If you’re in business there’s no way you’ve never heard the words “sales funnel’ before. My father owns a business, and a few years back it’s all he ever talked about. Sales funnels for leads on your website, sales funnels for selling eBooks, sales funnels for selling online classes and learning programs, there was a sales funnel for everything. You may be surprised to find out that not only do sales funnels work, but having one set up essential for business Thankfully the sales funnel trend of making outlandish claims and attracting customers with gaudy landing pages are long gone. These days it’s all about providing for your potential customers. “Give great value and it shall be given unto you”, or something like that. This notion is the start of your modern sales funnel and the part that will set your potential customers up for a journey to becoming a buyer. This first stage, the marketing stage (AKA the awareness stage) is where most people will hear about your business, and is consequently the largest stage of the funnel. Most people won’t move onto the second stage, but it is where you will be reaching all the people that actually do care about what you’re selling. In this first stage, you’ll want to make sure your marketing, your content, your advertising and outreach are all reaching the right people. To move people down the funnel and into the second stage your marketing needs to serve one purpose: to get people interested in what you’re selling. Thanks the internet it’s now easier than ever to advertise your product and market your services! Unfortunately, it also means there is a ridiculous amount of competition for a piece of the attention pie. In fact, researchers from Yankelovich, Inc found that the average person sees five thousand ads a day! In 2007, yep, 12 years ago people saw more ads than they ever wanted to, and the number is infinitely bigger today. It’s at the point where most people’s brains have learned to straight-up ignore ads, a phenomenon dubbed “banner blindness To combat this, your marketing in this first stage of the funnel needs to be specific to the audience your trying to reach, it needs to be engaging, and it needs to provide a ton of value. It’s the reason most big businesses these days have a full-time content creation team, all to grab people’s interest and prime them for the next stage of the funnel. Modern online advertising tools are often used exclusively to aid in this, with re-marketing targeting users and potential customers who have already shown interest, and many ads advertising free offers designed to generate interest, such as eBooks, webinars, free introductory services and more. If you’re looking to improve your funnel, you can try this yourself. Write a few blog articles, market an eBook, offer a free consultation, quote calculator or another service specific to your business and start adding value to the first stage of your funnel. Then promote on social media, search engines, video, your website and other channels, targeting the people who are already looking for a business like yours. Stage 2 is where sales funnel management really starts to matter. It’s where the entire sales process happens, and where you actually start creating customers. So if you thought your ads were doing the selling for you, you may want to refine your strategy. Customers are created on the sales pages of your website and through that first phone call. Which also happens to be where most leads are lost. To start turning more leads into customers, this is where you should start. Sit down and map out the stages of your sales process. If you’re a service provider, it might look something like this. You should be able to identify a similar process in your business, complete with all things that go into each stage, and where people often start saying “no”. If you’ve put the hard yards into value offering, there’s a good chance your leads will be ready to buy immediately. Otherwise, you may have to follow up two, three times, or even more and clearly explain your position, building that relationship. If you’re selling a product, or running an eCommerce business, your product sales pages are the salesmen for your business. Otherwise, it’s your job to guide them through your funnel and show them all the reasons why they want to buy from you. If you’re operating online, implementing digital marketing strategies such as remarketing (mentioned above), an email autoresponder. Often the first person to answer to a lead’s interest is the one that makes the sale. In fact, researchers found that the odds of a lead entering the sales process or buying are 21 times greater if they’re contacted within the first 5 minutes of inquiry. Setting up a system that reaches out to your leads right when they show interest, either through an email with marketing automation software or by calling them is a must. At this stage of the funnel, you’ve made the sale and created a customer. Congrats! But that doesn’t mean you can just forget and ignore them. Here your customers will demand the most in-depth attention. It may not be as frequent, but it’s where your business really needs to shine. It’s what you’re selling after all! However, it’s important to remember that existing customers are just as valuable, if not more so, than new ones. While a lot of your existing customers will use your services again or buy more of what you’re selling, many more will continue to read the content you’re publishing, the value you’re adding in stage one. They may even share it and refer you to other people, which is even more reason to create value for existing and potential customers alike. You never know where a lead could come from, and making sure you’re ready to provide the best service when it happens is essential. If you don’t have a sales funnel mapped out, grab some paper right now and map out the key points. Simply knowing the journey your customers take to buying your product is valuable, and can help you identify flaws and gaps in both your marketing and your sales processes.Stage 1: Reaching the Right Market
Stage 2: Making the Sale
Stage 3: Just the Beginning
