7 Ways to Building a Sales Funnel that Increases Conversions
You want a sales funnel that won’t require you to spend lots of dollars for acquiring new customers. This is how you should build sales funnels.
You want a sales funnel that won’t require you to spend lots of dollars for acquiring new customers. This is how you should build sales funnels.
Are people not buying, not matter how hard you were working on your product development and marketing?
Do you feel like you have a great design, effective call to action button, and engaging copy; but you’re still not getting the results that you want?
Perhaps your efforts were so focused so much on your revenue goals, rather than your customer’s goals. This is where many business owners and marketers fail when it comes to building conversion funnels. Even when they know that their focus should be what their customers want, they sometimes can’t help setting funnels with their profit numbers in mind. That’s bad practice.
But how important really is it for us to put customers’ needs and wants at the center of every sales funnel? We’ll go deeper into that in a while.
First, let’s understand what a sales funnel is and what it is for.
The Sales Funnel Explained
Here’s the thing.
When you know in your heart that you have a great product or service, it doesn’t always mean that your customers know they need it. Even if you think that your prospects will benefit from your product or service, it doesn’t always mean that they’re aware of the need to purchase it.
At least not yet for now. But if someone can get them convinced that they actually need, they will in fact buy it.
Now the question is, how do you get them to know that they need what you are offering them?
Here comes the power and beauty of a sales funnel.
A sales funnel is simply a buying process that ideally encourages companies to lead customers from awareness of your offer to their actual purchase. Below is a basic illustration from DigitalMarketer.
In layman’s terms, customers are brought into these three stages of a buyer’s journey in a manner where companies are letting customers:
- know about them first,
- evaluate all the information companies give them second,
- and finally, make a firm buying decision based on the content presented to them..
Gone are the old days when people go door-to-door to realize that they need whatever product or service the salesman or saleswoman is pitching. As a result of technology and the internet, people can find any information that they need about a product or service from search engines like Google. Customers today can simply go to the internet whenever they want to know more about a product or service they’re deciding on buying.
And that is a good thing. As a business owner, you want to acquire and retain customers. You don’t want to be someone who’s content with one transaction per customer. You want repeat business; and the one way to do that is think of every prospect as a potential lifetime customer, right?
This is the goal of a sales funnel looking into high conversions. You want a sales funnel that won’t require you to spend lots of dollars for acquiring new customers. You also want a funnel that increases lifetime customer value while minimizing costs.
That is smart business.
How Do Companies Build Their Sales Funnels?
Without going too technical about how companies build their sales funnels, the process all begins with a lead magnet.
A specific lead magnet. It delivers a promise that prospects can’t say no to. Who will say no to a cheat sheet, PDF download, coupons, discounts, ebooks, and more if the readers believe it will benefit them in their business or personal lives? A lead magnet has to be promising enough to blow a customer ‘s mind.
A well-designed landing page. As soon as a prospect gives in to the lead magnet and says yes by clicking, that prospect should go to a landing page that effectively communicates with them and their needs. It has a clear message telling them they’re in the right place and, and convinces them to opt-in instead of exiting. This is where companies get their prospect’s email addresses.
A well spaced out email campaign. Marketers can go from 4- to as much as 12-email campaigns once they get new opt ins. This is when all content and copy is crucial; these emails are the opportunity of a business to make prospects know who they are, what they do (or make), and how they can help them. The end goal is to make people buy, and then continue to buy.
We’ve touched on what a sales funnel is and how companies build them for conversions.
Let’s move on to what factors cause high conversions in sales funnels, shall we?
Top 7 Ways to a High Converting Sales Funnel
Keep the customer in mind.
Some of the questions you need to ask yourself when keeping the customer in mind are:
- What problems does your product or service solve?
- What are the emotional factors that will drive customers to buy?
- What could their hesitations be in buying from you?
An effective sales funnel always keeps the customers’ thoughts in mind. When you know what their problems are and how your product or service can address their pain points, it won’t be too hard for you to lead them through the entire buying process.
Understand really well how to attract customers.
When you already know what the common problems and hesitations customers might have about your product or service, you may now move on to thinking about how to attract them with your lead magnet. At this stage, it’s time to think about what your competitors are doing.
Think about how you can outperform your competitors through your lead magnet and eye-catching landing page. What is one thing in your industry that you can be an authority of or hasn’t touched on by your fiercest competitor?
From there, use words that a customer can easily relate to. Don’t use complicated words that will jeopardize your message. Have a copy that your ideal customer can quickly understand and truly resonate with them at each stage of the buying process.
Encourage action.
Once prospects have landed on your page, they don’t want to give out their emails only to be given something they never signed up for. Whatever your promise is on your lead magnet, deliver it in truth without attempting them to give something else.
You want to bring people from awareness to evaluation to conversion. If you fail in providing what they’re expecting on each stage, then they’ll get out of the funnel before you even know it. Remember that the end goal is to make them buy your main product or service.
Build a content plan that knows what customers want at every stage of the funnel.
From designing your lead magnet and landing page to writing an effective copy – your messages should always aim at keeping prospects excited to take the next step because they feel that they’re in the right place for getting more information before they can decide to buy. The copy on the lead magnet and landing page as well as your follow up emails should be geared towards satisfying the customer in every stage of your funnel.
Create an enticing lead magnet.
From a customer’s point of view, makes you click on an ad within Facebook or Google? Is it the design of the image or the impact of the headline? Believe it or not, a lead’s magnet powerful headline (which also becomes your landing page’s headline) will make or break the connection you want to achieve from a prospect.
Again, keep in mind that you need to put your customer in mind. A powerful headline that encourages them to make an action that will improve their quality of life is what makes an enticing lead magnet.
Ensure that you have an effective copy.
An effective copy is focused on providing the benefits the customers will experience when they buy your product or service. It will only hurt you if you talk so much about what your product is or what makes them best, without understanding that the customer should be the start of the show.
Use a language that highlights your customer, their problems, the ideal solutions; and then once you gain their trust it wouldn’t be a challenge to showcase that you have those solutions indeed.
Test your funnel.
Peter Drucker said that anything which isn’t measured will never improve. In this light, always test your funnel. Review what elements work and don’t work. When you have put several funnels in place, test which ones are getting the most conversions. Ditch the ones that aren’t making the money, and stay on course with those that are giving the sales.
Check the opens, the clicks, the conversion rates, the specific type of audience with the most positive responses – all of these and more will guide you on which areas you should put all or part of your marketing budget.
Take action
The process around sales funnels is always evolving. Customers’ needs today may not be the same a year from now. Therefore, you need to keep up with your customers’ expectations. Always focus on giving customers a memorable experience.
Liz Azyan is interested in the ways new kinds of social data and technology introduce challenges and opportunities to society. Get involved with Liz’s latest project here.
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