A tidy-up sales funnel can give the salesperson a better understanding of customers’ needs and interests. In this time of high competitiveness and distrust, sales don’t come easily. Instead, sales come in stages by understanding customers’ online behaviors.
If you know where the leak is, you will be able to fix it. In the same way, you need to figure out which lead is not working when running an email marketing campaign since it’s a leak in your sales process online. Unless and otherwise, it will lead you to a higher bounce rate.
What is Sales Funnel?
A sales funnel visualizes the journey of the visitors who visit your site, from seeing to purchasing.
Suppose you have a shop, and in front of it, various people walk by. These people are at the top of the sales funnel. Those who decide to walk into the shop represent the next stage of the funnel. Some will pick your products, and these people are in the third stage. Some from the third stage will represent the fourth stage when they take those products to the checkpoint.
If everything goes well, the customers in the final stage have the maximum opportunity to purchase.
According to Neil Patel, 70% of the people enter the shopping area, 35% put items on the cart and only 5% of the people purchase.
So, you need to figure out who will be your potential customers to increase sales. That’s why the sales funnel exists.
Four Stages of Sales Funnel
St. Elmo Lewis, an advertising and sales specialist from the late 19th century, developed a model showing four advertising campaign stages. This model takes the visitors on a new journey through the designed way by taking any action to purchase.
The sales funnel has four stages –
1Awareness
This is the stage when you catch the attention of your prospects through social media, blog posts or other marketing content. People tend to research products or services they need, which leads them to search on search engines or social media. You need to know about their interests and behavior online to attract attention.
2Interest
You become more active in learning about your prospects, which gives you a chance to build a deep relationship with them. Being aware of their goal can help you gain your visitors’ trust. You can provide simple solutions to the problems your customers face. “Quick wins” is an experience you can feature or face in this stage to ensure the initial attachment with potential customers.
3Consideration
After providing simple solutions or quick wins in the second stage, some subscribers might have big problems to solve. You already offered simple solutions to help customers gain trust. Many are ready to purchase premium services at this stage as they have experience with your products or services.
4Conversion
Some prospects from the previous stage decide to purchase the premiums or major solutions to their problems in this stage. Conversion is the bottom stage of your sales funnel. They trust your products as they have already experienced your freemiums or studied your content. So, they start putting items in the shopping cart.
If everything goes right, a percentage of your visitors will soon become loyal, paid customers.
Tailoring each stage is the way to increase sales in your business organization.
Executing Steps along with Sales Funnel
You have to execute some steps to build your sales funnel. Your plan depends on which product you will sell and who your potential customers will be. There are some steps needed to create a good sales funnel.
Create Buyers’ Persona
Buyers’ persona is a database containing the prospects’ various attributes and behaviors. Creating segments to connect with your customers effectively and more efficiently is essential. Your sales funnel will fail if you don’t study your customers.
Not all the users online are going to be your customers. If you own a toy business, your customers might be parents influenced by their children. In this case, you have to figure out the age boundaries and other online behaviors of the parents and children before advertising a campaign or writing SEO content. You’ll need to ensure that you communicate better with potential buyers when creating content, and understanding their attributes is the key.
Catch Visitors’ Attention
After creating buyers’ persona, you can put content using attractive templates in front of them containing exciting features about your products or services. Buyers’ persona will let you know where your prospects are browsing online. You must write content maintaining social media standards if your targeted audiences are on social media. If they look for blog posts, prepare engaging blogs with valid pieces of information for them. You can also spend money on an advertisement to catch their attention. You can directly send marketing emails if you have generated leads.
Your prospects are already looking for your products. Ensure that your content matches their interests, which will catch their attention automatically. This is the first stage of the sales funnel called “Awareness,” where your potential buyers become aware of your business.
Prepare a Landing Page
A landing page is where new visitors arrive on your website by clicking a link. There are a lot of parents looking for toys for their children. If you put content about toys in front of them, it will catch their attention. So, they are more likely to click it for more detailed information.
As mentioned above, 70% of the customers can click on the link, which will take them to the landing page on your web. A landing page can contain free advisory or some freemiums. Offer them a free trial in exchange for their email addresses and other information, which you will need to run different marketing campaigns in the long run.
Plan an Email Marketing Campaign
You are ready to run an email marketing campaign if you have good leads. A marketing email can offer simple solutions to your leads’ problems influencing the recipients to take action. You’ll need to put a ‘call to action’ to meet your targeted audiences’ needs. An attractive freemium trial would be the best option to add to your email marketing content.
Your marketing email attracts potential buyers like a magnet when your content matches their situations. MailBluster is a good email marketing tool with useful features and low cost to assist you in running an effective email marketing campaign.
Encourage Your Paying Customers
Among the total visitors, only 5% will purchase after you carefully planned and brainstormed. So, it is beyond question to say they are very special to you. There is a chance to build a good long-term relationship with them through thanksgiving. You can go through the referral system. This system offers gifts or freemiums in exchange for some new potential buyers from your customers’ surroundings.
Optimize Sales Funnel with Email Marketing
The main focus should be at the point where the users tend to move to the next stage of your sales funnel. A/B testing is an excellent process to reach reliable customers.
Don’t just send marketing emails to all your leads at a time. Instead, could you send it several times to different types of customers with various interests? It allows you to check which is working better. You can also send separate emails consisting of attractive images and texts using A/B testing in your email marketing. This will help you determine the best response from customers. If any content doesn’t work correctly, consider that better content is necessary.
A welcome email is effective at the beginning stage of the sales funnel, as it inspires them to consider your products. On the other hand, 35% of the visitors put items in the shopping cart, and only 5% make a purchase. Effective abandoned cart emails can dramatically increase sales, as it helps you get back your lost sales.
Thanksgiving email will make sure the future engagement of your customers.
Bottom Line
Among the email marketing tools, MailBluster is a cost-efficient tool that can help you optimize your sales funnel through email marketing. Create a buyer’s persona organically because this will be effective in the long run. MailBluster will allow you to create segments based on your targeted audiences’ attributes.
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