What is a sales funnel?
A sales funnel is simply a process that illustrates how your prospects turn into your customers. The ones who are highly engaged with your business travel to the bottom and bring sales.
It starts with a wider opening at the top where the customers come in contact with your business proposition. It goes further where the qualifying and non-qualifying prospects are filtered and the ones who need your service reach the bottom where they close the deal.
How does it work?
It works like an actual funnel and the stages are classified with the acronym AIDA.
(A) Awareness: It is the initial stage when the customer becomes aware of your business. Here he comes to know what you serve, how you deliver your products or services and how you are different from the competitors. It is just an introduction phase where there is no buying or selling motive as of then.
It can happen in any way:
(I) Interest: At this stage, you have made the customer interested in your service. Now, they start to determine if your products would be able to fulfil their needs and expectations. In other words, it is a research phase where you have the opportunity to guide the customers about your product as much as you can and show how you can fulfil their demands. The only two ways you can take your prospects from this stage to the next one is by satisfying their needs and by standing out from your competitors.
(D) Decision: Coming at the decision stage, the customer decides if he will be buying the product/service or not. Here they evaluate the prices and quality in detail and compare it with the competitors to figure out if they are choosing the right product or not. Strong actions are required here to take the customer to the final stage of the funnel.
(A) Action: This is the end of the funnel where the prospects finally turn into your customer. Here, they are ready to make the purchase. You just need the right persuasion skills that can make them checkout with your product/service. The action here might be a free trial or a first purchase discount, or a coupon that is valid when you purchase again.
Top 5 ways to increase conversions!
1 Getting to know your audience: Knowing who to target and when to target is an important task. Your product features say a lot about who your target audience should be. If you are targeting the wrong audience, your efforts are of no use. You need to gather insights into your and your competitors’ traffic sources and figure out the top-performing content to understand what works for your competitors and what resonates with their audience. For this, you may use google analytics and check out various personas.
Here’s an example to dig more into this:
Here’s is Amazon’s segmentation chart where you can see how Amazon categorizes their audience to launch its campaigns in the right direction.
Image Source: https://research-methodology.net/
2 Setting up a good landing page: The sole purpose of a landing page is to promote your product with a convincing offer that interests your buyer. Here you can collect your prospects’ contact information so that you can begin a relationship with them. It is observed that you can get more than 72% conversions with a good landing page.
Here’s an example to dig more into this:
3 Creating informative content: During the initial stages of the sales funnel, your prospects are highly interested to know what you can offer them and how your services are better than others.
Thus, the key to improving conversions in the awareness stage is by creating informative content that presents your company as an expert in its field.
This can be done by:
Here’s an example to dig more into this:
This is how Variance Marketing use articles and videos on their website where they add knowledge to customers and help them get optimize their marketing.
4 Collecting email addresses and do the marketing: Nowadays, no one is willing to share their information unless they are receiving anything of value or interest in return. If you want to share your content with them, you need to build a relationship and earn their trust. For that, you need a part of their information where you can send them the required info.
You may use a visible sign-up form on the side of your content that can be highly impactful. If they’re already engaging in your content, there is a likelihood they won’t hesitate in signing up and giving their email address.
Here’s an example to dig more into this:
The ad shows what offer BuzzFeed gives to its customers and to continue people need to sign up which is an effective way to get an email list.
5 Showcasing reviews and testimonials: The audience demands trust and you can build this with a simple strategy. Showcase them your best work, your featured work which acts as social proof that your service is up to the standards.
Here’s an example to dig more into this:
These are Variance Marketing’s testimonials visible on the website that help attract people and asks them to book their service with the company which is an example to get more conversions. A trustworthy Toronto digital marketing agency will openly showcase their client reviews, as we do. We love our customers!
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