The what and why of the sales funnel.
A sales funnel is also known as a sales process or revenue funnel. It represents the customer journey from early-stage brand discovery to final purchase. A good sales funnel has four major stages:
- Awareness – prospect becomes aware of a brand or product/service
- Interest – prospect shows a genuine interest in a product or service
- Desire – prospect shows a desire to purchase when it becomes clear the product/service meets a specific need
- Action – prospect decides to purchase product/service
Having a well-defined sales funnel can help by giving you free leads, a deeper understanding of your customers’ demands, filters bad customers by allowing the good ones to rise to the top, creates audience engagement, and increases sales conversions.
Most small business owners aren’t marketing experts.
Creating a sales funnel can be daunting if you don’t have the knowledge and tools to make it happen.
That’s why we have broken it down with our 7 Steps to Creating a Killer Sales Funnel System.
Klever Strategies Sales Funnel Template
#1 Define your lead magnet:
First, you need to figure out the #1 high-value, irresistible resource you can create and offer to your buyer personas. Brainstorm using our list of 50 lead magnet ideas and examples.
A lead magnet must:
- Contain information or an offer that is of high value to your target market
- Provide your potential client with what they want or need
- Have alignment to the products and services you sell
- Include a catchy title or description to pull people towards it (hence the magnet reference)
- Be simple to opt-in, receive, and share
Expert ideas and examples:
- Templates: DIY’s are big right now, and templates are the perfect way to give your audience what they need to create a process, checklist, or tool.
Example: Klever Strategies offers a FREE 6-step Buyer Persona Template
- Quizzes: People like games. Gamification can be an effective way to attract leads. Quizzes encourage users to leave their email addresses, which you can then use for multiple purposes (including the 5-email follow-up sequence in step #5).
Example:
- Webinars: A webinar is an online web-based seminar. They can be called anything from a webinar to a masterclass, intro session, group session, or group workshop.
Example:
#2 Do your keyword research:
Discover the specific search terms and questions your buyer searches to find the solution to their problem. Use this information for possible topics for your lead magnet.
#3 Create a ‘one-liner’:
Using data from keyword research, create a one-liner description for your lead magnet. You can use this in marketing your lead magnet in your social media, emails, or paid ads. Make sure your one-liner includes:
- The problem your customers have
- Your plan to help them
- How your product or service makes their lives better
Example: At Klever Strategies, we offer a FREE one-page digital marketing plan template.
Our one-liner: “Use this simple marketing plan template to create your digital marketing plan fast, in just 15 easy steps!”
#4 Create a landing page:
Using data from steps 1, 2, and 3, you need to build a landing page separate from the other pages on your website. This is the place where you will be asking your visitor to provide their name and email address, so it must contain both an offer too good to pass up, and a form that makes obtaining that offer easy.
Example:
#5 Create a 5-email series:
Next, is the creation of an email campaign to follow your lead magnet. The emails follow this sequence:
- Thank you email with the delivery of the magnet.
- An email to talk about one of your buyer personas’ pain points (related to the magnet) and how your products/services solve it.
- An email to share a testimonial story so that your buyer can visualize your service solving their problem.
- An email to squash a key buyer objection/concern about buying your product.
- The sales email: a 4-part email that covers (a) the pain point, (b) how your service solves their problem, (c) what life looks like with their problem solved, and finally (d) the CTA to buy.
Don’t overlook your email subject lines, and important part of your email marketing strategy. It’s important to devote some time to crafting irresistible email subject lines to captivate your audience and stand out in a crowded inbox!
#6 Create a trigger:
This is what takes the lead into the next drip campaign or your monthly newsletter list. Need a CRM, sales and email automation software to send out emails and create triggers, all on auto-pilot? Check out ActiveCampaign, it is a great option for entrepreneurs and small businesses!
Here is a simple example of a lead magnet automation:
#7 Launch!
Time to put everything in play, analyze results, and tweak as needed. Repeat the cycle by creating a post-purchase funnel and a subscriber sales funnel.
Is your business generating enough leads?
If you don’t have sales funnels set up for your products or services, you are missing the boat! Sales funnels are the perfect way to build a constant stream of leads and encourage conversion of these leads to sales. Use our sales funnel template to create your next sales funnel system.
If you are already using funnels, do they meet the requirements above? And one last important note, every sale funnel system will be unique to your business’ industry, needs and goals!
Need help going back to the basics? Download our Buyer Persona Template or 1-Page Digital Marketing Plan Template.
Are you set with your brand guidelines? If not, our Brand Guidelines Template is the perfect place to start.
Klever Strategies helps small business owners gain clarity on their business goals. We help with the implementation of digital marketing strategies, including SEO-focused website design, and fine-tune these strategies to replicate what works year after year.
