Sales begin when several potential customers look at your website. However, the number of people who make purchases becomes much smaller than those looking. As a result, the conversion rate is only about 2.35%.
When a prospect visits your business website, they become a business lead and, hopefully, a customer. However, getting prospects to become customers requires a seamless customer experience provided by an optimized sales funnel.
If you are still a bit confused, read on to learn everything about sales funnels.
Significance of Sales Funnels for Your Business
Creating a sales funnel allows your business to generate customers by leading your target audience through a series of steps that might eventually result in them becoming clients. Typically, the sales funnel narrows as you move closer to winning or losing the prospect.
Sales funnels also help generate referrals from satisfied customers to other prospects that were not in your original target audience. Moreover, exchanging feedback and information can help you monitor and adjust your business sales processes as you push customers through the sales funnel.
While moving prospective customers through the sales funnel, you can see which ones are unqualified as you take them through a series of steps to make a purchase. Finally, you can focus on converting targeted audiences once they reach the narrowed parts of the funnel.
Your business should rely on sales and marketing to guide the customer through the sales funnel and build customer loyalty. Social media marketing provides opportunities for two-way communication, content marketing, and customer data analytics access to make the process easier.
Understanding the Sales Funnel Stages
Sales funnel stages have four general sections, but these can vary according to your business.
- Awareness is the stage at the top of the sales funnel where you have the most customer prospects searching for a solution to a problem. Your marketing efforts have made them aware of your business.
- Interaction is the next stage, where your customer prospect numbers start to decrease. At this stage, the possibility of a sales conversion increases, and the customer engages with your business and asks for more information. In addition, customers generally do their competitive research at this stage to determine if your product or service is the best for their needs.
- Increased interest from these leads is the third most significant stage of the sales funnel. The prospect reaches out for more information about your product, including pricing and sales offers. At this stage, if the customer does not proceed with a purchase, their journey through the sales funnel stops progressing.
- Action is when the prospect decides whether or not to buy your product. Although, at this point, even if the customer does not buy, your business can continue to maintain their interest with added marketing.
Creating Your Business Sales Funnel
A successful sales funnel works as follows:
1. Understand Your Audience
Insight is key to understanding your audience, allowing you to know how best to position your products and provide them with the right offers. Therefore, you must determine the problems they want to find answers to, their expectations, and their interests.
2. Determine Your Goals
Know what you want at each stage of the sales funnel for your business by determining your goals. Different goals include getting more newsletter sign-ups, product demos, leads, and purchases. Once you know what you want business prospects to do, it is easier to measure whether each stage of your sales funnel is working.
3. Attract Attention
Create a way to draw leads into the funnel initially. These include infographics, videos, and marketing. Now that you have seized your audience’s attention, you can lead them to your landing page and offer them a free subscription, eBook, or free trial in exchange for their contact info.
4. Qualify Leads
Once you have your leads, you must determine which have the best fit – the ones that qualify most are worth nurturing.
5. Nurturing Leads
Several channels are available to nurture leads, even those prospects that have gone silent. These methods include email, social media, and paid retargeting. Whichever you choose, it’s essential to know that you need to nudge them closer to making their decision. One way to help them move down the funnels is by offering a particular discount or an extended trial.
Optimize Your Funnel
At the final point in the funnel, leads will either close the deal with a purchase or change their minds. Therefore, you must maintain strong communications with them to ensure customer retention and loyalty, but don’t stop nurturing those who didn’t convert.
Finally, keep tracking the results and analyze your sales data. These will help you see where you are missing opportunities and how you can optimize your sales funnel. Then, get the most out of your sales funnel by trying marketing automation software that automatically triggers emails, sends SMS and push notifications, ROI reporting, lead management, and so much more.
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