Making the Sales Funnel Work for You

Posted by Gregg Alexander on Jan 4, 2019 8:30:00 AM

Terms like “The Sales Funnel” always sound more vague and complicated than they truly are. While it may sound like something only a well-seasoned marketer would know what to do with, it’s really just industry speak for the sales process. The term “sales funnel” is helpful because the visual is accurate to how you cast your net when it comes to converting leads to paying customers. 

Hammer Out Your Sales Funnel 

A sales funnel helps you determine exactly where a prospect is in the buying process. Knowing where they’re at helps you target them more accurately. You wouldn’t send the same awareness messaging to someone who’s bought from you multiple times that you would to a brand new lead. In order to know where your lead falls, you must know your sales funnel stages. These stages start out broad and slowly get smaller (hence the funnel). Most often, these stages look like:

  • Awareness (Broad)

  • Leads (Smaller)

  • Prospects (Small)

  • Customers (Smallest)

Once you clearly identify each stage of the funnel, you can begin to strategize on how to bring value to your customers at every phase. In order to do this well, you’ve got to plan like crazy. Each stage deserves a solid plan for how you will engage and drive your prospect further down the sales funnel stages. Without a fully developed plan for each, you’ll be shooting from the hip with no guarantee that your message is hitting the right person at the right time. Again, you wouldn’t nurture someone who has just discovered your brand in the same way that you would someone who has purchased from you multiple times. Each of these falls in a different stage of trust, interest, and loyalty, and need to be marketed to differently.

Use Social Media to Your Advantage

In the olden days of the sales funnel, businesses were limited when it came to building brand awareness that gets potential customers started in their buying journey down the funnel. Today, social media has opened up an entirely new world for businesses trying to attract leads. No longer confined to channels like direct mail or radio ads, marketers have the opportunity to get their brand and its products directly in front of leads through platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. Tapping into these platforms is one of the fastest ways to up your engagement and push your lead into the next stage of the sales funnel. 

Trust the Analytics

One of the wonderful things about having a well-defined sales funnel is it allows you to see where exactly you’re losing customers. Without analytics on your funnel, how could you address where and why you’re prospects are falling off? Maybe you’re losing subscribers after the awareness phase. Knowing this empowers you to address what might be causing their loss of interest. If you’re losing prospects, you know something is jamming them up when it comes time to commit. And if you’re watching your customers, you can know if they’re mostly one-time buyers and look for why you’re not getting repeat purchases out of them. But without the sales funnel, and without the data, all you know is you’re losing numbers. That doesn’t make for much of a foundation for addressing the issues. Having not only your sales funnel defined but that hammered out process at each stage will help you pinpoint exactly what needs to be tweaked for some good testing.

Ask Your People How They Feel 

We can’t stress this one enough and have likely touched on it in some way in almost every post. Talk to your audience. They are not this ambiguous off-limits thing that you only communicate with through automation. They are there for the hearing and trust us, they want to be heard. Ask them what their experience was like. They won’t know about your sales funnel, but you’ll be able to decipher through their answer what it is about your sales funnel that is and isn’t working. Ever wonder why companies ask why someone is unsubscribing to an email list? Even though they’re jumping ship, their answer is an insight into what is and isn’t working in the buyer’s journey. Keep your finger on the pulse of your sales funnel with their insights so you can tweak that baby till she’s a well-oiled machine. 

Still have questions about the sales funnel? Ask us! We know this is a more complicated topic, so we're ready and waiting to help with any questions or issues you may still have. Let us know below! 

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