About 80% of businesses fail within the first 18 months. While many reasons contribute to their failure, not being able to generate enough revenue to keep the business running is the main reason.
For a business to generate profits, it needs clients. A sales funnel is the core of all the marketing strategies that help a business get clients or customers. Without it, your business is just an idea. So, what exactly is this sales funnel that we speak of, and why is it so important to your business? Keep reading to find out all the details.
Some believe that the concept of a sales funnel is pretty recent and that it began with the advent of digital marketing. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
Sales funnel is a marketing concept that has been around for over a century. It is not dependent on the internet and the online world. Marketing experts have been generating leads using offline sales funnels for several years before the internet.
A sales funnel defines the process to bring the customer all the way from first interaction with the business to the sale of your product or service. This whole process from introduction to the purchase of the product is called a customer journey, and a sales funnel helps you visualize this path.
A funnel is graphically displayed as an upside down pyramid with the broad upper side representing the entire customer base that would be interested in your business offering and going all the way down to the people who would actually purchase your products.
Sales funnels are usually represented by four different stages:
1. Awareness - the first stage that is set up to attract potential customers and make them acquainted with your unique selling point.
2. Interest - this is the stage where people are narrowed down to those who are interested in your product and want to know more but are not ready to buy just yet.
3. Desire - this is the deciding point where the customer builds up a strong desire to buy or not buy the product/service. You need to bring forth a strong reason for the customer to tilt in your direction.
4. Action - this is the stage where the customer takes the required action because he/she has been convinced by your marketing efforts. The action could be subscription to a newsletter, purchase of a product, downloading a guide, or anything else.
Based on your sales funnel, it will not necessarily end with a purchase. You could set up several sales funnel stages in between before the customer is led to the actual purchase. For example, a desired action for one of the funnels could be downloading the free guide, so you could collect the email.
Now that you are well aware of sales funnels, why does your business need one right now? Let’s find out.
There are several options for a single product or service in the market right now. Your customer won’t just drop by your website and start buying whatever you are selling. You need to stand out and give a reason to your customer to come to you.
Consumers nowadays are becoming very careful in their purchases. They have access to the wide world of the web. Naturally, they take their time, do their research, look around, and if possible try different services for free before choosing one.
The point here is that selling is not a straightforward process anymore. You can’t just sell stuff. You need to attract leads, nurture them for a while, and gradually convert them to loyal customers.
To do this, one landing page or a simple website won’t do. You need a sales funnel that targets the customer’s problems, informs them, and truly helps them, acting as their assistant till they reach the end stage of buying.
As stated before, your genius business idea won’t work if you have no customers to purchase your offering. To compete with other businesses, you can’t just go surfing the net to look for new leads every hour. There should be a proper automatic sales funnel set up to attract new leads.
A sales funnel will bring you customers from all around the web. You won’t have to message people or make sales calls all day long. The social media page with a message, the blog post that solves customer problems, and the free whitepaper download are all parts of sales funnels that generate new leads for your business on autopilot with little to no maintenance.
Email marketing is one part of a sales funnel that you can mostly automate. The day, time, hour, names, and more can be customized depending on the tool you are using.
This part of the sales funnel can prove to be the most profitable nut in your marketing strategy. This is because it targets individual customers personally in their inbox.
If you keep providing authentic value to your list of subscribers, when you launch your product directly in their inbox, a high percentage of people will respond because they have seen the value you give for free right in their emails.
Most other marketing strategies are based on one time purchases for the customer. A sales funnel will keep your customer hooked and coming back for more.
For example, you have their email and can keep sending new offers via emails as a part of different funnels, so the customer keeps turning to you for various purchases.
If your blog is a part of your funnel and provides true value, the customer won’t leave your blog after making a purchase. They will keep reading to get more value. In this way, you can upsell and retain customers for life.
A well-built sales funnel can be one of the best investments for your business. You can not just attract leads, but form true connections with people who became a part of your sales funnel.
In this way, they remain loyal customers for life. And you will get far more value from returning customers than you get from one time buyers.
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