There are 3 main goals your sales funnel should achieve:
- Increase your traffic
- Build your list
- Convert your list into buyers
If you have never created a sales funnel before, or never successfully created one, it may sound intimidating to create one from scratch.
Don’t worry, we are going to let you in on all the secrets of creating a profitable conversion funnel.
Read on!
Overview of a successful sales funnel
What is a sales funnel?
In short, a sales funnel is a series of steps that are designed to bring your visitors towards a buying decision. That is, to convert your visitors into potential buyers.
Here’s what a basic sales funnel looks like:
How a sales funnel can create a positive impact on your website:
- Create brand awareness
- Encourage interest in your products and/or services
- Educates your visitors to motivate them to purchase
- Encourages leads to perform a desirable action
- Guides leads from the top of the funnel to the purchasing stage
- Top of the Funnel
The top of the funnel is the exploratory stage.
The goal of this stage is to raise brand awareness to let potential customers know that YOU EXIST rather than making a sale.
So, what can you do at this stage?
Frequent exposure, influence and consistent engagement with the aim of persuading them that you could benefit them.
- Middle of the funnel
When you have raised brand awareness, the next is to pique their interest.
Turn your visitors into leads which is necessary to turn them into a customer later down the funnel.
Are you going to provide value to my life? Should I engage with them or walk away? These are the questions that your visitors are considering.
This is also the stage where you need to gather information about them.
How?
By using whatever means it takes to get their email address. This includes email courses, e-books, and free printables. Find something that will entice them to give you their email address.
You also need to focus on content creation and targeted offers to strengthen your relationship with your potential customers before you move into the bottom of the funnel.
- Bottom of the funnel
Congratulations! You’ve made it to the bottom!
This is the final stage in your sales funnel: the purchasing decision.
This is where your potential customers will be researching about the pros and cons of your product and/or service.
Will they benefit? Does it meet their needs? Can they part from their money?
Here is where you tailor your messages and sales strategies to be targeted to your buyers’ specific needs.
Creating a profitable conversion funnel
Now that you know the basic overview of a sales funnel, here are 5 important steps to create a profitable conversion funnel for beginners:
- Create landing pages
The top of the funnel is all about gaining traffic but in order to turn that traffic into potential buyers, you need a landing page that generates leads.
Here are some examples of exceptional landing pages:
What they did well:
- The call to action (CTA) button colour draws attention
- The image allows visitors to see what the product is like
- The copy is well optimised for reading
- Headlines and subheadlines show how valuable the product is
What they did well:
- Use of the word “free”
- Blue CTA button draws attention
- Copy in bullet points quickly allows potential buyers to realise the benefits
- Image shows what visitors will get it after they convert
The secret to building a successful landing page is to portray the benefits of your product and/or service, include a CTA that persuades visitors to click, and short yet informative copy.
- Drive traffic to your landing pages
Now that you have your landing page(s) set up, you need to drive traffic in order to guide a potential customer towards the next stage of the funnel.
Here are some methods you can drive traffic:
Pay per click (PCC) ads
PCC ads have the ability to reach a large range of people of a variety of platforms which make it a very popular option for marketers.
Think of those Facebook and Twitter ads that many brands and businesses use to drive traffic to their site.
However, PCC ads can be expensive.
You need to consider whether the cost to implement them is worth the return on investment (ROI). Will it generate enough traffic to move a large quantity of leads down your sales funnel?
Social media
Using social media is a great way to drive traffic since there is already a lot of traffic on those platforms. Look at this graph if you don’t believe us!
Social media outreach is a less costly way of driving traffic but you will definitely need a strategy to organically tap into the market and build brand awareness.
Content marketing
Content marketing includes using blog content, emails, etc. to drive traffic to your site.
It is a great tool, particularly for the middle of the funnel, as you can educate your potential customer to realise the benefits and value of your product and/or service in order to get them to finally convert.
- Create resources to collect email addresses
It takes a lot of effort to create content that effectively captures your audiences’ attention. You will need to continue to target them with the content they are looking for.
Here are some resources (also known as lead magnets) you can create:
- E-books
- Printables
- Subscriber-only offers
- Website access registrations
- Resources portals
Lead magnets should offer 2 things:
- Provide something valuable for the potential customer
- Gives you an email address that you can use down the line
Ways to make your lead magnets attract the RIGHT audience
- Create a variety of lead magnets
- Make your lead magnet easy to find
- Make it easy for people to give you their email address
- Plan an email marketing campaign
An email campaign is used to strengthen the relationship with your target market over time. It allows them to make a purchasing decision whilst keeping them engaged.
Email campaigns can be used to:
- Introduce the product and/or service that you offer
- Give them an insight into your company
- Provide customer testimonials to show them the credibility of your product and/or service
- Track and configure your sales funnel
Now that you have created your email marketing campaign, sales should start coming in.
However, you need to track each step to make sure there are no holes in your funnel i.e losing leads.
Keep an eye on your analytics and sales numbers, and be ready to configure your sales funnel.
Here are some tools that will help you track the success of your sales funnel:
Are you ready to create a profitable sales funnel?
Remember that the key to a profitable sales funnel is to work from top to bottom.
By focusing on creating landing pages that convert, creating lead magnets and email campaigns, and tracking your sales funnel, you are on the path of transforming your leads into buyers.
Have you ever created a sales funnel? Has it been profitable for your business?
Related Tag: Digital Marketing Consulting
great and useful article