Primarily, a sales funnel is an inbound marketing tool to track the progress of leads as they progress from prospects to customers. In simpler terms, it is the journey potential customers go through on the way to purchase.
Building a killer sales funnel with your website is core for one to start earning money from your digital marketing efforts.
There are four key stages in an ultimate sales funnel:
1. Awareness
The first stage of the sales funnel is called the “awareness” level. This is where people first become aware of your product or service. This might be through social media, advertisements, blogs, or even colleagues mentioning the same.
Your organization’s own sales and marketing ability influence how and why people move down the sales funnel.
2. Interest.
Once a potential customer has heard about your product, their level of interest over the same will hugely influence their decision whether to proceed and purchase or not. This consequently leads to the third stage of the sales funnel.
3.Decision
After the first two steps, the customer is ready to buy. They will be comparing all of their options at this point, which is why it’s important that your product stands out from everything else.
This is the right time to make the most irresistible offer that you can. You can offer various packages, options, free shipping, and discounts in order to sway prospects towards buying.
4. Action
Action is the final step in your sales funnel. At this point, your customer makes a sale or decides to leave without making a purchase. If they make a purchase, they are now part of your company’s ecosystem. Customer retention is important by expressing gratitude for purchases.
However, if they do not buy, you can create nurture campaigns to make sure that your customers who are on the fence about trying your product or using your service remain aware of you and eventually make the decision to try it.
After understanding the key stages of a sales funnel, it is now possible to create a sales funnel that will increase buyers to your products.
a. You need to build a landing page in order to capture your leads.
Make sure your landing page is clear about who you are and what makes you distinct from the competition. It should get prospects to fill in their contact details so you can continue to communicate with them.
b. Provide a valuable offer
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to get email contacts without giving your prospects something in return. So, on your landing page, provide a freebie that’ll persuade them to part with their contact information. These might include free e-books, free webinars, or free online courses.
c. Nurturing your customers
This includes offers such as discounts or free trials. Basically, it is anything that can sway a potential customer towards buying your product. In addition, it is important to keep in touch with the buyers to ensure that in case they need the same product, you are the one at the top of their list.
d. Reiteration
After finalizing the steps named above, it is important to keep on repeating the process in order to maximize on new customers.
After that, you need to find ways of capturing more leads and updating/upgrading your lead magnet and offers as appropriate so that you get the most sales.
