In today’s marketing world, you cannot imagine running a marketing campaign without a Sales Funnel in place. It will be too overwhelming and exhausting to do that. But how do you explain the sales funnel to a beginner? The simplest way to do that is to explain to him the different stages of a funnel. As you probably can imagine, Sales Funnel has different stages…
Let’s start with the customers. The first stage is, a potential customer needs to be aware of your product or service and need to know about you exist as a company. When they are interested in your company.
The second stage is lead generation. At this point, you want to capture the email address, phone number from them (lead). You will continue contact information until they become an ROI (Return On Investment) for your business. You have to invest money in advertisements and hope they buy from you later on. If they don’t buy with 1st purchase, 2nd, 3rd… However many purchases it takes – eventually, someone will do it – that’s how sales work in an ideal situation!
Next is the customer relationships stage. Nobody would like to do business with you unless they know and trust you. You need to appear in their inbox enough times before they can finally recognize you or your brand name. Then you just moved from a COMPLETE STRANGER phase to the Acquaintances phase and now they are at least listening to you.
Now you need to nurture this relationship and start pushing your offers. Once they are comfortable and the time is right, they will take action.
It’s important to understand the different stages your leads will go through on their way to becoming a customer. Your sales funnel should look a lot like this:
This is where most people get hung up when they are thinking about how a sales funnel works. Do they want to know what button I need to click? What ad needs to be displayed?
Stage 1: Attention — Your lead is at the top of your sales funnel and has your attention. This stage is just as important as all other stages combined because leads who move beyond this step are giving you permission to market to them via email, phone calls, or postcards. The most common obstacle that stands in the way of someone moving from being a prospect to paid customer
Stage 2: Interest — Your lead has now given you permission to market to them, and they are interested in what you have to offer. You need to provide value and educate your leads about the problem they face or the solution you have for them. Do not try and sell at this stage as it will make them run away from you fast!
Stage 3: Desire — We’re getting close to the sale. This is where your leads are really interested in what you have to offer and they are ready to make a purchase. The key here is conversion optimization and that’s what we love doing. Conversion optimization will help you continue on this path of converting more prospects into customers so they can enjoy the benefits of your product.
Stage 4: Action — Now your lead is a customer! This is the best part of the sales funnel when you have a happy customer who spreads the word about their experience with your company & product.
How can you move your leads through each stage of the Sales Funnel? Through great content and targeted emails (click here for more info )!
- All new leads are at the top of the sales funnel and need to be nurtured so they continue down towards becoming customers.
- The key to nurturing your leads properly is providing them with valuable information that will help them in their journey towards making a purchase decision.
- Different people need different types of information, which is why having multiple stages allows you to better focus on what type
- At the bottom of funnel, what really matters is how good quality your results are. If you were unable to attract the right kind of customers then you need to review your funnel and improve it.
If you are new to the sales funnel then click here to get our Free Sales Funnel Builder account with InterFunnels and start creating some funnels. It is easy, hassle-free, and requires no credit card to start.