14 Nov Put the FUN in Sales Funnel
What are Sales Funnels?
A sales funnel is the marketing term for the journey potential customers go through on the way to purchase. Some people will take longer than others to make their way down the funnel. It’s best to understand your long and short term goals.
Understanding your buyer persona(s) will go a long way in ensuring effective messaging. Know who your ideal clients are and what speaks to them. Be aware of you who are talking to and what their pain points are. Offer them ways to solve them with nothing monetary in return. Build those relationships and the money will follow. Statistics say that on average 96% of your website’s visitors aren’t ready to jump right in and make an impulse purchase so don’t waste their time and yours with sales pitches. Your content should drive people to your sales pages but should also provide quality content that is easy to access. People need to trust you and know about the thing you’re selling before they buy the thing. Sales funnel are a great way to accomplish this!
In return for providing valuable, free information you will receive their email address that you can retain for later use in email marketing campaigns and targeted outreach.
Basic Funnel Stages
Let’s breakdown the stages in more detail and how they may apply to your business.
- Awareness: You created a post on social that linked/prompted people to visit your website.
- Interest: You offer something of value for free in exchange for lead capture (e-book, recipe, tips, bonus content, etc).
- Decision: Your content informs your audience and prepares them for a purchase. Here is the point where people will decide to make a purchase or click-off. Make it easy for them. Have Paypal linked up so they don’t need to dig out a credit card, have return policies clearly listed. Anything you can do to make the decision to buy easier and transparent for them.
- Action: You offer a coupon or promotional deal tailored to fit the needs of your ideal client. Once they take the leap, follow-up immediately and have a plan in place to market to them soon after for retention.
Why do you need them
Sales funnels build brand awareness and a sense of trust with your potential clients. Funnels are great for tracking analytics and testing messaging to a select group. Sales funnels can lead to passive income streams as well leaving you more time for meetings and getting work done.
Understanding your sales funnel can also help you find the holes in the funnel. These holes are the places where visitors drop out and never convert to active clients. If you don’t understand your sales funnel, you can’t optimize it. Some platforms such as MailChimp or Constant Contact will track your analytics in e-mail marketing just like you would on your website. This allows you to pinpoint exactly where people drop off (click away) in the funnel. You can tweak things and keep checking back until you see a change.
You’re awesome!
People should know about the amazing work you do. You know your stuff! Sales funnels are a great way to check-in with existing clients and start building relationships with new ones. Your clients and online followers will appreciate the free offers you provide to share your knowledge and you’ll add to your email list in the process. You should also see an increase in your click-through rate (CTR)!
CTR: The percentage of people visiting a web page who access a hypertext link to a particular advertisement. This term can also be applied to your e-blasts or anytime an external link is present.
Need help strategizing your funnel? We can help! Advokate.net/date
