value.
If you're linking between pages on your own site, use the direct URL.
It's transparent. There's no extra redirect. And your analytics already knows where the visitor came from.
The same goes for internal navigation, footers and menus.
URL tracking belongs at the edges of your marketing funnel, where traffic enters from somewhere you can't see.
Common marketing funnel tracking mistakes
A few mistakes I see again and again:
- one tagged link used everywhere;
- campaign names changed halfway through;
- clicks reported as conversions;
- QR codes printed before the link was tested;
- a link tracker that only keeps a week of data, and nobody checks it in time.
Each one quietly breaks the marketing analytics behind your marketing funnel.
None of them is hard to avoid.
So, how do you measure a marketing funnel?
Start with one campaign, not a whole marketing funnel rebuild.
Give every channel and every printed placement its own short link.
Add a source, medium and campaign.
Generate a QR code for anything on paper.
Then compare the link clicks with the visits, leads and sales in your own analytics.
A marketing funnel you can measure gives you:
- the stage where people drop off;
- the channel that moves them forward;
- a clear line between clicks and conversions;
- data you can act on next month.
A marketing funnel is only as useful as the numbers behind it.
The diagram isn't the point.
The decisions it lets you make are.
If you want to try it, the short link generator on ZA.GL is free and there's nothing to sign up for.
Marketing funnel FAQ
What is a marketing funnel?
A marketing funnel is a model of the stages someone moves through, from discovering a business to buying and coming back. Teams use it to plan content and decide what to measure.
What are the stages of a marketing funnel?
A typical marketing funnel has four: awareness, consideration, conversion and retention. Some teams add more. Four is enough to start measuring.
How do I track a marketing funnel?
Give each channel its own short link with UTM parameters. Then compare link clicks with the actions recorded in your website analytics or CRM.
Can a QR code be part of a marketing funnel?
Yes. Create a separate short link for each placement, generate the code from it, and review the scans next to what visitors did after arriving.
Does a URL shortener track conversions?
No. A URL shortener counts link opens by country and device. The conversion part of the marketing funnel belongs to your website analytics or CRM.
How do I create UTM tracking links?
Use a UTM builder or campaign URL builder to add a source, medium and campaign. In ZA.GL you can enter those fields when you create the short link. Then reuse the same naming rules across your whole marketing funnel.