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Sales Funnel Simplified – What is a Sales Funnel and How to Build One?

Creating a sales funnel wouldn’t go amiss, whether you are running a brick-and-mortar or online store, funnel building plays a vital role. So, before we get down to sharing simple steps to funnel building, let’s first understand what a sales funnel is. 

What is a Sales Funnel?

A sales funnel is referred to as a tool that is used for tracking leads and understanding the purchase journey of your potential customers. It is of utmost importance as it helps access in-depth insights into how your customers react during every stage of their buying journey. 

By having such crucial insights at your disposal, you can channelize your time, money, and energy in every important marketing activity that affects the conversion process. Converting prospects into buyers requires you to create the right messaging at every step. 

Whether or not your prospects decide to buy your product or service, understanding your sales funnel helps you spot the gaps and solidify your strategy.

4 Stages of the Sales Funnel Explained 

Stages of the Sales Funnel
Sales Funnel

The internet is full of countless conversion funnel examples, but these 4 stages are common in all of them. All these stages are a reflection of your prospect or customer’s mindset and are known by an acronym AIDA – Awareness, Interest, Decision, and Action. 

First Stage – Awareness 

As the term suggests, this is where your customers come to know about your product or service for the first time. 

It could be due to an advertisement on TV, newspaper, internet, or word of mouth. The development of awareness is a crucial stage of your sales funnel as it lays the foundation for your customers to know about your product or service. Your timing, marketing efforts, and several other factors drive customers to visit your website, brick-and-mortar, or online store. They might also choose to connect with you via email, phone, or contact form. 

Second Stage – Interest 

The second stage is ‘Interest’ where the customer’s interest in your product or service gets developed and they get keen on making a well-informed decision. 

It is of great significance to convince the customer to make a positive decision and persuade them to make a purchase without being too pushy. 

Being too pushy or in other words, an aggressive sales approach comes as a bummer and more often than not drives away your customers. The best sales funnel examples demonstrate how to use the right tactics. 

Your content or marketing strategy must be centered on showcasing your product’s or service’s advantages, features, and other specifications and why buying it will make a positive difference in your customer’s life. 

Third Stage – Decision

So, this is the stage you are mainly interested in, and why not? You want your customer to make a positive decision and buy your product. Simple as that, right? But there is more to it. 

Let’s face it! Your customers have several other options at their disposal and they are going to compare all the options. 

The comparison will be on the basis of several factors including- quality, pricing, features, discount, shipping costs, a bonus product, etc. 

Here the key is to create an offer your customer cannot refuse. You can do so in a myriad of ways which we are going to throw light on later in this post. 

Fourth Stage – Action

So, your customer is at the final stage of the sales funnel – Action. 

At this stage, either the customer makes a purchase or leaves without making one. You always intend to acquire new customers and retain existing ones. Getting recurring business from your existing clients through frequent purchases is one of your major goals. In other words, you strive to achieve customer loyalty. 

Establishing such a relationship with your customer is a key facet of funnel building. Ask for customer feedback and appreciate them for choosing your product(s). 

Understanding the four stages mentioned above helps optimize your sales funnel to drive conversion and maximum profit.

So, now you must be wondering how to create a sales funnel? 

How to Create a Sales Funnel that Works?

1. Create a landing page 

The landing page of your website is an asset for you. It is most likely to be the medium to let your customers know about the product or service you offer. It must be well-designed to let your customers know about your offerings. 

Do not forget to have a contact form in place as it helps customers reach out to you and also helps you get their email addresses and other contact information. Also, Check Best Drag and Drop Page Builders for WordPress Website

2. Offer value through a lead magnet 

The best sales funnel examples tell you that a lead magnet must be in place to let customers feel that there is something worth their time. It could be a free download of an eBook or whitepaper. Freebies make customers feel valued and rewarded. 

Also, you would love to read more about White Label Lead Generation Software

3. Start educating your customers about your products 

As your customers proceed from the awareness to decision stage, they are keen on knowing more about your product or service offerings. Feeding your clients with educational content about your products and services through an email series will work wonders. 

4. Free product demo, discounts, and free trial

Convincing your customers to buy your product or service requires a free demo or extended free trial period. You can also offer an additional discount to persuade them into buying your offering. 

5. Maintain communication 

During the action phase, your prospects will either choose to buy your product or they won’t; however, you have to keep the communication going at all times. It helps brand-building in a way and helps your sales funnel. 

You should focus on engaging your new customers and educating them about your products. The bottom line is retention here. What about the customers who left without making a purchase? You should invest yourself in creating a fresh nurturing series based on their actions. 

Using a robust WordPress Popup Plugin resolves most of your concerns quite effectively. One such plugin is PopUp Anything- A Marketing Popup. 

The plugin promotes seamless customer engagement and communication with a whole host of features such as: 

  • Scroll boxes
  • Lightbox popup
  • Page-level targeting 
  • Exit intent detection
  • Push notification popup
  • Bar popup
  • Inactivity popup
  • Adblocker popup
  • A/B testing 

You can create visually-pleasing and attention-grabbing offers with sheer ease to create an exceptional sales funnel for your business. 

Conclusion: 

Sales funnel management cannot be done without and identifying the bottlenecks in your sales funnel holds importance in equal measures. Funnel building and knowing various stages is the key here.

Additional Articles to Read About:

How To Make A Best Price Comparison Website With WordPress?

10 Best Practices to Encourage Customer Reviews & Testimonials