A sales funnel is a step-by-step process that allows you to guide your potential customer from not knowing anything about you or your offer (cold lead) right through finding out about your brand, product or service (warm leads) to being ready to make a purchase (hot leads) and then completing the purchase.
The sales funnel process is broken down into four stages whether you are selling a product or service. These are Awareness, Interest, Decision, Action. Think of an actual funnel with cold leads go in the top and hot leads end up at the bottom. At each stage you will lose people who aren’t interested in continuing so you want as many people going in the top as possible. There are then things you can tweak, refine and test at each stage to improve conversion.
To compare with a real world example imagine someone deciding to buy a car, getting the person to walk through your car sales show room is the initial awareness. This can be done through advertising directly to the client, cold calling, leafleting, word of mouth etc. Next you have to find out what car they are interested in and show them the correct make, model, colour etc. Then it is decision time. This is overcoming any objections they may have and closing the sale. Finally they take action, hand over their credit card or bank details and make the purchase.
Online it is pretty much the same process but more automated enabling you to reach many more potential customers. Awareness is driving traffic to your webpage, article, sales funnel, landing page etc. Interest is the person reading about your offer and what it can do for them. Decision is where you overcome objections through testimonials and social proof. Action is where they click the buy button, sign up to your email list or whatever it is you are trying to get them to do.
For a sales funnel first of all you need a product or service to offer. Online Funnels can be used to promote and sell goods, online courses, promote your business, affiliate marketing, MLM etc. Just about anything you want to promote or sell can be done through a funnel. It isn’t always the case that you want to sell direct on a funnel, it may be that you just want to capture the customers details and add them to your email list.
When you know what you want to promote you can then build a sales funnel. Builderall is the most comprehensive online funnel builder and it comes with a lot of prebuilt funnels to save you time when you sign up to the premium package. You can get access to that for 30 days for just 1 euro here.
The crucial part of the success of your sales funnel is to drive targeted traffic to it. The more awareness that you can generate the better. This can be done through paid advertisements on the social media networks and search engines or through free methods such as posting on social media, joint ventures and email lists.
Interest is taken care of through the copywriting, text, sales video or webinar that you offer. There is generally an emotional aspect to people who decide to purchase. The best copywriters in the world understand this. You can either learn to write the copy yourself or outsource it to a freelancer.
When it comes to decision time from the potential client there will be last minute objections but the best sales people in the world know how to overcome these objections. Online this is done through your social proof such as testimonials, pushing the benefits and creating urgency in the purchase with things such as a limited time offer and countdown clock.
If you have carried out each of the stages correctly then people will take the action you want them to which should ensure you achieve your goal. Once you have converted the prospect to a client you should then aim to keep them as a customer and enable them to make repeat purchases from you again in the future.
Top Tip
If you are using paid advertising you will need to monitor it closely to ensure you are making more from sales than you are spending on advertising. Marketing is vital to any business. A sales funnel is no different. You can spend years building the worlds best sales funnel but if no one sees it then you aren’t going to make any sales.
Recommended Reading
Social Media Marketing – How to Use Paid Advertising and Sales Funnels on Facebook & Instagram for Maximum Revenue Growth.
Sales Funnel Management for Small Business Owners – Strategies on How to Setup a Highly Automated Funnel for Your Business (That Actually Makes Money).
Sites to use
Builderall – Complete online solution to start building and promoting your website including hosting, email list, sales funnels, image editors etc.