In this article, you’ll explore what is a sales funnel and how to build your first online sales funnel in 2024?
As an entrepreneur, it’s crucial to grasp the significance of marketing, as it is the linchpin of your business success. Neglecting marketing could lead to the eventual decline of your business. If you haven’t already dedicated time and energy to refining your marketing strategies, now is the opportune moment to commence. A beneficial initial step is to implement a well-structured sales funnel.
A sales funnel is a vital instrument that can guide you in enhancing your sales process, pinpointing areas for improvement. Elevating the performance of your sales funnel should be a top goal if you aim to boost your sales. An effective sales funnel provides salespeople with valuable insights into their potential buyer’s though processes, decisions and challenges.
Although a sales funnel is crucial for today’s business, almost 68% of organizations have yet to recognize or attempt to gauge its significance. Another static reveals that 79% of marketing leads don’t turn into paying customers, primarily because of the lack of a sales funnel.
Table of Contents
What is a Sales Funnel?
A sales funnel is a marketing concept that outlines the steps a potential customer should follow to buy a product or service. It comprises three main components:
Top of the funnel
Getting people interested in your brand, for instance, by promoting your physical store or your website’s landing page to attract potential customers.
Middle of the funnel
It includes all the parts of your sales process before the sale, for instance, people testing on products or services in your store or website visitors knowing the advantages of your products or services.
Bottom of the funnel
Finalizing a sale and caring for customers after their purchase, for example, customers making payments at the checkout or offering special upgrades to loyal customers.
Stages of Sales Funnel
Typically, potential customers go through the four stages in sales funnel where they become familiar with your product or service and make decisions to buy it.
The four stages commonly known as AIDA are as follow:
- Awareness
- Interest
- Decision
- Action
Awareness
Grabbing your customers attention is the first and utmost priority. The first thing you need to do, in order to attract a customer, is promote your business through a combination of paid and organic methods. This will encourage the user to do an in-depth exploration of your website. And will allow them to learn more about the product or service that you offer.
Interest
The indicators that show is the consumer is showing any interest in your product or service are research and inquiry placements. In order to engage your customers you can start by writing compelling content. However, be cautious not to come across as too aggressive. Keep in mind that this decision isn’t final at this stage, and trying to sell them might drive them away.
Decision
At this stage, the prospects makes the decision to purchase and want to take advantage of your offering. They pay more attention on what you provide and start comparing it to other options.
Action
When the prospect takes action, often in the form of a purchase, they become your customer. While the sale is finalized in this phase, the sales process continues. Your focus is to maintain customer retention for future purchases. Continue to provide valuable content and appealing offers to fostering customers loyalty.
Steps to Build Your First Sales Funnel
Know Your Target Audience
The one aspect you need to be mindful of is a solid understanding of your target audience. It is of pivotal importance that you understand your audience. The reason? Because a solid understanding of audience it is the foundation of the sales funnel. When you reach this stage, the most important step is to engage relevant people. As the more relevant people you engage, the larger will be your potential customer base. Your research must cover the following factors:
- What customers are trying to solve
- Area of interest of your audience
- Buyer’s preferred social media platforms
- Know the things that customers find annoying
Create a Landing Page
Landing page is the first utmost place for customers to contact with your company and also a significant point for numerous marketing initiatives. It’s the destination individuals arrive at after clicking on an advertisement, a social media post, or when they register for an account. To craft an affective landing page, you’ll need the following components:
- Attractive headline
- Call to Actions
- A featured image
- Amazing copywriting
Offer value
The best way to attract an audience is by offering the something that benefits them. To catch their attention there are two perks that you can offer. The first perk is discounts, because what human doesn;t appreciate a goof discount. And the second one being free valuable resources. These valuable resources include anything from white papers to informative videos to checklists related to your products and services. These will help to grab the attention of audience.
Plan on Generating Traffic
You need to implement different strategies to generate traffic to your website. Follow these steps for this purpose:
- Influencer marketing
- PPC campaigns
- SEO
- Guest posting
- Landing page optimization
- Social media marketing
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