As an online business owner, you’ve probably heard about the huge marketing power that sales funnels hold. And, undoubtedly, when they’re used right, sales funnels work like magic, boosting the conversion rate and building brand loyalty.
And yet, for many marketers out there, successful sales funnels are quite elusive. Maybe you’ve even tried this strategy yourself but were disappointed only to notice incremental changes in your sales numbers. So, what’s the secret to a fantastic sales funnel, and how do you create a strategy that takes the stress out of winning new customers?
Before we delve into that, let’s review the meaning of sales funnels
A done for you sales funnels is the journey that a customer goes through when completing a purchase: from clicking a link to reaching your website, browsing products, adding them to the cart, all the way to placing the order.
As you probably know, not everyone who visits a website ends up becoming a customer, which is exactly why we use the term “funnel.”
A sales funnel consists of four stages:
- Awareness
- Interest
- Decision
- Interest
As a marketer, your mission is to optimize the user’s journey across these four stages, so that they feel compelled to make a purchase.
These five strategies will help you unlock the power of sales funnels and grow your business:
1. Get to know your target audience
Alright, so you have to optimize the user’s journey, but who exactly is this user? Before you do anything, it’s essential to map out a buyer persona. Think age, gender, job, location, level of education, hobbies, and interests. The more you know about your user, the more likely you are to craft compelling marketing copy that appeals to their needs.
It’s entirely possible to spend hundreds of dollars on a beautifully designed and masterfully written landing page and yet have it miss its mark because it wasn’t built with the right user in mind. In 2020, good marketing is not just about technical skills. It’s about understanding who the user is and knowing what they need even before they do. This is the key to converting casual website visitors to customers and customers to loyal brand followers.
2. Provide value to visitors in the awareness stage
The business landscape has changed dramatically in the past few years, and the average business has A LOT more competition to deal with. There are services like imminentbusiness.com that can help you take your business to the next level.
If in the past, it didn’t take too much persuasive power to get a user to subscribe to your newsletter, now this requires a lot more effort. And it’s normal this should happen because the average Internet user is assaulted by marketing messages daily and yours has to stand out from the crowd.
So, to boost conversions, you could offer them something valuable in the awareness stage. It can be anything from a special discount to an ebook, free trial, or industry report. The idea is to offer them value before taking money out of their wallet. Think of Netflix’s sales funnel: before you pay for a subscription, you have one month of free content. Most free users are happy with what they get, so they make an effortless transition to paid subscribers.
For more ideas and examples, this 30 day Challenge by ClickFunnels is a great source of inspiration.
3. Build emotional connections
Have a closer look at the content on your landing pages. How do they sound? If the copy reminds you of a generic text that a call center employee would read monotonously during a cold call, it’s time to delete it and start over, this time following the latest copywriting standards.
The modern customer is looking for a deeper connection with brands. When reading their content, they don’t want to imagine faceless executives who are torn from reality. They want useful, heartfelt, valuable content created by a human being. Modern copywriting is less about pushy sales language and more about storytelling and genuine emotional connections. So, don’t repeat ad nauseam that your software has awesome features and confuse the user with tech slang. Instead, explain why these features are so beneficial and how they can solve the user’s problems.
4. Set up retargeting campaigns so users keep coming back
In an ideal world, every user who reaches the first page of your funnel completes the journey and becomes a customer.
However, this doesn’t happen all the time. In many cases, the user lands on your page, and something stops them from following through to the next step. Maybe they weren’t fully convinced yet, maybe they closed the tab by mistake, forgot about it, or got distracted by a funny cat video. In fact, up to 96% of your visitors aren’t ready to buy anything yet!
These users aren’t a lost cause, so don’t give up on them.
By setting up a retargeting campaign, you can remind these users that they forgot to enter their email address, download the software, or place the order. Your brand is already familiar and refreshing their memory via email or ads is often enough to persuade them to move on to the next stage of the funnel.
And here’s an extra tip for you: offer users an incentive to come back. If they weren’t totally convinced by their first interaction with your brand, an additional 5% off or some bonus features can give them that push they need to become paying customers.
5. Take advantage of every traffic source.
You’ve probably heard that social media rules over marketing channels nowadays, and we agree that it’s one of the most valuable traffic sources. However, that doesn’t mean you should limit your sales funnel to just ads. On the contrary, by using multiple traffic sources strategically, you can create a sustainable client acquisition system.
Social media ads, website content, native advertising, email, PPC ads, organic search results, these are all valuable traffic sources, so don’t narrow down your choices to just one. For best results, experiment with a little bit of everything, and success might come sooner than you think.
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