A marketing or a sales funnel is actually “all the steps someone goes through from the moment they first come across your business to the moment they buy from you”.
Much has already been written on the subject and still – I encounter this question from clients and colleagues.
There’s a lot to clarify, plus there are new developments and innovations in the field worth mentioning.
A good marketing funnel can help you track the activity of potential leads as they move through the stages of becoming your customers.
If you’ve properly divided the steps in your funnel and can monitor each step, you’ll be able to know which of the stages are working well and which of the stages need to be improved.
Let’s divide the stages in the funnel into three: Know, Like, Trust.
- Know is when they encounter the business for the first time and get to know you.
- Like is all our marketing activities until the purchase, and what causes the potential customer to like us. For example, when they watch our materials, they get value, they learn new stuff and they start to like us.
- Trust is when customers trust us and hence – also buy from us.
Why is it important to have a marketing funnel?
So as mentioned, properly building and understanding the steps in our funnel and tracking the steps, will help us understand which steps work better and which need to be improved in our marketing and sales process.
It will also give us an idea of what goes through the mind of potential customers in each of the stages and by doing so – we can influence them to take the right actions. This is done by improving our messages, materials and call to actions in each of the steps.
Stages in the marketing funnel
During the exposure to us, potential customers go through (or should go through) stages that are fairly constant until the moment they buy:
- Awareness – the potential customers come across us (from our advertising, from friends or from a random search) and get to know us and our product or service.
- Interest – customers are interested in our product or service. At this stage, it would be best to show them our content that explains the product or service and provides a lot of value.
- Decision – the customer has decided that he or she needs the product or service that we provide. At this stage it would be best to help the customer to take an action: offer discounts, coupons, a good explanation of the value of the product or service, or a sale that is about to end.
- Action – the customer performs an action to purchase the product or service. Sometimes it is a customer with concerns that the action he takes is to contact us so we can help him purchase.
In any case, a customer who has purchased becomes a part of your customer base and even though the funnel operation is over, the process is not over: a customer who has purchased once – trusts us and is likely to buy more.
Therefore – at this stage we will concentrate on retaining the customer and trying to get him interested in more of our products or services.
What is the main innovation in the field?
So far we have divided the funnel into stages in a certain order and focused on the order of the stages. Today, the most successful funnels have no order – we release all the stages together. It works out for the customers because even if they see our materials that were intended for the “interest” stage and still don’t know us, it doesn’t hurt us but actually helps because we get into their subconscious and at some stage (usually at the stage when they will receive content from us that solves their problem) They will be interested and will also try to get to know us.
The new thing here, is that the order doesn’t really matter.
How to build a marketing funnel?
- Landing page. The first step is, as mentioned, to get to know us. The fastest way is through sponsored campaigns for which you’ll need to build a landing page.
A good landing page will do an excellent job in leading the customer to get to know us: from the content of the landing page, by leaving details so we can get back to them, and also by leading them to our website (or any other asset) where the customer can get to know us better. - Offer something of value for free. Don’t be afraid to give value that you hope to sell. Customers who get good value from you for free will say to themselves: “If I get all that for free, what will I get when I buy the product or service?”
- Offer content – videos, ebooks or anything that can solve the problems of your potential customers.
This action is important for the “like” stage (learning to like you), the interest stage and the decision stage. - Warming up the client. This step has 2 important actions. The first is to continue sending the clients our materials that solve their problems or teach them new things that are important to them.
The second is remarketing – remarketing is a marketing medium that is based on visitors from our site – once they visited our site – they will start seeing our publications everywhere. This action makes us stay in the customer’s mind. - Closing a deal. When the customer is ready, send them your best offer. Usually it helps the customer to make a decision. You can also send the customer a free trial, a coupon, etc.
- Form an infinite circle. If customers bought from you, continue to send them materials that will provide value, special offers for existing customers, coupons, etc., a customer who bought once – the chances are very high that he or she will buy again because they trust us now.
If the customers haven’t bought, keep in touch with them and warm them up until they buy. - Optimizing the marketing funnel. When you have enough data – improve the stages in the funnel, where did customers stop interacting with you? Which stage is the most successful at the moment? How can each of the stages be improved?
At this stage (which we are constantly working on) it is important to check the landing pages, the content, the emails we send, our website, the calls to action.
Sometimes we improve a small element and as a result we have a big jump in sales.
Summary – Sales funnel represents the steps people go through until they buy from you. It’s also an important tool that allows us to understand the steps in our marketing and sales.
When built properly – it will improve our marketing and sales efforts while helping us understand the customers better.
If you need to build a good sales funnel but not sure how, feel free to contact us, we’d be happy to help.
