Imagine you’ve spent countless hours, months, or even years creating your first online business. You’ve created a beautiful website, offered valuable content on a regular basis, and finally released your first digital product…which fails miserably. “Why is this happening?” you might ask. You did your research, found a market need, and created the best product you possibly could. Well, the problem may have nothing to do with your product, but your sales funnel.
Creating a strong sales funnel is crucial in converting leads into lifelong customers. If you’re reading this, I imagine you’re ready to create your own sales funnel and start earning a profit from all your efforts!
What is a Sales Funnel?
In essence, a sales funnel is a marketing strategy. This strategy starts with awareness and leads to a conversion. A conversion can be anything from building engagement, to email subscriptions, to purchasing a product. The funnel starts very wide, essentially casting a large net to capture interest. Those who find interest are then further engaged to build trust, which leads to an eventual sale.
The funnel is broken down into three main stages, each of which has it’s own marketing objective. We start wide with the Top Funnel, make our way to the Middle Funnel, and finish up with the Bottom Funnel. This process converts potential customers into committed customers. Let’s dive into each stage to see how it’s done.
Top Funnel
The top of the funnel is filled with those who are unaware of your brand, but have potential to become customers. First impressions count and this is where you present who you are and what you do. Let me repeat to stress the fact that, “first impressions count” here. Take the time to consider your brands message and how to convey that in a clear manner.
The point of this funnel is to build awareness of your brand and products/services. This begins a relationship with your potential customer and serves as the foundation for further engagement.
Say for instance you have a Shopify store based on outdoor clothing. Your goal is to build awareness of your brand to begin that relationship with new customers. You create a short video including hikers on a mountain range, people kayaking down a river, and friends laughing around the campfire with your branded clothing throughout. Those who watch the video have now become familiar with your brand and have transitioned to the next stage of the funnel, the middle funnel.
Middle Funnel
The middle funnel is the warming stage, where you build on that initial engagement. The objective here moves beyond awareness to relationship building. Your potential customers knows your brand and might be interested in what you have to offer. The goal in this stage of the sales funnel is to engage and educate about your brand and it’s offerings. Objectives might include increasing website traffic, content engagement, and further lead generation to drive interest and consideration.
An excellent way to increase engagement and build trust is through the use of a lead magnet. A lead magnet is simply an incentive that encourages further engagement. In order for this to be successful, your lead magnet must be something of high value in exchange for little to nothing.
For example, say someone recently watched your branded video and Liked it on Facebook. You set up a retargeting ad campaign focused on growing your email list and product awareness. You offer a 10% discount for those who subscribe and include a link to your current catalog. Those who follow through on this step are not only aware of your brand, but trust your business enough to further engage for a discount on their next purchase. This is an excellent indication of their intent to buy, which moves them to the final stage of the funnel, the bottom funnel.
Bottom Funnel
Those who reach the bottom funnel are prime for purchase. They’re aware of your brand, have engaged with your content, and show an interest in the products and services you have to offer. The objective of the bottom funnel is to call them to action. This can be any number of actions, but generally asks them to make a purchase. Many businesses incentivize the call to action by offering a further discount.
Say for instance a potential customer looked at your catalog of products and subscribed for a 10% discount. You set up a retargeting campaign and start presenting them with ads of the products they looked at in the catalog. You offer another incentive that includes free shipping on their first order and the customer begins the purchase process. At this point you offer additional up-sells at a discounted price to incentivize additional purchases and the potential customer converts into a paying customer.
Keep in mind that it’s much easier and cheaper to build sales through previous customers. Create retargeting campaigns to present previous customers with new products on occasion and send them regular emails to retain that familiarity and trust.
Creating Your First Sales Funnel
The biggest mistake you can make when marketing is sending the wrong message to your audience. For example, sending a bottom funnel message to a top funnel audience will not be very effective. It’s essentially saying, “Hi, you don’t know me, but buy my product!”. You may get a few sales, but it’s not conducive to building a strong brand image. Approach marketing as if you were meeting someone new – introduce yourself, build rapport, and then talk business.
I recommend giving away and interacting with your audience as much as you possibly can. Provide helpful articles, videos, podcasts, free courses, and more. The mantra used to be, “sell, sell, sell”, and has now become, “give, give, give. Introduce yourself to your audience and build rapport by giving away lots of value. Eventually, when you do target your bottom funnel, you’ll have customers lined up to purchase all your premium products.
What are your thoughts, have you created a sales funnel for your business? Leave comments below about any successful campaigns and if you have any questions!
*Some of the links above are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase I will earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you. I recommend them because they are helpful and useful, not because of the small commissions I make if you decide to make a purchase.
