How to Create a Winning Sales Funnel: 6 Tips and Tricks

If you want to convert potential customers into paying, loyal customers, you need to create a successful sales funnel. A sales funnel guides potential customers through the buying process, increasing the likelihood of them deciding to make a purchase. It’s not enough to simply drive someone to your website or social media presence, as this is unlikely to be enough to carry them through to the buying stage. If you want to make sales, you need a sales funnel that works.

What is a Sales Funnel?

There are various stages that a potential customer goes through before they become a paying customer, and each stage is a key part of their journey with your business. From the moment they become aware of your product or service, to when they finally make a purchase, they are moving through a sales funnel. The customer journey is described as being a funnel because, as customers move through each stage, they drop off and take their business elsewhere. Whereas a lot of potential customers start at the top of the funnel, where it’s bigger, fewer make it the narrower end. There are different stages of a sales funnel, starting with building brand, product or service awareness, and ending with retaining them as a loyal, returning customer.

Stages of a Sales Funnel

There are six main stages of a sales funnel, and these are:

• Awareness – At the very top of the sales funnel is the awareness stage. This is where potential customers first learn about who you are, what you do and the services or products you have to offer. Customers might have found you via social media or your SEO efforts, or they might have been recommended to you by a friend. The aim of this stage is to grab the attention of customers and make them interested in your business.

• Interest – Once a potential customer is aware of your product, the next stage is to determine if they’re interested. They might start following your brand on social media, engaging with your content or signing up to your newsletter. This stage is all about providing more information that’s likely to convince them to make a purchase.

• Evaluation – By the evaluation stage, potential customers are actively thinking about buying your product or service. It’s at this stage that they will start evaluating your offerings by comparing them to competitors, reading reviews and looking for more information.

• Engagement – At the engagement stage, potential customers have stuck around long enough that they are genuinely interested in making a purchase. They may add products to their basket, sign up for a free trial or contact you to find out more.

• Purchase – At the bottom of the sales funnel is the purchase stage, where a potential customer converts into a paying customer by buying something. This stage is the overall goal of the sales funnel, and it’s where you should aim all customers to get to.

• Retention – Once a customer has made a purchase, there’s one more stage of the sales funnel. The retention stage is where your focus changes to retaining the customer and encouraging repeat business. By keeping in touch, providing good customer support and offering loyalty programs you can keep a customer engaged with your brand.

How to Build a Successful Sales Funnel

There’s a lot that goes into building a successful sales funnel, but these six tips and tricks are sure to start you off on the right foot.

1. Understand Your Audience

Before you kickstart your sales funnel, you need to understand your audience. Understanding their preferences, buying behaviour and pain points – all of which can be determined via market research – will give you an insight into what motivates them, and you can then tailor your marketing efforts accordingly.

1. Make Buyer Personas

Once you have a good understanding of your audience, create detailed buyer personas. These personas should represent your ideal or ‘dream’ customers – for example, their demographic, purchasing goals, pain points and buying behaviours – and help you tailor your messaging and content to ensure it resonates with them.

1. Spread the Word

Of course, your sales funnel is unlikely to succeed if you don’t have any potential customers to target. You need to spread the word about who you are and what you do, and there are a few ways of doing this. Social media marketing, email marketing, SEO and pay-per-click campaigns are all ways to let people know about your products or services. The more people who are interested, the more people who will enter your sales funnel.

1. Engage Your Audience

It’s important to engage your audience, and you can do this by providing them with interesting, unique and valuable content. Blog posts, videos and infographics can all provide information to potential customers, highlighting how you can solve whatever problem they’re facing. The more value you provide, the more likely potential customers are to move through your sales funnel.

1. Encourage Conversations

It’s a good idea to start a conversation with potential customers and you can do this by interacting on social media, providing live chat services or adding chatbots to your website. Take the time to answer their questions, make personalised product or service recommendations, and help them make a decision on which product or service is right for them. Starting a conversation is a good way to showcase your knowledge, industry authority and customer service.

1. Keep in Touch

The sales funnel doesn’t stop just because a customer makes a purchase. If you want to turn a customer into a loyal and returning buyer, you need to keep in touch. You can do this through email newsletters, personalised offers and customer satisfaction surveys. Regular communication ensures customers remember who you are.

Sign up to our newsletter to get the latest from Business Advice.