SeedX saw a 256% increase in revenue from refining our sales funnel. If you're a business owner, your sales funnel is the most important marketing tool you have. Many entrepreneurs struggle with understanding how to build a sales funnel that works well. Not understanding this part of your business means fewer sales, lower profits, and an unstable business. That is why we created this guide on how to make your first sales funnel, or how to improve the existing one.
What is a sales funnel?
A sales funnel is a way to get people interested in your product. You do this by giving them free content, like blog posts, YouTube videos, and Facebook posts. Once they are interested, you give them an offer for something that only requires a small action from them, like leaving their email address. This is often in the form of an ebook or guide, video series, discount code, checklist, or other valuable content.
Once someone subscribes to your mailing list, you will offer them a series of low-cost products, such as a trial membership or free shipping on the first order. Customers who buy these products will move further down the funnel and be offered more products.
As they continue to buy, they will move closer to your most valuable offers, which make up the bottom of your funnel.
The top of your funnel is where you put the content that is most free. The people who want the most for free will look at that content. The people who want less for free will look at the lower priced items. The people who want to pay the least will look at the lowest priced items. The people who are willing to pay the most will look at your high-priced offers.
You, as an entrepreneur, need to make sure that this funnel leads customers naturally from top to bottom so they can find what they are looking for.
Sales funnel is a culmination of many skills
- Marketing strategy,
- Sales,
- Design,
- Automation,
- Customer validation,
- Analytics.
Types of sales funnel
There are three types of sales funnel: acquisition, activation, and monetization.
- Acquisition. Acquisition should be designed and architected to help the business acquire as many new prospects as possible.
- Activation. Activation is designed to help the business turn as many of its potential customers into actual customers as possible.
- Monetization. Monetization is a process by which a business can generate revenue from its active buyers and subscribers.
There are different types of funnels, and each one produces different results. So, which funnel should you use?
There are three types of funnels that you can use to turn leads into customers. If you need to create more leads, use an acquisition funnel. If you need to turn your current leads into paying customers, use an activation funnel. If you want to keep your buyers loyal, create a monetization funnel first. Now that you know which funnel is right for your needs, how do you build it?
How to build a sales funnel
Start by figuring out what you want your customers to do at the end of the funnel. Work your way backwards so that you know what you need to do to achieve this goal.
The top of the funnel
Your website visitors come from your website traffic source. That is the place where strangers become interested in what you have to offer. To make sure this happens, you need to send all the traffic to a specific landing page with content that is optimized for getting them interested in what you have to offer. This will then lead them to the next step of the funnel.
There are many different types of website traffic sources, including paid, free, and online/offline sources. Some examples are:
- Pay-per-click on Google AdWords,
- Search results on Google,
- Social media posts on Facebook and Instagram,
- Press releases and affiliate programs.
Middle of the funnel
Now that you have successfully directed your traffic to a landing page, the key is to keep your visitors interested. Failing to do so will make them leave. The best way to keep your audience engaged is by showing them what they are looking for.
For example, if you’re an e-commerce store, direct the traffic to a landing page where they can find a discount code or free shipping info.
Bottom of the funnel
Make sure you continue to support your customers after they buy from you. This means sending them relevant offers and schemes in order to get them to come back to your website and make another purchase. If you don't follow up, their click-through rates or additional orders may go down.
How can you calculate how effective your sales funnel is?
Despite your best efforts, some potential buyers will not buy your product. This does not mean that your sales funnel is unsuccessful - there are many factors that contribute to a successful sale. Here are some important metrics to track in order to measure the effectiveness of your sales funnel.
Conversion rate
Your conversion rate is a summary of how well your sales funnel is working. It tells you how many people were interested in buying what you're selling. You can find the conversion rate by dividing the number of people who converted by the number of people who saw your offer.
Consumer lifetime value
Consumer lifetime value is a metric that calculates how much money you can make from a customer over the course of their relationship with your business. If the CLV metric does not increase over the lifetime of your relationship with a customer, it might be time to fix your sales funnel.
Customer acquisition cost
The customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the total amount of money spent on marketing activities in a particular period of time, divided by the number of new customers acquired during that same time period. If the CAC is not decreasing over time, it means that you are losing money, and your sales funnel needs fixing.
Click through rate
The click-through rate (CTR) is a measure of the relevance of an advertisement to its audience. It is calculated by dividing the number of clicks on an ad by the number of impressions (views) of that ad. The higher the CTR, the better.
Return on investment
ROI is a way of measuring how much profit you make from the money you invested. You calculate it by dividing the profit earned by the total cost. The higher the ROI, the more money you made in comparison to how much money you invested.
In conclusion
If you follow these simple steps, we have confidence that you will see improvement in how your sales funnel performs. These steps are general enough to apply to any industry, yet can be applied within any particular niche to great effect. Start creating or improving your sales funnel today and generate more sales than ever before!