Turn your leads into customers by guiding them throughout the entire sales process and fail-proof your strategy by applying the different phases of a sales funnel to get higher conversion rates.
As a marketer, you aim to get the most out of your website by converting your traffic into customers and using strategies that work.
To think that driving traffic to your website is already challenging, you must also learn to plan everything first before even building a sales funnel.
Once you learn how to plan your funnel by applying these different phases, you’re guaranteed to achieve your business goals in no time.
So what exactly are the seven different phases of a funnel and why do you need it to make a sale?
In this article, we will be talking about the different phases of a sales funnel that are included in our DotCom Secrets Review.
And you will also learn how important these phases are and where you can find them inside the stages of a sales funnel.
What are the stages of a sales funnel?
To help you understand more about the different phases, let’s talk about the stages of a sales funnel first that you can easily remember with the AIDA Model.
Awareness
This is the first stage of a sales funnel where your prospects are already aware of your brand through advertisements and promotions.
For example, Customer 1 saw a product from your brand on a Facebook ad, which is a high-end automatic vacuum machine that functions like Alexa and is currently on sale for a limited time.
Interest
After they become aware of your brand, they will then find it interesting and eventually do more research to know if they want to avail your products or services.
Customer 1 will start researching with their mobile phone as they are riding a bus going home from work.
Decision
Once they become interested, they are much more likely to develop a desire and are starting to play scenarios in their head as if they’re already using your product. They are thinking about making a decision.
After learning more about your product, Customer 1 will then start thinking about how it saves them time since the product can be controlled even while they’re away.
That means they can choose to turn the vacuum cleaner on anytime and can expect to get home with a clean floor.
And since it functions like Alexa, it can even wake them up in the morning, thus, more benefits for them.
Of course, it’s only happening in their head since they haven’t bought it yet.
Action
This is the part where the prospect interacts with the company like signing up to get exclusive discount vouchers and stuff.
It is also a very important step for your brand to nurture the prospect so you can make a sale.
Now that Customer 1 has decided to get your product, they will then try to call someone from your sales team to ask for more details so they can make a purchase.
The Different Phases of A Sales Funnel
Learning the different phases of a sales funnel is the most important step to reach your business goals in no time.
Since your primary goal is to get your customers to buy something from you, you must be able to apply different strategies that move your prospects through the sales funnel.
Phase 1: Traffic Temperature (Awareness)
Determining the three kinds of online traffic lets you create a strategy on how you can approach each type.
Hot traffic (product-aware)
This type of traffic is where prospects are already aware of your company and the products or services that you offer.
You can think of them as your friends or loyal followers who already have an idea of what your company does.
It’s also possible that they used to be your customers before.
Warm traffic (desire aware)
These are the people who don’t actually know your company yet but are still looking for products and services that you offer.
To put it simply, they’re the type who already know what they want and need but aren’t aware that you have the solutions to their problems.
Cold traffic (problem aware)
This type of traffic already has a problem but aren’t aware of the solution that your company has just like our sample Customer 1.
Phase 2: Pre-Frame Bridge (Interest and Desire)
Now that you already know the different types of traffic, the next step is to create a “pre-frame bridge” that increases their awareness stage.
This could be in a form of ads, vlogs, articles, email, etc. that lets you earn their trust to be interested to listen to what you’re about to say.
So basically, you’re persuading your audience in this phase.
Hot Traffic Bridge
This type is probably the easiest since you don’t have to build a bridge anymore except that you need to make the bridge stronger.
To make it stronger, you can start by sending people who bought from you before or your friends a simple notice like an email that gets them to your landing page.
The good thing is that you don’t have to earn their trust again since they already know you and a simple call-to-action is what you’ll only be needing.
Warm Traffic Bridge
Since this type of traffic doesn’t know you yet, you can make them aware of your brand, by having a third party promote it for you like an influencer, a content creator, or even affiliates.
Cold Traffic Bridge
This is probably the hardest type of traffic to reach since they aren’t aware of the solution to their problem yet, so you have to broaden your brand’s exposure more.
It means that you need to hook them first to see if they want to be hooked. Get it?
Think of Customer 1, in the first place, they weren’t even aware that they needed a vacuum cleaner.
They aren’t also aware that such product from your company even existed.
But as they were just catching the bus to get home, they came across your ad that says,
“Are You Always Tired and Find It Difficult to Do House Chores?”
“If You’re The Busy Type Then Our Advanced Vacuum Might Just Be For You”
Although it was only a brief moment that they saw your ad, it still made them aware of it.
Your warm and hot traffic are the easy ones to target, so you don’t have to educate them more since you can create a simple pre-frame bridge to teach them more about your products.
However, for cold traffic, you need to educate them more which means that you need to put in extra effort in persuading them just to get them to your landing page.
And since you already hooked their attention, you can explain the product even more through a bridge page that makes them more curious.
Phase 3: Qualify Subscribers (Action)
So you already had your prospects on your landing page, which means that it’s time for you to do your best to make them give their contact information to you.
This can be done via an opt-in page that lets you build your email list, which you can use in the future for email marketing.
Phase 4: Qualify Buyers (Action)
To help you understand this phase easier, let’s go back to our Customer 1.
Since they are already interested and have decided to give their email to you just to buy the product, this is the chance for you to do more promotions.
Like this for example:
“This product is currently on sale for a limited time and as a bonus, we’re also offering free shipping on your product”
This is where you can easily distinguish people who just signed up to subscribe and abandoned their cart, from people who are ready to buy.
Phase 5: Identify Hyperactive Buyers (Retention)
Retention is basically where you add upsells or downsells to hyperactive buyers, loyal customers, etc. to encourage them to buy more from you.
This means that the stages of a funnel can also be composed of 5 stages that most marketers refer to as the AIDAR model, however, this step is often overlooked.
Phase 5 is where you turn a qualified buyer to buy more from you by showing them upsells and downsells to increase the products on their cart.
Phase 6: Age and Ascend the Relationship
This phase is where your prospect is now a buyer and you start increasing your relationship with them while increasing customer lifetime value at the same time.
You can think of it as follow-ups that you can send through their email address
Phase 7: Change the Selling Environment
This is actually very easy to understand since you can do it to get your customers to enter a new sales funnel.
For customer 1, you can offer them something new by changing the environment like maybe giving them a phone call where you can tell them,
“Hi, this is the company where you bought the vacuum from and as our loyal customer, we want to offer you a new product that lets you do the dishes even after leaving the house. If you have time, you may visit our physical store at…”
As you can see, the sales funnel is never-ending and it can indeed, convert leads into customers especially when planned well.
If you’re interested to learn more strategies, you may also click here to read our DotCom Secrets Book Review.
