A sales funnel is a marketing term referring to a customer’s journey from learning about a brand to making a purchase. It’s a step-by-step sales strategy roadmap that helps you reach your objectives.
However, building a sales funnel from scratch is a challenging task. Here, we’ll explain how to create a sales funnel that will generate maximum conversions without spending a fortune.
How to Create a Sales Funnel
Find Your Target Audience
Regardless of your business scale, industry, and marketing strategy, you should first determine your target audience. This will help avoid spending time and money on generating leads that won’t convert into customers.
Furthermore, different audiences prefer different channels and approaches. For instance, if you target young people, your main lead generation channel could be Instagram or TikTok, whereas the older generation prefers Facebook.
Target audiences differ by interests, purchase intention, age, gender, income, education level, profession, and other sub-groups. You can identify your target audience using various methods, such as surveys, data analytics extensions, and feedback from existing consumers. Excluding leads who certainly aren’t your target audience also helps.
Once you’ve identified your target audience, you can move on to selecting the most suitable for your business sales funnel type. Never attempt to do that before determining your audience. The same funnel may be highly effective with one lead group and utterly useless with another.
Determine Your Sales Funnel Type
Generally speaking, all sales funnels consist of three elements. The top of a funnel or the first stage of your strategy is raising awareness. The middle stage is boosting interest and building customer relationships. Lastly, the bottom of a funnel is closing the deal or transforming leads into paying customers. However, not every funnel is the same.
Sales funnels may differ by intention and steps. For example, the purpose of a lead generation funnel is gathering potential customer data rather than making a sale. An automated webinar funnel aims to inform leads about your offer in detail.
A self-liquidating offer funnel strives to convince customers to make a low-investment purchase to push them to make a more substantial purchase later.
In other words, you should determine your starting and ending points. For example, do you want to attract new leads and build a relationship with them? Do you want to make new sales or offer existing customers an upgrade?
Furthermore, different sales funnel types may be more suitable for certain products or services. For example, automated webinars and discovery call funnels are typically used to sell high-end products and services, often digital or informative. A self-liquidating offer funnel, in turn, is a better choice for businesses selling relatively inexpensive goods that can be upsold.
Create a Sales Funnel Map
The top, middle, and bottom of a sales funnel are only navigating points. Each of these elements is divided into smaller steps that may differ depending on your business specifics and intention. Let’s take the awareness stage as an example. Methods of reaching a new audience include but are not limited to:
- Social media ads
- Search engines
- Direct email offers
- Guest blog posts
- Collaborations with complementary businesses
Your awareness strategy must be based on your target audience, and chosen sales funnel type. But it must be clearly defined to be successful. The next step is boosting interest, and it can be done in the following ways:
- Posting valuable content
- Sending emails with product information
- Offering a free trial
- Offering a discovery call
- Offering to join a webinar
These methods help your potential customer learn more about your product or service and increase their interest. You can’t skip this step and jump straight from raising awareness to successful sales.
Closing a deal is the final stage of a traditional sales funnel. Although this step may seem straightforward in practice, it isn’t that simple. Your goal here is to eliminate any doubts left after stage two of your funnel.
For instance, you can offer them an attractive discount on the first order or add a call to action after your webinar. When each step of your sales strategy is clearly defined, you have no space for hesitancy and mistakes.
Create a Landing Page
One of the main objectives of a sales funnel is to redirect leads to your landing page. While many modern businesses don’t have a landing page and operate solely on social media, this isn’t particularly far-sighted.
If you don’t yet have a business website, consider acquiring one as soon as possible. It serves as your business card, the base of your social channels, and a powerful tool for various operations.
In addition to your main landing page, you also need the funnel landing page. Let’s assume you’re planning to launch an automated webinar sales funnel. First, you need to create a webinar page with a call to action to implement your strategy. Then, you can share the link in your ads and on your social channels to drive traffic when you have the funnel landing page.
This step may seem complex, as creating new web pages typically requires professional help. However, we live in an era of technological progress, and many processes can be automated.
You can opt for the help of cloud-based software such as Funnel Mates. Their catalog contains hundreds of ready-made funnel landing pages that can be personalized for your brand or customized using your custom code.
Generate Leads
Any sales funnel starts with generating leads. Your goal is to gather potential customer data and build a connection with them. Take a look at the first stage of your sales funnel map. Will you attract a new audience using social media ads, content marketing, or another method?
Regardless of your strategy, your ad should feature a link to your landing page and encourage people to leave their contact details. This way, you will generate traffic and expand your potential customer database. To convince people to leave their contact details, you must offer them something valuable. For example, a discount on their first order or a free e-book.
Capture Interest
After you’ve acquired enough leads, your goal is to build their interest in your product or service. For example, if you choose a content marketing sales funnel, start creating high-quality SEO content. Alternatively, if your lead generation method is social media ads, engage with your Facebook and Instagram followers.
Any sales funnel’s middle stage purpose is nurturing the prospects with valuable content that educates them about your product or service. However, remember that you’re toeing a narrow line between keeping your subscribers informed and annoyed. So don’t spam – strive to maintain a healthy relationship with your leads.
One of the best ways to boost consumer interest is email marketing. However, email marketing tools tend to be pricey, and composing a successful email offer requires the help of professional copywriters.
Thankfully, you can escape unnecessarily significant financial and time investments with Funnel Mates. This service offers integrated hosted email marketing software with ready-made offers tailored to your branding and including your affiliate links.
Generate Conversions
Each action undertaken in the middle stage of your sales funnel should lead to an offer. For example, if you write educational blog posts, embed a link to your sales funnel landing page in the text. If you invite people to join a webinar, add a purchase button underneath the video. Strive to make an offer that your leads can’t turn down.
Funnel Optimization
Your marketing efforts don’t end when your sales funnel is built and launched. You should constantly analyze data to determine whether your funnel is successful and optimize it. Gathering and studying data helps find your funnel’s weak points – steps at which you’re losing customer interest.
Perhaps you’ve managed to capture lead attention but didn’t make an appealing enough offer. Or, you’ve provided valuable content but didn’t include a link to your funnel landing page. Therefore, you don’t generate traffic. Each step of your funnel must be consistent and lead to the next step.
Testing your sales funnel with different offers at the early stages is always a good idea. Compare the number of acquired leads and completed purchases to determine the most effective option.
Alternatively, opt for already tested and optimized sales funnels, such as those offered by Funnel Mates. Each of the funnels found in their collection was thoroughly tested for efficiency and is guaranteed to generate conversions. All you need is to enter your data to customize the template.
Nurture the Customer Relationship
Although most sales funnels focus solely on generating conversions, some marketers argue that the objective is building loyal customer relationships. In other words, instead of converting leads into one-off customers, you should strive to convert them into your regulars.
According to SemRush, the probability of selling to a new customer is only 5%-20%, while existing customers will purchase your product with a 60-70% chance. Loyal customers are also more likely to spend more than first-time buyers.
You can find endless strategies for acquiring loyal customers online. Here, we’ll focus on the funnel method. Don’t forget about your customers after they make a purchase. You may set up an automated email sequence to keep them informed about your updates or offer discounts on their birthday.
Anything that makes your audience feel valued and maintains their interest will do the job.
Consider Automation
Now that you know how to build a sales funnel, it’s time to take action. First, check out the Funnel Mates catalog if you don’t have the time and funds to invest in a made-to-order funnel. They offer sales funnels of any type and for any industry without a subscriber limit. Most importantly, the process is entirely automated, and each funnel is thoroughly tested to ensure its efficiency.