How to Develop Your Sales Funnel

As we've seen in our previous post describing lead generation, the first step to identifying leads and later converting them into prospects and then finally customers is to develop your sales funnel (in some contexts, also known as sales pipeline).

A sales funnel can be visually illustrated as an inverted pyramid where the biggest portion lies at the top of the aptly-named funnel. Like water pouring through, the current gets ever smaller and smaller until it peters out at the bottom.

In a similar way, a large quantity of general consumers in a market form the head of the funnel. It is up to the marketer to successfully guide the general consumer from awareness of the businesses product/service all the way down to the final purchase and staying with the business (customer loyalty/retention). In between, there are a number of steps that need to be taken prior to purchase including discovery of the product, evaluation of the product, intent to buy the product. 

More traditional marketing studies refer to the AIDA model. AIDA is an acronym standing for "Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action." It uses the same funnel shape as the diagram shown above with the main difference being that it is simpler to understand and contains fewer details. Also, there is no interlinking with the sales pipeline that can also be run parellel to the funnel.

Due to the widespread prevalence and use of the internet and social media, in recent years the sales funnel has seen numerous revisions and modifications in light of the developments. With the importance placed on content marketing as a powerful tool to convert leads into customers online, sales funnels with a unique digital emphasis have been created.

One such recent example is GetResponse's Autofunnel which emphasizes the use of social media and email marketing in converting leads into customers through content marketing and lead nurturing. The first step involves generating traffic onto your website/blog through content marketing and ads. Then, leads would be directed to an attractive landing page where they would then subscribe to your businesses newsletter/form through engaging content. Once they subscribe and then eventually purchase after continuous engagement through your e-commerce plugin, your last task would be to keep their as loyal customers and request them to refer your business to others.

Developing a sales funnel is not an exercise to be done in isolation, but rather, it's an integrative project which requires the input of marketing, sales and programming in order to perfectly sync your company's social media, email, website, e-commerce and customer database/CRM efforts into one campaign with the ultimate aim of converting general customers into interested prospects and finally to paying customers who will continue to buy your products/services.

If you find the idea of creating and executing your own sales funnel to be daunting and complex activity, then there are lots of companies like GetResponse and others that do all the heavy lifting for you with their ready-made sales funnels and applications that are completely customizable depending on the needs of your business.

In our next article, we will explore the intricacies of content marketing and how your business can best apply this powerful tool in order to increase traffic to your website/blog/social media and thereby apply your sales funnel for lead generation and conversion. Till then, stay tuned!

Cheers,

Red