Sales funnels can be a powerful tool in your marketing arsenal to help boost sales for your business. A sales funnel helps businesses understand what’s working and what’s not. By analyzing your sales funnel, you can identify where prospects drop out and don’t convert to members or customers. Once you understand this, you can invest in marketing activities that attract more prospects, develop relevant messaging at each stage of the funnel, and convert leads.
It’s important to remember that funnels aren’t a one-size-fits-all strategy. Your funnel should be tailored to how your buyer buys, so it’s important to understand your customers habits.
What Is a Sales Funnel?
A sales funnel represents the journey that leads take from becoming aware of your brand to becoming a member or paying customer. They are most commonly based on the AIDA model.
Awareness
When a person first becomes aware of your product or service.
Interest
The prospect has learned about your company, brand, products & services, and have decided to evaluate it based on their level of interest.
Decision
The prospect is ready to buy and may be considering several options before making the purchase.
Action
The prospect becomes a member or customer by doing business with your business.
The 3 Stages in the Sales Funnel
The AIDA model can be simplified into a three-stage model:
Top of the funnel: Awareness & Discovery
In this stage, your prospect is at the beginning of the buyer’s journey. The majority of users at this stage aren’t looking to make a purchase just yet. Instead, their main goal is to learn about what the company has to offer so they can decide if they want to invest more time in learning about it. Your goal during this stage should be all about attracting as many new prospects as possible and building brand awareness for your product/service/brand.
Some popular content ideas to build awareness about your brand, products and services:
Middle of the funnel: Consideration
At this stage of the funnel, your prospects have a clearly-defined problem, and are weighing out all available solution options. They are considering whether or not your solution is the best option compared to other available solutions from your competitors. Your goal is to nurture the lead and educate them on why you have the perfect solution to their problem. Educating them on your product or service proves value, builds trust, and makes it easier for leads to make a decision on the best option to suit their needs.
Some content ideas for the consideration stage:
- Remarketing ads
- Quick informative or educational videos
- Email marketing
- Case studies
- Checklists
Bottom of the funnel: Conversion
Once your leads get to the bottom of the funnel, they are making the final decision to buy from you or one of your competitors. Your goal in this stage is to convert them from leads to members or customers, so it’s important show them why you are better than other options they may be looking at. If you can convince leads your solution is superior to the competition and can solve their unique problems, they’ll take action.
Some content ideas for the conversion stage:
- Special offers
- Testimonials
- Training videos or webinars
- Onboarding
Defining Your Funnel
There is no cookie-cutter approach to creating a good sales funnel, but the key to an effective funnel is understanding your customers. Below are some tips on building a sales funnel for your business:
Research your audience
For your sales funnel to be effective, you need to understand your audience. Create buyer personas for each distinct group. Each buyer’s journey is different, so we recommend grouping them into relevant buyer personas based on:
- The product or service they are interested in
- How they are likely to research your business, and your products and services
Implement strategies for traffic and lead generation
People need to learn about your product or service in order to buy it. With that said, you need to develop strategies to drive users to your website. Some ways you can generate traffic include digital marketing, printed mailers, and most any other type of digital or traditional marketing.
Once they are at your site, be sure you have engaging content that helps sell your business and the product or service they’re shopping for.
A sales funnel should be quantifiable, and reviewed regularly to make sure it’s still accurate. If you need help defining a sales funnel specific to your business, PMD Group can help! Contact us to learn more.