Being an entrepreneur, one of your major goals is to turn visitors into long term customers. Even if you’ve already established a successful business, you know you need new customers to join the club to maintain the level that you’ve attained. This is why marketing plays an Important role in a Business. Without which it is probably impossible to reach your potential customers. That is why, creating & utilizing a sales funnel in the process of attracting new customers can be beneficial.
Table of contents
What is a sales funnel?
In the terms of marketing, a sales funnel is when a prospect is moving forward to make a purchase. Ever wondered why it is called a sales funnel? Because of its diagram form; the top, middle and the bottom. Which is a match to the name sales funnel.
The top of the funnel is the marketing plan which you create that will appeal and attract your target audience. For instance, creating a new web page for your brand or advertising about your outlet.
The middle of the funnel is where the visitors visit your store/website to get an overview about your brand, products and services that you offer.
The bottom of the funnel is where the visitors become your customers by making a purchase. For instance, purchasing from your offline store or making an online purchase from your website.
In short, a sales funnel is a buying journey of visitors where they get to know about your brand and eventually become your customers. They can be both new visitors or brand loyal customers.
Before we dive deep into create a powerful and effective sales funnel, let’s have a look at the 4 stages of a sales funnel.
The 4 parts of a sales funnel also known as The AIDA Model (Awareness, Interest, Decision and Action) are basically the 4 stages that your potential customers move through. It all starts with learning about your brand & your products and services and ends with making (or not making) a purchase. Each step demands a different approach from your end while you communicate with your potential customers through all these stages.
Awareness
The first stage is where the individuals become aware about your products and services. Advertising makes it easy to help you find the customers who are interested in your products and services. People may come across your brand through various ways such as online advertising, word of mouth, google search (when someone is particularly interested in the kind of products you sell and your brand’s website or social media handle shows up in their search feed.) Some may even visit your store or website to learn more about you.
Interest
At the second stage, people are already aware about your brand, your products and services. In this stage, depending on their level of interest, the prospects will evaluate your brand. This is the right time to educate them more about your brand. You can do this by publishing great content in the form of brand promotion. Make sure you don’t compel them to make any purchase as this will push the prospects away and they will eventually take a step back. Your aim here is to subtly inform the prospects about your area of expertise.
Decision
The decision-making stage is where the prospect will dive even more deep in their research. They will compare the price & packaging and also several other factors that will help them to choose the right product. One of the best ways to crack the deal is to come up with your own unique offer. For instance, an attractive discount or free shipping or extended warranty or any combination of these. The sole purpose of coming up with the best offer is to make your offer so irresistible that the prospect is left with no choice but to purchase your product.
Action
The decision-making stage is where the prospect will dive even more deep in their research. They will compare the price & packaging and also several other factors that will help them to choose the right product. One of the best ways to crack the deal is to come up with your own unique offer. For instance, an attractive discount or free shipping or extended warranty or any combination of these. The sole purpose of coming up with the best offer is to make your offer so irresistible that the prospect is left with no choice but to purchase your product.
How To Create an Effective Sales Funnel?
Learn about your target audience
Your products and services may not be a perfect fit for everyone. That being said, you know you are going to target a certain group of people who will be interested in buying your products and services. The work here is to do the market research and find your target audience. Also, be ready with the content through which you will catch their attention. Post eye-catching content on all the social media platforms. If you’re willing to take the paid route, then run ads. Do the research and place ads where your target audience is highly active.
Create a lead magnet page
Prospects need a place to land when they come across your ads. The best way is to redirect them to your lead magnet page where they can learn more about your brand. People will arrive at your lead magnet page in more than one way; either they’ve clicked on the link at your Social Media Page, or they landed here through your ad campaign. Your lead magnet page is one of your biggest chances to leave a good impression in the prospect’s mind. Make sure the lead magnet page is clear and appealing enough that describes in detail about your brand’s essence. Also, try to grab the contact information of your prospects. This makes it easy to communicate with them about why you can be their best choice.
Can you offer anything that is valuable?
Prospects will happily give their email address if they’ll receive a free perk in return. Here you can provide value by offering a free e-book or a free webinar that can be beneficial and useful to them.
Encourage the prospect
You know the prospect is interested when they provide you their email address. Encourage the prospect by providing them the Content that will help them Understand your Brand at a deeper level. Do not suffocate their mailbox by sending plenty of emails. This can actually turn against you as the prospects will lose their interest in receiving a ton of emails from your end. Ideally, sending one or two emails in a week is enough to catch their attention.
Lock the deal
This is perhaps the most important part of creating a sales funnel which many people forget about. The key is to come up with the offer that no one can resist to take action on, and eventually you can lock the deal. For instance, provide a free trial, bonus products deal, and appealing discounts but also give them something they can take an action on.
Final takeaway in Creating an effective Sales Funnel
Keep it moving. This is literally a never ending process. Whether you seal the deal or not, you need to retain the existing customers. Either way, your communication must be on with all of them. Provide best rewards and offers for the existing customers. And, keep coming up with innovative ideas that will further attract many new leads.
You keep getting better at create a sales funnel with time. Your previous experiences will help you a lot while creating a new one. By analyzing the previous sales funnel, you can avoid all the mistakes while creating a new one. Analyze every minor detail and see how you can get better at it.
Even a small detail such as a font size can impact the entire game. Take your time to study in depth about your previous sales funnel as that holds the key to improvement. The goal here is to showcase that you offer quality products and services without making the prospects feel compelled for the same.
By the way we have found this article on Sales Funnel to be very helpful.
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