If you passed primary school then you should know how a funnel works. You pour contents from the top through the funnel out the small bottom.
When thinking of a sales funnel, think how it metaphorically works like a real funnel.
This time the content going through this funnel isn’t oil for your car or milo in the milk carton.
It’s your customers! (Metaphorically)
Your goal is to deliver a prospect through the different stages of the funnel to become a buyer.
Critical stages of the funnel
Stages of the funnel are like a coming of age story for your business and customers. Consider what you are about to read as the starter or basic sales funnel for beginners.
Some sales funnels can have up to seven stages while others only have three.
Personally, it gets a little confusing when there are seven stages, and when there is only three your missing out on a lot of information.
Today I am giving you, what we here at CLIQ Marketing Content think is the basic but perfect five-stage funnel model.
Stage one: awareness
In most versions of the sales funnel ‘awareness’ is the first section.
It is considered the most important section because it gains people’s attention so that they might journey in through the rest of the tunnel.
In short it makes people aware of your business.
Prospects enter you sales funnel through an enticing offer that is usually found upon your leads page.
Your leads page that might happen to offer freebies (otherwise known as a lead magnet), where you gain the first link of communication.
This is why a leads page is so important so make sure that it pops out to customers to lure them into your business.
Stage two: interest
After gaining your future customers email through stage one you can now communicate to them and try to gain some of their interest.
This can be done in different ways, but it is important that you’ve provided what your customer needs or wants.
Try and share as much information about your business as possible and even the product that they might wish to buy.
This is the start of your customer relationship so be polite and not too salesy because it won’t make for a very good long-term relationship.
Introduce each email with friendly remarks and add information about who you are and what your purpose is.
You can include information about products but make sure to add personal touches such as what you think.
Include a lot of inclusive language to refrain from making the emails sound like your standard automated email from a robot.
The customer is more likely to buy from you if they like you and if they like you then they will like your business.
Stage three: decision
Sometimes a lot of thinking happens before someone goes into buying something. Other times, there isn’t much thought at all.
But, actually whether it happens quickly or takes a while is up to you! You have a lot of sway in your prospects decision.
Show them reviews of how other people were happy with the product after buying and even articles about your business.
Find anything that you can that says “yes” and put it under their noses. Hopefully the decision is yes and that takes us to the next step.
Stage four: purchase/commitment
Your prospect is now a customer!
At this stage you check up on your customer and see if they are happy with their product, making sure that it works and giving any aids that may help them.
You can offer upgrades and downgrades and send emails connecting them to similar or additional products.
You should keep in touch with them and even maybe ask them to leave a review or fill in a survey about their experience.
The sacred stage five: Loyalty
This is the last step in the funnel.
Not all funnels will have this as a step, but it is important to consider.
After a customer has bought something from your business the story shouldn’t end there because after going through that entire process of gaining a customer it would be a waste to stop attending to them.
Sometimes this can be called the ‘repurchase’ section where you try in getting customers to buy more than one thing.
But having loyalty with a customer means that it is long term and rather than them maybe buying one or two things they become a regular.
‘Repeat customers’ (some call them) are too valuable to not place time and effort into.
So, as much as it is important to gain new customers, you should look after the ones you already have equally as much.
Don’t forget about those first buys. Give them further value over a period of time after they have bought something, send them blog articles and a ‘thinking of you’ message – ask them for a review and leverage the power of re-marketing.
This article was originally published at Cliqmc.com, by author Gabrielle Torpey.
Recent Comments