Creating the right sales funnel for your business can help you automate your marketing processes, increase your sales revenue, and grow your business. This guide will introduce you to the concept of a sales funnel and help you apply it to your business.
What is a sales funnel?
A sales funnel is a step-by-step process for converting you into a customer. It's called a funnel because the process starts at the top with a large number of potential customers who know about your business and its products or services. Some of those leads are lost to your marketing efforts, and some of those leads become customers when they reach the bottom of the funnel.
For example, how a sales funnel might work for a retail store in a mall:
- Passers-by passing through the mall pass a store offering 25% off summer clothing. This is the top of the funnel.
- A percentage of people who walk past the store will see the summer clothing sale. This is the next stage of the funnel.
- A customer brings in two dresses for inspection. This is the last stage of the funnel when the customer completes the purchase or leaves the store without clothes.
The importance of the sales funnel
A sales funnel is a visual representation of your sales process. It shows you how leads enter your sales process and progress to the final sale. Understanding your sales funnel reveals how your sales process works, as well as its flaws and where leads are falling through the funnel and not converting. Finding gaps in your sales funnel will allow you to solve problems and attract more customers.
The stages of the sales funnel
The sales funnel consists of four stages: awareness, interest, decision, and action.
Each stage reflects your prospect's mindset, as well as the marketing approach you need to take at that stage.
1. Awareness
At this stage, the potential customer gets to know your company and its products or services. Advertising can occur in several ways, such as an advertisement, a Facebook post, a Google search, a tweet, an email recommendation, a postcard or a website visit.
In some cases, he will realize that he needs a solution or has a problem. Then they will understand that you offer a solution. They can learn about your business and its solutions at the right time and make a purchase decision at the time of discovery. However, this can be the start of a relationship and it takes time to build trust and move to the next stage of the sales funnel.
2. Percentage
At this point, the potential customer is interested enough to gather more information about your business and its offerings. They can research and compare different options.
At this stage, the ideal would be to attract potential customers with the right content. Aim to inform and educate rather than sell. It allows you to demonstrate your knowledge and experience in the field that interests you. For example, it could be a case study on how a company solved a similar problem with your product, or a white paper on different ways to solve a similar situation. Now is not the time to sell or promote your product, if you focus too much on selling you risk alienating a potential customer.
An interested customer can subscribe to your newsletter or mailing list, or follow your social media pages to follow what you are up to. If they provide an email address, you can send regular emails to generate interest in your business and its offerings.
3.Solutions
At this stage, the option is ready to be purchased. Your company's product or service may be ranked as the top choice, or your offering may be ranked in the top two or three choices.
This is when you offer the best: a discount code on your first purchase, a bonus product when you order during a certain period or even free delivery when you spend a minimum amount. The offer must be relevant and attractive to entice the potential buyer to buy. A sales pitch can take many forms, such as a phone call, email, referral to a sales page, webinar, or any other interaction.
4.Karma
This is the last part of the sales funnel when a prospect turns into a buyer and makes a purchase. They buy your product or service and close the deal.
Even if the customer reaches the bottom of the sales funnel, the process is not yet complete. The customer has taken action, and now you need to focus on retaining the customer to purchase additional products or services in the future, as well as recommending your business proposition to others. This process involves creating the right content for your customers and delivering it at the right time. Below are some examples of actions you can take:
- thank you for your purchase
- Be available for training, education and support
- Provide feedback or suggestions through surveys and outreach
- Special offers and discounts by e-mail or post
- Share product user guides and technical support
Creation of a sales funnel
There are many ways to create a sales funnel, and which one is right for you will depend on your business and your goals. An effective strategy is to follow these steps:
1. Collect and analyze data about your audience
Before you can create an effective sales funnel, you need to understand your ideal target customers. You need to know their specific goals and needs, what they do to meet their needs and goals, and how your products or services meet those needs and goals. The results of this analysis allow you to create content that speaks to your target audience, learn how to improve or complement existing products or services, and refine your sales funnel to focus on the main selling points. sale.
You need to analyze the behavior of your target customers when they visit your website or interact with emails and other marketing information. You want to know where they click, where they spend the most time, how long they read, and how long they spend on a particular page.
With all this information, you can create buyer personas for each type of customer. Different people have different reasons for buying your products or services, as well as different ways to use them. By creating buyer personas (various fictional representations of your target customers), you can create targeted sales funnels and content to improve each group's buying experience.
2. Attract the public's attention.
To get people to buy, you need to get them involved in your sales funnel. To engage them, you need to show the right content to the right people at the right time.
There are several ways to attract the attention of the public:
- Organic (free) traffic is obtained by posting content (e.g. blog posts, infographics, videos) to your social media platforms.
- Paid traffic comes from buying ads on various platforms (eg Google, Facebook, LinkedIn).
- Cold calling and email connect you with businesses and people who may need your product or service.
3. Create a landing page.
Potential customers should follow your call to action after seeing your content. An alternative is to send the potential customer to a landing page.
A landing page is a website or page with an attractive offer Most visitors to your landing page will be in the interest stage, so the goal of your landing page is to generate leads, not sales . The page explains the next step in the sales process and includes a compelling call to action (eg, download a white paper, watch a video, subscribe to a newsletter for an informative guide).
4. Develop an email marketing campaign
Once you've captured the email addresses of your potential customers, it's time to sell them through your email marketing campaign. Provide great content that generates interest in your products or services and the solutions you offer. Don't start selling yet; Educate your prospects first and provide valuable and helpful content through your emails.
One thing to consider is how often you want to send emails. You want to provide regular content to stay in touch, but you don't communicate often enough to get frustrated and unsubscribe. One or two e-mails per week are regular enough to keep you in touch and motivate you without getting tired of greeting each other.
What you have already learned about your prospects will help you create the right content for your email marketing campaign. Understand what your customers want to know, what problems they need to solve, or what goals they want to achieve. Also consider the reasons why they don't want to buy from you.
Once your email marketing campaign is complete, create your offer. Make it an irresistibly good and desirable prospect. This key content should entice them to make a purchase.
5. Keep in touch with existing customers.
When a customer makes a purchase, the sales funnel does its job. However, your interaction should not end there. It's important to stay in touch with your customers after they've made a purchase so they'll continue to buy from you and recommend your business to others.
There are several ways to contact buyers after the sale:
- Thank you for your purchase.
- Connect with them on social media.
- Offer coupons and discounts for future purchases.
- Post special offers and information for customers only on personal pages.
Measure the success of your sales funnel
A sales funnel is not a static tool. Once you've created a sales funnel, measure and evaluate its success to identify gaps and improve efficiency. Sales funnels should change over time as you get to know your customers, develop new products and services, and invest in new technology.
Track your conversion rates to determine the effectiveness of your sales funnel. Determine the number of potential customers who subscribe to your mailing list after clicking on various website ads. Collect data on how much they vary on specific links, download different data products, visit different pages on your site, and make purchases.
Evaluate what happens at each stage of the sales funnel. Ask these questions to determine where you need to improve your sales funnel:
- How many leads are you generating daily, weekly, and monthly from your content?
- How many customers give you their email address or contact information?
- How many buys are you getting with your latest email marketing campaign?
- How often do customers make repeat purchases?
Optimization of the sales funnel
Even if your sales funnel is doing its job, there are ways to improve it. It is important to optimize your sales funnel to make it more effective and efficient. Some parts of your sales funnel can lose you faster than others.
Follow these strategies to optimize your sales funnel:
- Pay attention to where in the sales funnel people take the next step.
- Run multiple versions of the same ad and content using different titles and phrases.
- Target content and direct to different buyers on multiple social media sites to show your content to the right people.
- A/B test your landing pages to see which ones convert the most customers
- A/B test your email campaigns by changing titles, language, layout, images, and other factors that produce the highest response rates.
- Check if your offer has a higher conversion rate than others. for example, some people respond well to free shipping, while others may prefer a discount.
- Track your customer retention rate to see how often customers return to your store.
- Track your referrals to see how many clients they refer to you
