Ready to launch a successful sales funnel?
Let’s state the obvious: having a well-prepared sales funnel offers good results.
To put it simply, it could be increased sales productivity, more revenue, faster response times, and more.
Why is a Sales Funnel Necessary?
Despite its status, many businesses overlook this process completely and venture into the fight blindfolded. You would not wish that for your business, would you? Which is why it is important that you understand what the different stages of the sales funnel are. Why? You see, it’s similar to building a house. What if your builders had no idea what went into the construction of your house, and just went about placing bricks together randomly?
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We doubt you’d be pleased with the outcome, or that you’d feel sheltered in construction put together by inexperienced professionals. The same goes for your business. Building a sales funnel for your business can give you a relationship-focused structure to follow, preventing you from giving your offering too early. Rather than pushing your prospects on your services and products, the sales funnel allows you to educate your clients to make fitted, educated purchasing decisions.
While the sales funnel’s steps can fluctuate, it typically trails the same process: awareness, evaluation and interest, desire, action and re-engagement.
Each stage of the sales funnel requires you to provide specific information, content, or solutions that help your potential customers move even closer to making a purchase. At first, research and preparation may not look like an actual stage in the sales funnel- however that’s particularly important to generate future success.
Stage 0 in the sales funnel lies in understanding your business’s core and developing a foundation that matures long-lasting, more valuable customer relationships. Not only that, but throughout this stage, you will also get to know your target audience beyond just a possible payday.
Awareness
The purpose of this stage is to optimize the visibility of your brand and start gathering leads. Since you want to ensure you’re targeting the right audience, it’s also beneficial to cast a wide net at this stage.
The awareness stage is meant to focus attention on your brand; however, you don’t need to push any particular service or product. Instead, you have to emphasize the share of ideas and solutions.
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Here are a few ways you can grow awareness about your brand:
- SEO
- Sponsored social media posts
- Independent research
- Videos
- eBooks and whitepapers
- Webinars
- In-person events
- Infographics
That’s why understanding sales funnels is critical to your brand awareness – it keeps it informative but also interesting and fun, which is what you need to stand out in an already crowded space.
The key here is to come up with content that will entice your target audience and attract their attention where they already spend a great deal of their time – even when it’s not the “best practice” platforms, such as Twitter or Facebook.
You can also identify a specific action or process that would push the lead to the next stage of the sales funnel, such as registering for a webinar or signing up for your newsletter. If the conversion rate doesn’t seem to increase, then you’ll want to revisit the content you’re making. Start looking for content that may be more attractive to your audience or even for better posting alternatives.
Interest and Evaluation
Once someone passes the awareness phase, they will automatically enter in the evaluation and interest stage of the sales funnel. Once you get to this stage, it means you’ve attracted a prospect’s attention, and they want more about a particular concern, idea, or question.
The main task at this point is to mature a relationship with your fresh lead and determine what their end goals are. To do so, you will need to develop a consistent message and a brand voice that your prospects can relate to and share it through different content platforms.
- Blog posts
- Email campaigns
- Chatbots
- Free trials
- Social media accounts
The interest and evaluation phase will prove even more efficient if you choose to put out feelers and see what your prospects engage with.
You want to track what posts they engage with on social media or what links they click in your email campaigns – in doing so, you will be able to better understand what issues they’re facing and what solutions they might be searching for. Also, be sure to track any question you lead might have or additional information they require.
Desire
At this phase of the sales funnel, your leads are already full-blown prospects. How so? Not only you’ve captivated their attention and got them interested in your product – they’re also considering making an acquisition. However, that doesn’t mean you are ready to close the deal. They aren’t completely sure if your service or product is the right solution for them. They’re going to delve through how well your offer suits their current business model, their budget, and what kind of results they should expect.
Your goal? At this phase, you will need to prove your prospects of what life would look like as a customer. Show them what type of return they can expect on their investment into your services and products and make it as simple as possible for them to fire it up.
Action
Once you’ve properly nurtured your lead, you’re set and ready to close the deal and convert your prospects.
However, the purpose of this phase isn’t just to get your almost-buyer to purchase something. It means you should also push them to success with your service or product. You want to provide them with educational resources that will help familiarize- and, more importantly – incorporate the new solution into their day-to-day lives.
Ensure you come up with a clear training system – regardless of whether that’s through a phone call, email, or webinar. Also, tracking your customers’ behavior will help you identify possible concerns and questions. Give them some time to get acquainted with the service or products and then check in again.
Re-engagement
It goes without saying that loyal customers are the best thing that could happen to a brand. About a 5% increase in customer retention can reach 25% to 95% growth in profit. And loyal and content customers aren’t just likely to share with their friends, but to buy as well.
Therefore, re-engaging with an audience who had a positive experience with your service or product can inspire them to make an extra purchase, as well as give you recommendations that lead to new customers.
At this phase in the sales funnel, you need to focus on maintaining all your long-term relationships going. Perhaps by introducing new products and features that customers might be interested in or inspiring your customers to become ambassadors for your brand.