How to Create a Sales Funnel

You have a sales funnel. If you’re aware of it, there’s a possibility to drive more sales to your business.

It could be your website or a landing page. You have traffic, leads submitting forms, and purchases are trickling in.

At each stage of your sales funnel, there’s an impact on consumer behavior, and when you apply the proper techniques, you can improve the outcome in your favor.

Think of a sales funnel as a concept where people navigate your business, interact with it, and decide to buy.

That’s what we’ll be discussing in today’s article.

What is a Sales Funnel

Let’s define the sales funnel: The route website visitors take to buy your products or services.

Some people get stuck at the top of the funnel while others pass right through. Fortunately, you can influence every sales-to-funnel stage to encourage more prospects to reach the bottom.

If you’re starting online marketing, let’s take a moment to use an example from a brick-and-mortar business.

At the top of a sales funnel is a prospect that walks through the door. They wander around the shop, browse merchandise, then interact with a sales clerk. The sales clerk says to the potential shopper that they can get one free if they buy 3.

Upon deciding on three items and choosing 1 for free, they walk up to the register to check out. That’s when the sales clerk offers a complimentary gift for a discounted price. The now-paying customer purchases their things and then walks out the door.

However, it doesn’t end here.

The customer was so pleased with their purchase that they returned a few weeks later to shop some more.

With this in mind, a similar process is. It is occurring on your website. Instead of a sales clerk, you’ll have information blog posts, FAQs pages, on-site support, automated bots, and more. All this help guide visitors to the point of purchase.

Why is a Sales Funnel Important

If you can visualize, map out and analyze your sales funnel, you can take action to improve the process that leads to a purchase.

You’ll be able to identify where potential customers lose interest and disengage in your sales funnel. Or figure out why no one converts or how to retain current customers longer.

When you understand your sales funnel, you can optimize it (discussed below). To be successful, you must be specific, targeted, and focused on your customers. These are the fundamentals of online marketing.  

4 Stages of a Sales Funnel

There’s an easy-to-remember acronym describing the four stages of a sales funnel, AIDA: Awareness, Interest, Decision, and Action. These stages represent the thought process and perspectives of your customers.

Understanding these phases will allow you to create a better sales funnel.

• Awareness.
  This is when you catch your potential customer’s attention. It could be a paid advertisement, a social media post, or organic search engine traffic.
  Prospects are now aware of your business.
  Some prospects may proceed directly to the bottom of the funnel, while others will present objections, questions, doubts, and concerns. These must be addressed throughout your sales funnel.
  
• Interest.
  In this sales funnel phase, prospects are researching, comparing the competition, and thinking over their options. This is the moment to share value-focused content (without selling to them).
  This is a critical stage. You’ll lose your products and services if you push them too hard. The goal here is to offer help and support in any way possible.
• Decision
  At this stage, a prospect is ready to buy. You can present your offer, and hopefully, the transaction will go through.
  You could sweeten the deal to make first-time buyers remember a great experience. Offer free shipping, a discount code, or a bonus product. When you’re offer is so good, how can they refuse it?
• Action
  We’ve reached the bottom of the funnel. Here, customers take action. They may serve as an ambassador or become a repeat buyer.
  The bottom of the funnel is not the end for your business. It brings prospects from one sales funnel to another, from the opportunity to customer to returning buyer. Be sure to reach out to capture feedback and testimonials (to help attract more candidates stuck at the top of your funnel).

3 Steps for Creating a Sales Funnel

Here’s how you can create a sales funnel for your business.

Step 1: Identify Your Prospects

First, you must identify the prospects for your sales funnel. Spend time, energy, and resources effectively by targeting interested people at the wide end of your sales funnel. When they arrive, you can begin qualifying them as good prospects with no return on investment.

Start by creating a buyer persona. This is a hypothesis of your ideal buyers, their interests, demographics, and more. If you run a sports store, ask yourself:

• What are national sports popular right now?
• Are the majority of customers teens, university students, or middle-aged adults?
• Is there a product preference toward a specific demographic?
  

You’ll need to come up with your qualifying questions. This is simply a planning strategy to identify who you’ll be targeting your marketing efforts to at the top of the funnel. Remember, focus on pain points, desires, fears, and aspirations.

Step 2: Qualify Your Prospects

Qualifying prospects is quite simple. You can offer surveys, conduct polls, start discovery calls, and have conversations to reveal your prospects’ needs and desires. You can also learn valuable insider information to tailor your products and services to appeal to the right audience.

As a rule of thumb, those who qualify will bite, while thor who don’t won’t.

Step 3: Develop Your Funnel

If you have a $150 product, you must find the people willing to hand over that money for the benefits you’re offering. How can you do that? The best way to develop your funnel is to plan backward.

Let’s say the only way someone will pay $150 for your product is if they trust you. You can share valuable content using blog posts or video content to achieve this. You can also offer a lower-priced product.

At every step in your sales funnel, ask yourself: What will build trust with my prospect at this stage?

Then, find the answer: How can I drive my prospect to that decision?

Here’s an example of breaking down a sales funnel from bottom to top:

1. Flagship product
2. Mid-range product
3. Intro product
4. Free educational piece (teaser)
5. E-mail opt-in campaign
6. Blog conversation
7. 400;”>Social media interaction
8. Facebook Ads

The key to a successful sales funnel is to identify your customer. Once you have a background about the types of people buying, you can begin to tailor the marketing message and strategies to target these buyers. You may have to create new products and pages to appeal to a broader audience or narrow in on your ideal customers.