In marketing, one of the major goals of every campaign is to turn a qualified lead into a potential customer — either by curating marketing strategies for them or by building good relationships with them.
And one of the most effective ways of doing this is by creating an effective sales funnel! Business owners use this strategy to lead potential customers to a step by step process that can lead them to making a purchase.
And just like any other sales strategy or sales process today, it must be done carefully for it to be successful. If you don’t have the right understanding of how it works and each stage it goes through, there’s a high chance of your efforts going to waste.
How A Sales Funnel Works
Despite being a commonly known strategy, not a lot of businesses use it — or know how to use it wisely. As a matter of fact, recent case studies have revealed that 68% of companies are yet to identify or try a sales funnel. Additionally, the same research showed that 79% of marketing leads are never converted into paying customers.
Hence, Creatitive believes that the first step towards an effective sales funnel is better understanding of the strategy. So, let’s start with what a sales funnel is! It’s defined as the visual representation of a lead’s journey from initial contact until a completed purchase.
The top of the funnel is the widest and the bottom of the funnel is the narrowest. In each stage, the most qualified leads are being transferred to the next stage of the sales while those who are not a good fit are dropped.
Each step is divided to focus on the different phases of a consumer’s mentality while making a purchase. By using this, you can create awareness among consumers, build an interest in your products/services, strengthen relationships with existing customers, and create more conversions.
Now, how can you tell if a funnel is effective or not? Does conversion rates determine its success? Not entirely. A well curated funnel is one that improves the customer’s journey and keeps a company healthy through customer retention.
Stages of A Good Conversion Funnel
Sales funnels can be set up differently depending on a businesses’ sales model. However, most of them tend to work in generally the same way. One example of a sales funnel is this five stage model:
Awareness
Initially, potential customers are looking for solutions for their specific problem. So, they start their own research while they try to verbalize their problem.
They’re likely looking for a trusted source of information or someone they can confidently talk to. Taking a marketing perspective, they want informative content like blog posts and videos.
And one they start reading your blog posts or scrolling through your website, they become leads. Once this happens, businesses start asking questions to see if they’re qualified enough to be a potential customer!
Interest
In this stage, you’re no longer dealing with a nameless lead. You should have been able to get their name, their contacts like email addresses and have successfully defined their problem.
Now, the prospect becomes interested in your product or service because of the solution it offers. The questions asked during this phase are no longer generic. Your leads are looking into the other kinds of solutions available to them.
You start discussing what makes you different against your competitors and in return, they evaluate you. The lead then becomes qualified as you determine whether your offer fits perfectly with their problem!
Engagement
The prospect starts paying attention to offers and engaging with marketing outreach, eventually deciding to make a purchase.
They start looking into your FAQs and start asking you more questions regarding product features and other concerns. It is during this stage when your qualified leads receives your proposal and where negotiations start.
Purchase
And once your qualified leads have earned enough information to decide, they’ll make an educated purchase!
Keep these stages in mind so that you can address your target market’s needs and deliver the right messages at the right time!
Tips For An Effective Sales Funnel
Now that we’ve discussed the basics of how sales funnels work, let’s dive into some of the best practices you can do!
While gaining the attention of your target market is your first priority, reaching them simply isn’t enough. You have to be able to gain their interest, access their pain points, and convince them that what you offer is the best solution to their problem. Here are some tips for how you can do this.
1. Get to know your audience.
You need to know all about your audience’s interests and purchasing patterns. Knowing what social platforms your audience uses, how they’re influenced, what brands they purchase, and what their expectations are is essential.
2. Create a good strategy for gaining leads and getting traffic to your site.
You need to be able to access your audience, engage your attention, and get them onto your website. There are a variety of ways that you can accomplish this. Some of the most common are SEO, PPC, social media marketing, brand ambassador marketing, and email marketing.
3. Engage your audience and cultivate a relationship.
You need to be able to create a plan that allows you to make multiple contacts with your audience and engage their attention. In order for your leads to become sales, they need to be nurtured. Educate your audience, provide them with information, and convince them how great your products are. Email blasts, blog posts, social media posts, video blogging, and guest blogs are a great way to accomplish this.
4. Facilitate easy purchasing.
Once you’ve convinced your audience to make a purchase, you need the buying process to be as quick and simple as possible. Minimize the amount of clicks they need to make in order to make a purchase and how much information they need to provide.
In addition to taking the above mentioned steps, there are many tools you can use to optimize your sales funnel. ClickFunnels, Leadpages, and FunnelDash are just some of the many tools you can use to perfect your sales funnel.
However, it is important to know that managing these tools can be complicated and time consuming, and not something most business owners and entrepreneurs can accomplish on their own. Not to mention, you have to do all the work of creating a sales funnel in the first place. That’s why most businesses hire a marketing agency, like ours, to handle these tasks for them. Additionally, an agency can help you with other aspects of your marketing, so you don’t have to go to different sources for everything.
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At Creatitive, we’re experts at creating effective sales funnels. We’ve helped many entrepreneurs, small businesses, and athletes find powerful solutions that allow them to grow their business and reach their audience online.