You can accompany these visitors with email marketing automation and you can measure each of their actions and develop them into a lead. Here your sales department will intervene, seek personal contact and prepare an offer. Normally from here on you measure with a CRM, but often also with an Excel spreadsheet.
First, the customer must become aware of your product. This is done through marketing. A customer may not see your product as an opportunity if they have never heard of it.
Next, you need to engage your target audience and show those potential customers why your product is better than the competition. Maybe you have the latest and fastest technology, or maybe you are half the price of the others. In any case, show what makes your product different.
Now that you've captured the interest of potential customers, now is the time for them to make their decision. This is where your prospects may or may not be on the rise, and it is your job to take them to the next step.
After your new customers have made their decision and decided to move on with a purchase, it's time they did something. Your sales funnel takes the customer to a purchase screen or takes them to a sales rep who will advise them on the purchase and payment method of your business.
At the beginning of the process would be for his product / service attention grab. You can draw attention to your product in various ways, such as giving lectures , internet campaigns or print advertising . Now there is a large number of unqualified, potential customers in your sales funnel because you have generated the attention of so many different people.
Now the interest of potential customers has to be won. It must be found out who of the addressees is really interested in your offers . This can be implemented with a lead magnet that promises the customer, for example, the solution to a problem in the exchange of e-mail data . Only those who signal that they are interested in your products by exchanging email data will remain in the sales funnel.
Once you have screened out the prospects, you can now start addressing specific customers. Initial visits and needs analyzes create more intensive contact with customers . A good presentation of the offers is an advantage for the further course of the sales funnel. In this step, customers are again eliminated who see no benefit for themselves in the products.
This section of the sales funnel is about the real offers you make to your won customers. Various sales strategies can lead to further success here. Customers for whom the offers are not suitable drop out in this step.
The last step is to sell the products / services. You have selected the right customers through the 5 steps of the sales funnel and you can now benefit from them. A further cooperation or follow-up orders can come about.
Think about your customer base: each of your customers went through a process and ended up making a purchase. In the course of this process, he became aware of your brand, found out more about your product or service and ultimately decided to buy.
For some products – usually cheaper consumer goods – this process only takes a few minutes.
Perhaps you are currently scrolling through social media, seeing an advertisement for shoes, and clicking the link to learn more. You like the shoes and you buy them. In these cases, the sales funnel is relatively simple. The provider often does not need much more than a web shop and a method to be found by customers.
Companies can still optimize their funnel by offering customers first-class service and creating upsell opportunities that go beyond the actual product.
With other products, the sales funnel is more complicated: For example, if you sell high-quality, high-priced enterprise software, you need to use a variety of methods and channels, including email marketing , webinars, sales pitches, downloadable resources, and in-person demos. In these cases, it often takes months for a prospect to become a customer.
All companies that sell something have some sort of sales funnel – even if it has never been officially defined.
A service provider website that new customers get to through word of mouth is a very simple type of sales funnel. Search engine advertising, to draw buyers’ attention to a webshop, also.
While some companies will be successful with such strategies, others should create a more specific sales funnel to guide their prospects through.
The service provider mentioned above could, for example, introduce an e-mail distribution list to which website visitors can become members even if they are not yet ready to buy. The company can then conduct lead nurturing until these interested parties decide to buy.
Here are a few reasons why you should create an effective sales funnel for your business.
A clearly defined sales funnel means your sales team can say goodbye to the watering can principle. Instead, they see the exact steps and actions they need to take at each stage of the process. Establishing your strategy is the first step; everything else follows from it.
A simply structured sales funnel consists of three phases that your leads go through:
This is the route most customers take.
In the first phase of the sales funnel, the lead becomes aware of their problem and starts looking for more information. Companies need to provide content that makes it easier for the lead to find information. It is important to consider where leads are looking for answers. Here are some of your options:
Did the lead land on your website? Nice. Now use a lead magnet to get him to take the first step in the sales funnel. Such a lead magnet could be a free trial, an invitation to a webinar, downloadable content, or anything else that could get the visitor to give you their email address. Your sales team can then write to the prospect as part of the lead nurturing.
If you’ve just started your business or haven’t created a sales funnel for any other reason, then you should start right away.
Below, we outline the steps you should take towards your sales funnel. The instructions are very general; the exact steps will depend on your product and your sales cycle.
It should also be mentioned at this point that not everyone defines the term “sales funnel” in the same way. For some, it covers all marketing activities, while for others, it’s just the final stages of the funnel, which is about converting the lead.
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