Are You Ready to Build a Full Sales Funnel? Here’s What You Need to Know

Each step of the sales funnel has an impact on consumer behavior. You need to know them very well.

If you know the stages, you can use tactics to increase the number of people moving from one stage to the next.

It can have crazy effects on your business.

Let’s say you double the number of people in 2 stages of your funnel. You double the number of leads and the percentage of closed customers, providing you with four times the number of current customers each month.

Significant and managing your sales funnel is one of the essential concepts in business.

Let’s dive in.

What is a Sales Funnel?

The sales funnel consists of all the steps someone has to take to become your customer.

Let’s look at a sales funnel in a shop.

People who are at the top of the sales through your shop. A certain percentage of them decide to join, and they are next in the funnel.

A customer sees a shelf of T-shirts for sale. The customer browses the shelf; they are in the next step of the funnel. The customer then selects four T-shirts and goes to the checkout. If all goes well, he completes the purchase and reaches the end of the funnel. He is on the last step.

This process happens in all businesses in one form or another. Your sales could consist of:

• Retail shop
• Sales team
• Website
• Email address
• Personal inquiry

Every marketing channel can be part of your sales funnel. And your funnel can span multiple channels.

Why is a sales funnel important?

Your sales funnel illustrates the path that potential customers follow.

Understanding your funnel can help you find the holes in the funnel, i.e., the places where leads abandon and don’t convert.

You need to understand your sales funnel to optimize it. However, you should know that it can influence how visitors move through the funnel and whether they convert. Below we will explain in detail how the funnel works.

The Sales Funnel Explained: How it Works?

Although many terms are used to describe the different stages of the sales funnel, we will use the four most common terms to explain how each stage works as a customer moves from visitor to prospect to lead to buyer.

A visitor visits your website through a Google search or a social link. The visitor may look at some of your blog posts or browse your product offering. At some point, you offer him the chance to sign up for an email list. He is now a prospect.

When the visitor fills out your form, they become a lead. You can now engage the customer outside your website, for example, by email, phone, SMS, or all three.

Potential customers often return to your website when you contact them with special offers, information about new blog posts, or other exciting news. You can also offer a coupon code.

The sales funnel narrows as visitors pass through it. This is because you have more potential customers than buyers at the top of the funnel, and your messages need to be increasingly targeted.

Understand the 4 Sales Funnel Stages

The four stages of the sales funnel can be easily recognized by the acronym AIDA: Awareness, Interest, Decision, and Action. These four stages represent the mindset of your potential customer.

Each step requires a different approach from the salesperson because you want to send the right message at the right time.

Awareness

This is the moment when a consumer’s attention is first captured. It could be a tweet, a Facebook post shared by a friend, a Google search, or something else entirely.

Your probable customer becomes aware of your business and what you offer.

When the chemistry is right, sometimes customers buy immediately. It is a suitable place, right time scenario. The consumer has already researched and knows that you offer something desirable at a reasonable price.

More often, the awareness phase is more of a pitch. You are trying to get potential customers to return to your website and take a closer look at your business.

Interest

In the interest stage, customers research, compare shops and consider their options when they can come up with great content that helps them without taking advantage of them.

If you initially present your product or service, you discourage potential customers and scare them away. The goal is to demonstrate your expertise, help the customer make an informed decision, and offer as much help as possible.

Decision

The decision stage of the sales funnels is when the customer is ready to buy, and they may consider two or three options, hopefully including you.

The time when you make your best offer. It may be free shipping, while most competitors charge a discount code or an additional product. Whatever it is, make it so irresistible that your customer can’t wait to take advantage of it.

Action

At the end of the sales funnel, the customer takes action, buying your product or service and becoming part of your company’s ecosystem.

Your job is done after a customer reaches the funnel’s end. The customer and also the marketer need to act. You want to do everything you can to turn one purchase into 10, 10 into 100, and so on.

In other words, focus on customer loyalty. Thank your customer for their purchase, encourage them to contact you with feedback, and be available for technical support if needed.

Example of an effective sales funnel

Imagine you have an e-commerce business selling old posters. You know that your target group spends a lot of time on Facebook and that your target customers are men and women aged 25 to 65.

You place a great Facebook ad that leads visitors to a landing page. You ask your potential customer to sign up to your email list in exchange for a lead magnet on the page. Pretty simple.

Now you have leads instead of prospects. They are moving through the funnel.

Over the next few weeks, send out content that tells your subscribers about old posters, gives them ideas on how to create them, and shows them how to put them up.

At the end of your email, offer a voucher for 10% off a customer’s first order. And bang! You’re selling old posters like crazy, and everyone wants what you’re selling.

Then you add those exact customers to a new email list. You ask them to come back and ask for more. You give them ideas for gallery walls, advise them on maintaining their posters and suggest posters to give away. You start the process all over again but with different content.

There you have it:

Awareness: you created a Facebook ad to drive traffic to your website.

Interest: You offer individuality of value in exchange for lead nurturing.

Decision: Your content notifies your audience and prepares them to buy.

Action: Offer a voucher that your potential customers can’t resist and then target them to increase customer loyalty.

How to Build a Sales Funnel Fast

However, there are some steps you should keep in mind before starting this process.

Step 1: Analyze Your Audience’s Behavior

The more you know about your target group, your sales funnel will be more effective. You don’t market to everyone; you market to people who match what you sell.

Where do they click when browsing, and how long do they spend on a particular page? All this data will help you refine your buyer personas.

Step 2: Capture the attention of your audience

Your sales funnel can only work if you can engage your customers, which means getting your content in front of your target audience.

Go organic and publish tons of content on all your platforms. Vary it up with infographics, videos, and other types of content.

If you’re willing to spend more money, run ads. The ideal place to place these ads depends on where your target audience is. If you’re in the B2B space, LinkedIn ads may be the perfect fit.

Step 3: Create a landing page

Your ad or other content needs to take your potential customers somewhere. Ideally, you want to direct them to a landing page with an introductory offer.

Since you still need to improve the sales funnel, you should focus on generating leads rather than driving sales.

A landing page should direct the visitor to the next step.

You need a clear call to action that tells them exactly what to do, whether downloading a free e-book or watching an educational video.

Step 4: Create a drip email campaign

Target your leads by email by providing them with great content. Do this regularly, but only sometimes. One or two emails a week should be enough.

Build on the sale by educating your customers first – what do they want to learn, and what obstacles and objections need to be overcome to get them to buy?

Make a fantastic offer at the end of your drip campaign. It is the content that will inspire your customers to act.

Step 5: Keep in touch

Remember your existing customers. Instead, keep in touch with them. Thank them for their purchases, offer them more discount codes, and engage them on your social networks.

Measuring the Success of a Sales Funnel

Your sales may need adjustments as your business grows; you learn more about your customers and diversify your products and services. That’s OK.

An excellent way to estimate the success of your sales funnel is to track your conversion rates.

How many people, for example, sign up for your email list after clicking on a Facebook ad?

Pay close observation to each stage of the sales funnel:

• Are you capturing the attention of enough consumers with your initial content?
• Do your expectations trust you enough to give you their contact information?
• Have you fixed purchases from your email campaign and other marketing efforts?
• Are real customers coming back to buy from you?

Significant answers to these questions will tell you where to adjust your sales funnel.

Why do you need to optimize your sales funnel?

The truth is that your potential customers have many choices. You want them to select your products or services, but you can’t force them. Instead, it would be best if you marketed efficiently.

With a tight, optimized sales funnel, you’re guessing what your prospects want, and if you get it incorrect, you lose the sale.

How to optimize your sales funnel

You can optimize your sales funnel in many ways. The important places to focus are where consumers move on to the next point in the funnel.

We’re talking about Facebook ads. They may be very similar, but target them to different buyer personas and use Facebook’s targeting features to ensure those ads seem in front of your target audience. Don’t run just one ad, and run 10 or 20.

It takes time, but you’ll reach many people and turn leads more efficiently.

You can also test your email campaigns. Change language, images, offers and designs to determine your audience’s response.

However, the best way to enhance your sales funnel is to pay attention to the results.

Begin at the top of the funnel. Whether paid or organic, you’re creating content to draw attention to your brand and inspire people to click on your CTA. If one section of the content doesn’t work, try another.

Make sure the offer and CTA imitate the content of your blog post or Facebook ad, or any other assets you’ve used to drive traffic there. Test the headline, body text, images, and CTA to find out what works best.

When you ask people at the action stage to buy from you, A/B test your offer – does free shipping work better than a 5% discount? These small things can make a big difference to your revenue.

And finally, track your customer retention rate – do people come back to buy from you for the second, fifth, and twentieth time? Do they recommend you to their friends?

Your goal is to keep your brand at the top. If you always satisfy your audience, you’ll have no reason to look somewhere.

wrapping up

Creating and raising a sales funnel takes time. It’s hard work. But it’s the only way to remain in a competitive market.

As unlikely as it may seem, a detail as small as font choice can affect conversions. And if you ask people to buy from you too rapidly, you’ll drive them away.

Take the time to create a sales funnel that enacts what you want and what your audience wants. Cultivate it over time, modify your approach to the different sales funnel stages, and discover why your efforts aren’t working.

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