Spend even a few minutes online trying to learn how to build and grow a business and you’ll undoubtedly come across someone celebrating the many benefits of a sales or marketing funnel. This isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme, even though many online personalities love to market it that way.
This is simply another tool in your bag of tricks to increase traffic, sales, and customer engagement.
I’m going to break down what is a marketing funnel a bit so you can get a clear understanding if it is the right tool for your business and what it can do for your unique niche.
What is this Magical Marketing Funnel You Speak Of?
Think of your customers like water and the steps they take to find, engage, and purchase your product or service as the funnel the water flows through. The goal is to capture as many target niche customers and send them through this funnel so they make a purchase and become brand loyalists or, hopefully, ambassadors.
A solid marketing funnel works by removing the friction in the buying cycle. It tracks your customer journey from the first time they hear about your brand to the moment when they make a purchase. Let me give you a quick example of what I mean.
Different Stages of a Funnel
Let’s start with the widest end of the funnel first:
- Brand Awareness: Your customers find out about your company through an event, advertising, blog post, social media, or other marketing channels.
- Interest: These potential leads get more interested in your product because you’ve engaged with them through highly relevant content like emails, newsletters, and more.
- Consideration: Now you’ve got them on the hook, and they are interested, so you deliver the goods with more product information from your site, free trials of your products, or relevant studies that prove the value of what you’re offering.
- Intent: Your demos or shopping experience convinces customers what you have is a great option.
- Evaluation: Customers compare what you have to offer against competitors. Think of tools like price matching.
- Purchase: They Buy!!!
That is a long-tail funnel. They can come in all sorts of sizes and sequences designed for your target market and business niche. The goal is to capture attention, convince them to buy, and then make the sale.
Interconnected Systems – A Big Phrase for Making it Work
Hopefully, that quick explanation of what is a marketing funnel gives you all the background you need. Don’t try to overcomplicate it with other people selling you an idea that you need thousands of dollars of specialized software to make your funnel work. It breaks down to a simple concept: build interest – convince to buy – purchase item.
A quality marketing or sales funnel will build your business by having a smooth pathway to capture new leads and send them through the customer journey that increases revenues. One of the easiest ways to ensure this pathway is clear and concise is having interconnected systems.
Think of all the moving parts of your online and physical business as “funnel fuel.” Do you have advertising, email marketing, on-page SEO, affiliate marketing, referral links? Each one of these items is a customer touchpoint that fuels your sales funnel to grow your business with higher customer engagement.
How Do I Do This?
I know this all seems overwhelming, but it gets a lot easier in time as you try different methods. The whole point of operating a solid marketing funnel is to remove friction in the buying cycle and customer journey. You need to think about how you would want to naturally discover a new brand and make a purchase from their store. Ask yourself a few questions:
Is there a deal?
If I purchase this item, do I get a discount on another item in their store? Offering your customers a pricing structure that gives them an immediate discount for making more purchases is a great way to expand your marketing funnel.
What value does this product offer?
Am I getting the correct value for my money? Harvard Business School loves to talk about product valuation propositions. To keep it simple, think like this: my brand helps (x) do (y) by doing (z). X refers to the target customer, Y means the daily activity Z. A copywriting business would be something like: We help companies resonate their messaging with target audiences by communicating their value clearly and with strong emotions. Making this formula clear across your funnel increases sales. It is just that simple.
Are there engaging add-ons?
Can I get more of what I like? Transaction density is a gift to any business. When you offer sales funnels, are there add-ons that increase the value of your purchase, like secondary products or free offers? Can you extend the time of your customer’s engagement so that you’ll have more opportunities to make more sales with them? Any movie theater worth its salt offers popcorn and a loyalty cup that encourages return buyers so they get the full value.
What to Consider with Your Marketing Funnel
When you do start building what is a marketing funnel to you, consider the idea of collapsing time and compounding momentum. The shorter you can make a point of entry to your funnel from the point of sale, without decreasing customer value, the better.
How do you accomplish this? Try to find automation tech tools that build your marketing funnel seamlessly and decrease manual effort. Services like email mailers that send out an automatic set of 6 messages anytime you capture a new email address is an excellent example. You write the email once, and every time those thousands of customers engage with your brand, they get a new offer to join, buy, or continue working with your business.
Try to come at your funnel design from a holistic viewpoint. This is where most businesses get a little tripped up with the technology. You want a clean and clear marketing funnel blueprint that shows the customer journey. Eventually, you can start building multiple funnels, sometimes called funnel stacking, that captures customers with specific needs, wants, and desires.
Feeling Overwhelmed?
I get it, this is a lot of information, and almost all of these topics could be a book on their own. But, the good news is, I want to help you!! I can walk you through this process so you can build the digital marketing sales funnel that works for your specific business.
I have experience crafting custom-made and easy-to-understand marketing funnels for businesses & I go a step further to work with your brand to forge a holistic approach to your marketing. This way, your customers get a unique experience to talk about to their friends and family.
By the way, if you haven’t noticed, you are now in one of my marketing funnels now. 😉 I cannot wait to hear from you and help grow your business with solid marketing strategies and processes.
