Definition: A sales funnel is a term in digital marketing that talks about the step-by-step process that guides potential customers throughout the entire sales process.
Explanation:
It can be hard to guide customers on your website especially when you have lots of potential customers at the moment and you don’t want to miss out on making a sale
What makes sales funnels important is that it serves as your digital salesperson that guides and nurtures prospects until they take action on your website.
Oftentimes, marketers like to invest in software that builds, manages, and maintains their sales funnels effectively to automate the entire process.
Why is it important?
Sales funnels are important as it helps business owners understand customer behavior in the different part of your sales process.
If you’re not using sales funnels to learn more about the different steps, this will only make it harder to optimize conversions.
The Stages of a Sales Funnel
Awareness
The first stage of your sales funnel is where your prospects develop awareness of your brand after seeing it from an ad, someone tells them about it, reading your blog, or somewhere else.
For example, Jenna was scrolling through her social media accounts and came across a paid ad about your new product, a solar-powered lamp for the outdoors.
Interest
The second stage of the sales funnel is when the prospect becomes interested in your brand.
Jenna starts getting answers to questions about your brand and product and goes to Google to search,
“Pros and Cons of Solar-Powered Outdoor Lamps”
“Outdoor Activities to Try”
“What is Company XYZ?”
Desire
The third stage is where your prospect is interested to take action but isn’t ready to make a decision yet.
They might still be comparing your offers with a different brand or company and the best way to get them to proceed to the last step is to make your offer irresistible enough.
Action
This is the last or the bottom of the funnel where your prospects are finally converted into a customer or a lead in exchange for something valuable.
Three Parts of the Sales Funnel
The three essential parts of the sales funnel are related to the four stages of the sales funnel that were previously mentioned.
This is to help you visualize what’s happening inside the funnel and how it ‘filters’ or ‘sieves’ prospects just like how a kitchen funnel works.
Top – Awareness
The top of the funnel mainly focuses on the marketing process that includes gathering information of the prospect.
Let’s say there are around 100 people who are aware of your product, however, only a few people will proceed to the next step.
Middle – Interest and Desire
In the middle part of the funnel, this where you build more interest and persuade or nurture them as they move to the next step.
This is also the part where email marketing comes in, and companies are sending emails to their leads to spark interest in their offer.
Take note that this is a very critical stage and you need to approach your leads in a lowkey manner that pushes them without looking too desperate.
You can expect a decrease in potential customers in this part and get maybe 50 people out of 100.
Bottom – Action
The last and most important part is getting your prospects to reach the bottom of the funnel (as mentioned in the previous section) where they finally turn into prospects or leads.
During the whole filtering process inside your funnel, you can expect to get fewer prospects from the middle part, and finally getting only 15 out of 100 potential customers throughout the process.
Basic Elements of the Sales Funnel
This section talks about components of a sales funnel, that are widely used by marketers who are selling physical or digital products.
Landing Page
The landing page is the page where a potential customer ‘lands’ after clicking an ad or a link that redirects them to this particular page.
This page is responsible in lead generation to capture the contact information of prospects by encouraging them to fill out a form and turn them into leads.
Sales Pages
The sales page is where you introduce a valuable offer to a potential customer.
Order form bumps are more likely to appear on this page after the customer clicks on the ‘Buy Now’ button.
Upsell Pages
The role of your upsell pages is to encourage prospects to buy more from you and this can be a one-time offer that they might be interested to buy.
Downsell Page (optional)
This page usually appears whenever the prospect rejected your first upsell.
It still keeps the buying loop open by presenting them with another offer that’s typically cheaper.
Confirmation Page
The final page of a product sales funnel is where you thank your customer for their purchase and tell them instructions on how they can receive their product.
By the way, the sales process doesn’t end on the confirmation page.
In fact, it can also be an introduction to another funnel in your value ladder.
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