Most successful online businesses use a sales funnel to help convert prospects into customers. Establishing a basic sales funnel can help your business turn cold traffic into eager buyers in a matter of a few simple steps. Here, Christopher Lee, WNY Holdings LLC Marketing Manager, discusses six steps involved in building an effective sales funnel.
Select Your Marketing Channels
The first step to building a sales funnel is determining which channels your business wants to target from a marketing perspective. Every business and audience is different, so it’s crucial to evaluate where to place paid advertisements and content such as how-to articles, tips, tricks, or interviews with existing customers.
Paid Traffic
While your website’s homepage is an excellent introduction for a broad demographic of prospects looking to learn more or are merely browsing, paid advertisements typically have a very specific demographic. Therefore, paid traffic should be directed to a targeted page on your website to learn more. Paid advertisements should direct prospects to a landing page tailored to that audience’s needs and wants, providing detailed ads and testimonials to help convert those individuals to customers.
Content Marketing
Blog posts and articles, by design, should be different from standard landing pages on your company site. As a result, articles should be written with subtle calls to action and link back to specific pages on your site.
Build a Strong Email Campaign
Like any form of communication, an email funnel should have a progression that naturally flows from an introduction to education and conversion. Email campaigns should begin with an introduction that lets prospects know who you are and what your business is about. After an introduction, those who have subscribed should be educated further on what sets your business apart from the competition. Including details such as a case study, demonstration, or explanation video can go a long way. Once prospects have been informed, your campaign can progress to making a call to action to purchase a product or schedule a meeting to discuss.
A/B Test
Any part of a sales funnel should be reviewed frequently to determine which content is driving the most conversions. Things such as colors, copy, fonts, placement, and other formats should be tested across advertisements, content marketing, landing pages, emails, and social media channels to identify what works and what doesn’t.
Persistence
The final key to building a successful sales funnel is to determine how to tastefully be persistent and follow up with potential customers to draw them back in. Prospects might not always be ready to commit to purchasing upon the first visit to a website. Campaigns such as re-targeting ads or drip campaigns are a way to keep prospects enticed and remind them why they should be interested. Retargeting ads are a way to circle back with prospects after they have visited your site to remind them of the product they had an interest in initially. Drip campaigns are a way to add value on an initial visit, such as offering a free ebook, discount on first purchase, or signing up for a monthly newsletter.
About Christopher Lee
Christopher Lee is the Marketing Manager at WNY Holdings LLC, a customer-focused digital marketing company that was started in 2018 to provide tailored marketing strategies for small businesses. Christopher Lee assists clients with all their digital marketing needs, from content marketing, web, and graphic design, media creation, SEO, all the way to Facebook advertising.