A sales funnel also known as a purchase funnel can be simply described as a customers journey towards purchasing a particular product or service meaning the stages a consumer had to go through before eventually making a purchase.
Sales funnels stages.
- Awareness – This is the stage where, in most cases, your target audience is hearing of your business for the very first time. In this case, it is very important for them to understand exactly what you do.
- Attraction – The next step is when you try and get your leads to interact with your business. In this stage, you assume that your leads are at least aware of your business and know what product/service you are selling to them. You should now try to entice or convince them as to why they need your product.
- Interest – This is the stage that every business dreams of. Where the customer comes to find you rather than the other way around.
- Purchase – This is the happy ending that every business dreams of. Where the lead finally makes up their mind and chooses to buy from your business.
- Delight – At this stage you need to ensure that your customers are happy with their purchase as this stage is what keeps the funnel going, if your customers are not happy with your purchase they won’t come to buy again and as you know mouth – mouth is very powerful a potential customer could hear of their bad experience.
Steps to creating great funnels
Create a great landing page.
Your website’s landing page is the first impression potential customers will instantly have of your business. Therefore, take time to make sure that it looks great. A good landing page will also encourage visitors to sign up for some sort of list, or subscribe to the website. This gives you that all-important contact information, which becomes your first line of communication.
Present a front-end offer.
The next step is to present potential customers with the opportunity to buy a product or procure your service. “When constructing your main front-end products and associated upsell offers, you should be engineering them with the additional mindset of . . . how will this help create more desire for the next [backend] offer [you’re] going to present them with,” explains Todd Brown of MarketingFunnelAutomation.com.
Give an upsell offer on the back end.
Offer your customers who just bought or are about to buy a product or service the opportunity to upsize, or upgrade, that service. For example, create an offer that will deliver even more benefit to the customer if he or she upgrades. This strategy is called an upsell.
Offer a downsize option.
In the same way that you encouraged customers to upgrade services in the upsell step, this element of the funnel calls for you to offer a downgrade option to certain customers.
No, a downsize option doesn’t represent a failure and should not be looked upon as the loss of a sale.
Keep it going.
The last step in the sales funnel is to keep your momentum going. Follow up with all the new customers you have acquired and ensure they are happy with their product or service. A great way to accomplish this is to offer a membership-based rewards program. This will allow you to remain in contact with customers, giving you the perfect means for telling them about new deals and services.