In different businesses, navigating the path from lead to loyal customer is similar to going on a journey. This journey, often called the sales funnel, is crucial to any successful sales strategy. Like any expedition, understanding the stages of this journey is key to reaching the ultimate destination—a sale.
On this path, we must first raise consciousness, pique curiosity, educate, and inspire action. The sales funnel helps companies move customers from awareness to purchase while providing a pleasant experience.
Let’s learn about the benefits of a sales funnel and break down the stages of a winning sales funnel.
Benefits of a sales funnel
A staggering 68% of businesses have not even thought about creating or measuring a sales funnel, and an even more astounding 79% of marketing leads never end up in a sale. Therefore, you need to focus on the sales funnel to increase your sales. Here are a few advantages of a well-designed marketing funnel:
1. Improving the customer experience
You need to adopt a sales plan that works for you by looking at the sales marketing funnel. Businesses that make the purchasing process simple for customers have a 62% higher chance of making a quality sale. Customer lifetime value and conversion rates can be enhanced by keeping your target clients in mind throughout the customer journey.
2. Improved comprehension
Your sales team can better understand your client's needs and meet those needs precisely when they use various forms of information. To accomplish this, you might make use of an automated sales funnel that focuses on mobile retention.
3. Better method for creating sales
If you want to stay ahead of the competition and develop your strategy, constantly contacting your customers is the way to go. Sales automation, or customer relationship software, is the most effective method for monitoring and acting upon these discoveries.
The six stages of the sales funnel
The stages of the sales funnel help businesses understand where their prospects are in the buying process and tailor their marketing and sales efforts accordingly to move them smoothly through the funnel toward making a purchase. So, let's study the six stages of a sales funnel.
Step 1: Awareness
Awareness is the initial stage of a sales funnel, where businesses try to get potential customers to notice them. Advertisements, social media, and other forms of promotion typically ease this first meeting. The objective is to get people to see the service or product.
Step 2: Interest
The 'interest' stage of the journey follows the 'awareness' stage. Here, businesses tell buyers more about the goods to pique their interest and encourage them to learn more. The main goal is to make interested people go further into the content.
Step 3: Consideration
At this point, prospective buyers are actively assessing the service or product. They might compare it with competitors, read reviews, or request demos or consultations to understand how your product or service meets their needs.
Step 4: Intent
The Intent step symbolizes moving from contemplation to a conclusion. The attention of possible buyers is high, and they may soon make a purchase. Special discounts or incentives are common targeted methods businesses use to attract commitment.
Step 5: Evaluation
During the evaluation stage, businesses provide relevant information, address any questions or concerns, and demonstrate the value of their offering compared to competitors. By effectively showcasing the strengths of their product or service, businesses increase their chances of converting prospects into customers.
Step 6: Purchase
The actual buying and selling occur in the Purchase phase. By simplifying the purchasing process, businesses make purchasing their products or services easy. The customer reaches the pinnacle of the marketing funnel journey at this level. In the end, that's what matters to companies.
Six easy steps for building a sales funnel
To assist you in establishing a solid groundwork for improved B2B sales, we have compiled a few simple steps. A sales funnel is created by following these six steps:
Step 1: Look at your audience
Identifying your target market should be your top priority. Among the many possible approaches are:
- Finding out who your perfect client is.
- Cataloging information such as the duration of the page, number of links clicked, amount of time scrolled, etc.
- Their engagement with the material on your social media pages.
You can map your customers’ journeys and create buyer personas once you understand what interests them.
Step 2: Establish goals
Now that you have a good grasp of your customers, their pain points, and their wants and needs throughout the buying process, you can set realistic sales goals.
A top, middle, and bottom sales funnel will help with this stage. Consider, at each point, how you would like to engage with customers.
- At the top of your sales funnel, you should aim to increase visitors to a particular page.
- Mid-funnel outreach should aim to increase engagement.
- Get twice as many sales from your funnel's bottom.
Step 3: Create content
At each point in the sales funnel, you may refine the content type to offer by getting to know your buyers and setting goals. An effective content strategy will raise brand recognition while also providing useful information. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements, SEO, videos, and blogs captivate viewers more easily.
A drip email campaign is another great way to create a relationship with your buyers and ensure they get what they need when needed. This is the optimal approach for sales funnels before pushing a product demo on a buyer.
Step 4: Engage with them
Like your goals, your approach to creating a sales funnel should always be divided into three parts: before, during, and after the implementation (BOFU, MOFU, and TOFU).
At each stage of the sales funnel, consider the action you want your potential customers to take. To generate engagement in the middle of the sales funnel, you should take a more direct approach to establishing trust. But don't contact a potential customer merely to call them.
For example, if you’re in the cleaning business and are hoping to raise awareness at the TOFU level, you could engage in online communities. At the MOFU level, you send email campaigns with information on your cleaning services and pricing. At the BOFU level, you could distribute QR codes with discount coupons for your services.
Step 5: Encourage Action
Including a distinct and well-defined call to action at the bottom of your conversion sales funnel is crucial to creating a successful one.
You risk annoying your buyers if you try to rush the sale, but you risk losing them to competition if you wait too long. Therefore, you must act quickly.
Presentation is king when it comes to sales. The following is what we propose:
- You should not have an excessive number of fields on your form.
- Give away some free value.
- Provide an overview of what comes next.
Utilizing high-quality visuals such as conference photography can significantly enhance your presentation, making your services more appealing and memorable to potential clients.
Step 6: Talk to People
Finally, keep your communication upbeat and businesslike at all times. You want to get off to a good start with your relationship retention once your prospect converts.
Speaking of retention, keep the lines of communication open at all times:
- See how they are faring.
- Locate whether they require any assistance while utilizing your service or product.
- Provide them with instructional materials you think will be useful.
The more people they tell about your company, the more committed consumers you may expect to receive through your marketing funnel.
Case Studies
To give you a clear idea about how a successful sales funnel works, here is a case study for help.
How Basecamp’s Sales Funnel Works
Teams can benefit from Basecamp, a project management platform that facilitates communication and collaboration when working remotely. Organic search, instructional content, tutorials, case studies, newsletters, and free trials contribute to their business-to-business conversion funnel.
- Awareness: To raise awareness, Basecamp publishes blog posts and books that assist prospects in overcoming challenges and accomplishing objectives connected to remote team management.
- Interest & Decision: Basecamp provides tutorials that show potential customers how to lead distributed teams and finish projects successfully with the help of their software. They also offer case studies and client testimonials to establish credibility and prove they are the top project management solution.
- Action: Basecamp's free trial gives consumers a taste of the tool's usefulness, hoping they'll upgrade to a premium subscription. Additionally, they gain credibility by delivering informative newsletters and instructional content brimming with helpful hints and strategies. Purchase intent is heightened when these tactics are used in tandem.
Why Basecamp's sales funnel works
Basecamp's sales funnel is effective because it adds value at every step of the prospect's journey. It shows how it helps prospects by attracting them with instructional content and how it solves their problems.
Prospects have an easier time converting thanks to the free trial. Then, it guides prospects to maximize the tool's value to encourage them to upgrade to a paid plan.
Conclusion
By developing an effective sales funnel, you can attract and convert leads into loyal customers for your business. You should definitely put effort and cash into developing a good marketing funnel approach. Nevertheless, you will get a return on your investment, so investing your time and resources is worthwhile.
