Why Every Business Needs an Online Sales Funnel
Every business needs an online sales funnel because it is the best way to generate leads and convert them into customers. Your online sales funnel can be set up using a combination of online marketing tools including blog posts, landing pages, email campaigns, sales pages, social media, and online advertising.
What is a Sales Funnel?
A sales funnel is the path or journey you take someone on that turns them from a complete stranger with little to no knowledge of who you are or your business, and converts them into a paying customer and raving fan who loves your products or services.
Building out an effective sales funnel for your business will arm you with the marketing tool you need to achieve success in the long run.
Understanding Your Sales Funnel
There are four stages in your sales funnel:
Awareness, Interest, Desire & Decision and Action.
Each of these stages is essential to your marketing efforts, and it is important that you understand each one before you launch any marketing campaign that feeds people into your online sale funnel.
Stage 1. Awareness
To sell your products or services to someone you first have to make that person aware of you, your business and that your solution to their problem exists.
This happens at the top of your online sales funnel where you will get prospects attention with some form of online ad or online content building awareness of you and your business.
This is where you will use high-value online content in the form of blog posts, online videos and even PDFs to attract your ideal customers towards you. This content is hosted on your website or landing pages.
The most common form of high-value content is called a Lead Magnet....an irresistible, complimentary digital offer given to your potential customer in exchange for their email.
A FREE offer that introduces you to potential customers as an authority through educating them about their problem.
This could be a PDF cheat sheet, short training video, how-to guide, self-discovery quiz or any other piece of digital information that you think will truly help them get an understanding of how they could solve their problem.
This is why it is so important to create amazing online content at the top of your sales funnel, content that truly helps your prospects. If you want to capture more attention from potential customers, capture their contact information and begin to establish yourself as an authority in your industry, this is your first step!
Stage 2. Interest
Now that you have the attention of your ideal customers you move them further down your salves funnel into the middle of the funnel.
Here you need to communicate with them online to build interest in your solution...your offers and products that will solve their burning problem.
Explain to them that your solution and products and services are different and better than the competition.
You does this in 3 ways:
1. by actually showing them you care about them and
3. explaining to them the feel-good benefits of your solution that they will experience once it has rid them of their problem.
2. by demonstrating to them what the unique mechanism is that allows your product or service to work and deliver on the desired outcome it promises to give them. This is your unique formula, system, ingredient or element of your solution.
Here is where you will use their email address you captured in the awareness stage to now engage deeply with your potential customers via email, educating them and nurturing them.
The best way to do this is to use an email marketing tool called an email autoresponder that will allow you to automate the entire email followup process. This online tool will automatically email people on your behalf.
This is where you truly start to build trust through consistent engagement with potential customers, and establish yourself as an authority in your industry.
Stage 3. Desire & Decision
Even though you have built interest in your products or services and showcased all the awesome benefits of buying from or working with you, there is still work to be done!
This is where the 3rd stage of your sales funnel comes in.
You need to create desire within people to actually want to change...to go from where they are right now to where they really want to be....
...So that they ultimately make the decision to buy from you and take their credit card out their wallet.
But humans make buying decisions on emotion and justify their purchase logic.
You need to remind them of the pain they are currently experiencing and will continue to experience if they do not decide to do business with you.
This is when they become more interested in your products and services and get into the purchase decision phase.
This is when they start to check out reviews and testimonials from past customers.
They start to do comparison between you and the competition.
They want to make sure and confirm that you are not only "legit" but definitely the best option for them.
This is where any evidence you have of social proof is most effective at taking them to the decision stage.
Stage 4. Action
Once your prospects have made the mental decision to buy, they will be ready to buy from you.
This is the time when you must use your unique selling proposition (USP) and calls to action (CTA) to convince them that your product is the best option for their needs.
Your USP should be a unique benefit that your product or service offers to someone that no other competing product or service does.
They must believe that they can not get this unique benefit from any other business or any other person than you.
You must then call them to action by literally telling them to "click the order button" or "fill out the application form" or "Register now!".
At this stage you can offer a free trial of your product or service, discount codes for other products, or any other incentive that will make them pull out their credit card. Regardless of the incentive you choose, make it so irresistible that your prospect can’t wait to take advantage of it.
This persuasion is all done through the use of online sale pages that will persuade your prospects to pull the trigger to buy and facilitate your customers payment via credit card.
And that's when you here Cha-Ching!
A stranger now pops out of the bottom of your sales funnel as a buying customer.
And this entire process can all be setup on autopilot using an online sales funnel builder.
That is how your online sales funnel makes you sales and why you need one!
After your prospects buy from you will continue to communication with them and nuture the relationship you now have establish with them.
You offer them excellent customer service and support.
You keep them informed of new products or services.
You offer them new more expensive, higher-value offers, increasing their lifetime value with your business.
You build customers for life!
If your prospects have not yet purchased, you can still nurture them through automated email nurturing sequences and continue to engage them to encourage them to make a purchase in the future. This will allow you to maintain relationships with them that will help your business grow in the long-term.
Learn how To build YOUR ONLINE sales funnel
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Learn how To build YOUR ONLINE sales funnels
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