What Are Sales Funnels and Why Do They Matter?
Sales Funnel is a fancy word used in the marketing world to describe a system, or a step by step process of getting customers to the point of purchase. It is a technique that observes and learns from the positive and negative sides in the process of getting leads and making them purchase.
In the vast ocean of marketing techniques, information, ideas, possibilities, and options in general, the sales funnel is a cool way to show how people can be brought to the online stores and make them spending customers. Click here if you want to learn more about sales funnel optimization, and become an expert.
What exactly is a sales funnel?
The name comes, of course, from the word funnel, which we all use in the kitchen when we want to sip something from a larger container to a smaller one. We use it to make the liquid precisely focused on the small opening of the other container.
Think of the two containers as the places where potential customers are and should be. The first one, or the large container, is the place where people surf through the internet. The marketer’s job is to make them go through the funnel so they can become spending customers.
Just like in real life, the many droplets of potential clients will swirl through the funnel and go to the same place. At least, that’s the idea.
The truth is, that you can never make everyone you invite to check out a particular product buy it. However, the marketer is aware that some of those who are invited through various mediums, will take a look at the product and consider buying.
So, if there are 100 potential clients, 80 of them will take a look at the product and will be interested in going forward with it. The other 20% will simply not click on the offer. We’re not interested in them.
Out of these 80, only 60 will have actually consider doing it. Yes, they might be interested, but not all of them will consider doing it. It’s like having a great art painting, and some people will just think to themselves how beautiful it is, and some will think, it would be nice to have it home.
Of these 60, only 40 will have an intent buy. Let’s continue with the example of the painting. So they see the painting, they’d love to see it their home, but not all of them will think about actually buying it. Most of them will think that it would be nice but know that they can’t go shopping at the moment.
Then, there’s the last step toward a purchase. This one will be done only by 20 of the remaining 40. Everyone who’s about to buy will evaluate the product. No one just jumps into deals like that. Every one of us will like to see what they are actually buying.
So they’ll click on the landing page, think about it, look at it from different angles, and try to see if there are flaws. Finally, they’ll make the purchase. Not all of them, but only a small portion of all these people. See this link to learn about the 80/20 rule.
The five stages of the sales funnel are marketing gold
We just mentioned the five stages that are highly valuable for every marketer. If you’re about to work this, or you want to know more about it, you must know these five stages – Awareness of a particular product, Interest, Consideration, Intent, and Evaluation. Finally, if the person goes through all of them, will make the purchase.
How awareness is created?
There are tons of ways and options for something like this. Some people prefer content-related aggressive campaigns, which will drive organic visitors from google, others prefer social networks, and some are not dealing with this kind of hard work, but opt for PPC on Google or social media ads.
It’s much simpler with running ads, but the complexity behind the process is not a joke. One must do a thorough analysis of whether their product is commercially valuable and will clients accept this type of promotion. Some products are better left without ads for getting the customers who will spend money.
The content idea is to write quality blog posts that will rank high on google. At the same time, it’s best if this campaign goes together with social media presence and posting. The two things together will get lots of leads at the same time.
Sales funnels are often done when there’s a sale action or promotion of a new product. E-mail marketing is also an option that proves to have great results for some companies.
In short, everything that a marketer or a marketing agency thinks of doing …
