If you’ve been running your business for a while you’ve probably already heard about sales funnels, but if you want to know what exactly they are and how they can help your business stay here because here we will explain what a sales funnel is and how to implement it in your business.
No matter what type of business you have, because surely you already have a sales funnel, however maybe you are not aware that you have it and maybe you are not identifying what are the elements that you need to improve, to make the process automated and productive, so today we will tell you what are the phases of the sales funnel, so you can implement it in your business.
What is a sales funnel?
A sales funnel is a representation of the path a user takes to make a purchase. It is best that you have control of this path, to ensure that there are no distractions or complications that force the user to abandon the funnel without completing the purchase.
We have used the word user and not customer because in the design of your funnel you must consider that any user, public or person can be a potential customer, so you must design a strategy thought in this sense, thinking about making it reach en masse.
Specifically, it does not matter how your sales process is, or the strategies it should include, but the essence of a sales funnel is to filter a group of people into leads or potential customers. That is, this process aims to convert the general into something concrete, so it is also often called conversion funnel and that is why it is not usually represented as a linear process but as an inverted triangle. In which there are many people, and then you keep some of them.
Any business makes a conversion funnel, either by presenting itself to a more general audience through advertising, social networks or conventional media and then surely employs specific strategies to retain the audience that has shown more interest, so that at the end of the day they make a purchase. If you have identified this filter in your sales strategy, you already have a sales funnel, but if you consider that it does not give you the results you are looking for, you just need to review the phases to improve them.
What are the advantages of a sales funnel?
The advantages of sales funnels is that they give clear experiences, once you have designed that path the process becomes automated. Designing a sales funnel that works is like having your best salesperson generating sales night and day for you without asking for anything in return, achieving conversions for you without much effort.
Another advantage of the sales funnel is that it maximizes your profits, a sales funnel allows you to serve all your customers, even if they can’t or are not ready to buy your services or products, because it allows you to take advantage of the information, they have given you to keep in touch with them, avoiding them to get lost.
If you have a normal website, it is likely that if a customer enters and does not buy from you, he will not come back, but if you have designed it as part of your funnel, you can convert all those visitors into potential customers, for this you have to invite them to register or subscribe to a newsletter, so the information they leave will help you to follow up with them through automated emails or other means of contact.
Sales funnel phases
As we have seen the main objective of a sales funnel is to convert the public into customers, for this there are some phases with specific actions that help future customers to follow the path we design for them.
1. Contact
This is the widest part of this inverted triangle. The objective of this phase is to reach a larger audience and attract them to the buying process, basically you have to present the company or a specific product.
It is important that in this phase you interact with the users to obtain their data and keep the contact with them flowing, so you can take them to the next phase.
The strategies you can follow are advertising on social networks, to make your company reach more people, remember that both Facebook Ads and Google Ads are tools that will help you to advertise online in a focused way. Also think of your website and online store as the first step in your sales funnel, so you can ask them to subscribe to a newsletter or sign up, so you will have their data for the next phase.
2. Leads
At this stage and thanks to the interaction and information they have left us, we are going to separate between those who may be potential customers and those who are definitely not interested. Here, when you have well-defined the first group, you can continue sending offers and information about our product.
The strategy to separate potential customers from the rest of the public that most businesses use is to create a landing page, a web page independent of yours that has the objective of converting leads.
Basically it is about offering something in exchange for data, so you can give a coupon, a discount, an eBook or a PDF, for free in exchange for the user to leave their data, this helps to determine which users are more interested in our brand and are not only occasional audience.
3. Opportunity
In this phase we will separate the leads that have expressed an interest in the brand, for this phase we will need the personal data you have collected in the first and second phase, because through them, you will send them offers, this way you make sure that this advertising is completely targeted, because it will be reaching only those who are interested in it, so surely they will not let it pass.
If you have an online store, in this phase are also people who in addition to browsing it have already sent some things to the shopping cart but for some reason do not finish the purchase. In both cases, you should use email marketing strategies to motivate them to complete the purchase.
4. Closing
This is the final stage, where only the customers who have purchased the product will be in the final stage. Remember that once the purchase is completed it does not mean that the process is over, remember that we want loyal customers and not only customers, so you must continue in contact with the customer, from sending simple satisfaction surveys to offers and presentations of new products. You can even encourage them to leave their opinion on your website or online store.
Tips for a winning sales funnel
For your sales funnel to work, you must see it as a digital experience that gives your customers a step-by-step automated process, so that most of them end up doing the conversation.
Today the Internet is accustomed to increasingly shorter attention spans, that is why all phases of your sales funnel must be clear and without distractions, if you put extra information or a saturated design it is most likely that your customers are distracted and lose interest.
In summary, the sales funnel is a path that you have to prepare to convert the public into customers, but in the process, it is also an excellent opportunity to better understand your customers and their needs, so the best thing you can do is to perfect this funnel to automate your sales and build customer loyalty, but first tell us what is your key strategy to generate more leads.