As an enterprising entreprofessional, you likely want to learn how to shortcut your way to business success, right? You can stop worrying, because these 5 simple steps for building a killer sales funnel from scratch will pave your way to business success before year-end.
Without a marketing strategy that incorporates a well-developed sales funnel process, your business will most likely fall short of achieving your desired sales goals. Your web traffic will likely suffer. Your audience growth will likely be challenged, along with your audience-to-interested-prospect conversion rate and your prospect-to-paying-client close rate. Therefore if you’ve come this far through 2020 and still don’t have a sales funnel process as part of your overall marketing strategy, what are you waiting for?
What Is A Sales Funnel?
A sales funnel is a combination of marketing and sales strategies that are combined in just the right way and at just the right times to generate web traffic and nurture individuals through your sales cycle. A sales funnel is the path that guides strangers through the stranger-to-client journey. The funnel shape symbolizes that not all individuals make it through the client journey process. Many people will learn of your message and the services you provide, but only a few will filter through from strangers to audience members, from audience members to interested prospects, and ultimately from prospects to paying clients.
Why Is Sales Funnel Important For Your Business?
A Sales Funnel is important because it visualizes the customer journey. With a sales funnel process, you can identify the triggers that compel your prospects to convert and also the challenges that prevent them from turning into loyal, paying clients.
There’s a saying, “knowing is half the battle.” Putting together a Sales Funnel gives you insight into your business processes. It may have been quite some time since you last viewed your business through the eyes of prospective clients and clients. A Sales Funnel will also give data that you can use to make informed decisions regarding your marketing efforts. For instance, if you are not sure at the outset which of a few different marketing messages to use, you can A/B Test multiple messages and use the data regarding successes and failures to iterate your messages for optimal performance.
Building A Sales Funnel From Scratch (2020 Edition)
You should think of your Sales Funnel as an automated selling machine that generates the potential for more clients all starting with a few clicks of your Call To Action (CTA) buttons. Building the Best Sales Funnel for this year may seem challenging, but it's not all that hard if you follow these 5 steps:
Step One: Research Your Target Audience
Once you know more about your target audience, you’ll be better equipped to effectively create the marketing content and assets that you will need to help cultivate your audience, convert them into interested prospects, and ultimately close them into loyal paying clients. Keep in mind that it only makes sense to market to the audiences that need and can afford your products and services. That’s an added benefit of researching before investing too heavily in your marketing efforts.
How to know more about your target audience?
You'll know them better by following these tips:
a. Demographics - Have a look at the demographics of your prospects that might need or afford your product or service. Assess them on age, gender, ethnicity, location, occupation, income, marital status, and education. Through demographics, you'll be able to craft your ideal client persona and become familiar with your prospects' preferences.
b. Have a look at your existing customers or clients - By reviewing your current clients, you'll have an idea regarding who is most attracted to your product or service.
c. Check your competitor - Who is your competitors' target market? In most cases, you and your competitor have the same target audience. But when it seems impossible to compete with them, you can observe and choose to focus on a specific market that they fail to focus on. In this way, you can fill the potential gaps that they fail to grab.
Tip: To target everyone is to target no one. Therefore, instead of focusing on everyone, choose a specific niche market that is the best fit for your product or service.
Step Two: Attract Your Target Audience With Compelling Copy
Take note that content is king, but only when done right. That's why understanding your target audience is the first step because to create compelling copy you need to know for whom that message is intended. So, start researching your target audience and then work on writing excellent copy and content that answers questions on the minds of your ideal clients. You can diversify your content with videos, infographics, and podcasts.
Even if you have the most detailed sales funnel and the best marketing campaign, without compelling marketing copy, it still wouldn't effectively drive the traffic needed to be successful. No traffic means no prospects and no sales.
Tip: If you want quick results, be sure to place your message where your target audience usually hangs out. After all, if they aren’t exposed to it, it doesn’t exist for them.
Step Three: Create A Landing Page
What is the landing page?
A landing page is an individualized web page, designed for a specific sales funnel, that is focused on turning the audience into an interested prospect and eventually into paying clients via CTAs such as signing up for more information, subscribing to regular content, and more.
How does the landing page work?
A landing page typically has a form that allows you to collect an audience's personal information like name, location, email, and phone number in exchange for something they desire, such as an E-Book or access to an Exclusive Educational Webinar. Remember that the landing page is the first thing that your potential customers see when they are driven there via your Sales Funnel, and it should be separate from your website. With that, make sure to create a good landing page that encourages a person to exchange their personal information with you.
Tip: To turn more leads into prospects, create a great offer that your target market wouldn't want to miss out on. For example, offer educational content based on your expertise in exchange for their email address.
Step Four: Build An Email Campaign
To efficiently market leads by email, you must give them fantastic sales copy and content regularly to remind them of your business and your offers, and that copy and content should be segmented based on relevance for the intended recipients.
In fact, Hubspot said that marketers who used segmented campaigns increase their revenue by as much as 760%. That's why Vimagery suggests using email campaign tools like Kartra, Mailchimp, or Klaviyo to properly segment email campaigns by criteria appropriate for your audience.
Typically, this segmentation email technique is meant to personalize your content and to deliver more relevant emails to your subscribers based on the given criteria. Those criteria could include location, age, interest, and customer journey statuses like warm lead, cold lead, e-book download requested.
Moreover, you can make an email flow much better with regard to engagement opportunities with your audience and prospects by using relevant content based on their customer journey status. Let's take, for example, when a landing page visitor clicks on a "download" CTA button, the visitor will be redirected to a form on the landing page that tackles the downloadable content, and exchanges that content for even more personal information of your audience member or prospect. In subsequent e-mails, that added information can be used to personalize the content even more for that audience member or prospect. But when a landing page visitor fails to click the "download" CTA button, instead of getting that particular downloadable content at that time, the subscriber will receive a follow-up email after 2-3 days that reminds them to take advantage of your offer to provide the downloadable content.
Takeaway: Through email campaigns, you can retarget your prospects that have abandoned your CTA button. In fact, according to ConversionXL, Busted Tees got a 390% ROI on an email retargeting campaign, which showed ads to recent shoppers and encouraged them to buy again. And while retail is a different animal than professional services, the power of email campaigns hold true.
Tip: On every email that you sent to your customers and prospects, don't forget to attach an incredible offer that will get them to take a specific action like purchase, subscribe, order, upgrade, and more.
Step Five: Keep the Momentum Going
The final step is to keep the momentum going. Continue to nurture and follow up with your audience and prospects with email newsletters and additional offered services. Follow all these steps in creating the best sales funnel for your business, and you will surely acquire more loyal, paying clients.
Tip: A great way to guarantee a long term subscription is to provide an annual offer with your product or service. In this way, you'll maintain your relationship with your clients for years to come.
Conclusion
A Sales Funnel is considered to be one of the most efficient ways to ensure lead nurturing throughout your sales cycle. But there’s something important that you should take into account. For Professional Services, a sales funnel works best when paired with a good business reputation and public trust. People secure professional services differently than they do for retail products. Many people engage professional services businesses based on a referral, the researchable reputation of the business, and public trust, not solely on marketing messages, pricing, or promotions. Therefore, client satisfaction should be your top priority to ensure business success. With that, you must make sure to keep your professional service information true and authentic.
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If you're overwhelmed on how to develop a sales funnel for your business, allow us to help. Click here to see if you qualify for a Vimagery Strategy Session. Together, we can help you to gain an unfair advantage regarding your efforts to cultivate, convert, and close new clients in the weeks and months ahead.
