One of the ways to ensure that you make sales that will grow your business is to employ a sales funnel. Not only should this marketing strategy be employed, but you should also have a good understanding of the stages in the funnel.
With such an understanding, you can employ techniques that will enable you to increase the number of people that move from one stage to another. Such traffic could have a significant effect on the growth of your business. Read this article to learn how to increase foot traffic to your business.
Since this is important, we will reveal all you need to know about a sales funnel and how you can take advantage of it to improve the sales of your company.
Let’s begin, shall we?
What Is It?
A sales funnel refers to the steps that an individual will take to become a purchasing customer.
To break it down, let us use this simple scenario:
When folks come in contact with your product or brand for the first time, they can be said to be at the first level of the funnel. This is the same as the people that pass by a store.
Some of the folks that pass by might choose to come into the store can be said to have moved to the next stage. Hence, the individuals in this next group are those that have chosen to interact with your company, brand, or product.
Moving on, they might see a product that catches their interest and add it to their cart. With this action, they have moved to the next stage. Once they make the final purchase at the checkout, they have successfully reached the last level.
This process is applicable for all businesses irrespective of the services or products you offer and the platform through which you offer them. It is possible to use a single marketing channel for the sales funnel or you could use multiple channels.
Hence, you could make use of marketing channels such as a store, website, sales team, personal consultation, and email. Visit https://digitalmarketingphilippines.com/ to learn more about digital marketing channels and some effective ones that you can use.
Why Is It Important?
A sales funnel is an illustration of the path potential customers take. Hence, when it is properly understood, you can find out where the leakages are in the line that is preventing conversions.
When you have such in-depth understanding, it becomes easier to optimize your funnel to lead to more conversions. Therefore, this tool is important because it allows you to influence the movement of visitors through each stage until you get them to convert.
How Does It Work?
Many experts have come up with different terminologies for the stages in a sales funnel. For this article, we will use four of the ones that are most common as we explain each stage.
First of all, when a visitor comes to your website via whatever channel, such a person becomes a prospect. They can then browse through your blog or products. You can then ask them to become part of your mailing list by providing their email address. You can ask for their phone numbers if you intend to reach them via call or text.
If the person provides their contact details, they are now regarded as a lead. At this point, you can market your services or products to them via email, text, or phone. You can choose to use all three but be careful so that you don’t overwhelm them in the process.
Usually, a lead will revisit your website especially after you’ve contacted them with information regarding new posts, special offers, or any interesting message.
Like a typical funnel, the sales funnel gets smaller as people move from one stage to the next. This is expected as the prospects are usually more than the buyers who occupy the bottom level.
With that said, let’s get a better of the 4 stages we mentioned above…
Sales Funnel Stages
These stages are the representation of the mindset of your potential customers. As a result, you need to approach individuals at every stage differently. This will ensure that they move to the next stage.
Below are the stages:
1. Awareness
This refers to the point where you catch the person’s attention. There are different things that could lead to this; however, the bottom line is that they are now conscious of your offers and business.
Some customers buy immediately if the chemistry, time, and place are right. However, the norm is that you will need to apply more effort to persuade them to engage more.
2. Interest
At this point, the customer is making research and comparisons regarding your offer. This is where you will provide them with helpful content. This content is usually free and it is essential that it is.
If you choose to sell from the get-go, you might end up pursuing the prospect. Instead of doing that, provide them with helpful content that allows them to see your wealth of experience. This will establish a level of trust in their heart.
You should also tell them to contact you for further assistance as you are more than eager to help out. By doing this, you will form a bond with them. We recommend you read this to learn how to build a relationship with your customers.
3. Decision
When a customer reaches this stage then it means they are ready to purchase your product. In quite a good number of instances, the prospect still has other options they could choose from apart from you.
Therefore, this moment is critical and demands swift action. Hence, you need to make them an offer that they can’t resist. For example, if they are buying online, you can provide free shipping especially if your competitors charge for it.
Whatever action you choose, ensure that your offer is so good that they will not consider the other options they previously had in mind.
4. Action
With an irresistible offer, the logical thing that most folks will do is to take action and buy the product. With that act, they have become purchasing customers.
When a purchase is made, you shouldn’t rest on your oars and think that there is nothing left to do. Instead, you should ensure that you retain the patronage of the customer.
Some clever ways to do this include expressing gratitude after a purchase, asking for feedback, providing tech support, etc. Visit https://blog.startquestion.com/ to find out why customer feedback is important to your business.
Conclusion
In the article above, we have discussed the important things you need to know about a sales funnel and how you can understand it to grow your business.
