Each stage of the sales funnel has an impact on consumer behavior. These stages are essential to your understanding.

You can learn each step and use strategies to increase the number of people who move from one step to another.

This can have an incredible impact on your business.

Let’s suppose you can double the number of people in each step of your funnel. Double the number of leads, and you get double the number of customers who have been closed. This means you can get 4X as many new customers each month.

One of the most important concepts in business is to define and manage your sales funnel.

Let’s get started.

What is a sales funnel?

Each step in the sales funnel must be taken by someone to become your customer.

Let’s take a look at a brick-and-mortar sales funnel.

Your store is visited by the people at the top. If a certain percentage decides to enter, they will be the next in the sales funnel.

A customer comes across a rack of clearance T-shirts. The customer looks through the rack and then moves on to the next step. Next, the customer selects four t-shirts to be shipped and proceeds to the checkout. They are now at the final step. If everything goes according to plan, they complete the purchase and reach the bottom of the funnel.

The same process applies to every business differently. The sales funnel can be described as:

• Retail store
• Sales team
• Website
• Email
• Consultation in person

Your sales funnel can include any marketing channel. Your funnel may be spread across multiple channels.

What is the importance of a sales funnel?

The sales funnel shows the prospects’ journey.

You can identify the gaps in your funnel and help you to convert prospects.

You can’t optimize your sales funnel if you don’t know how it works. Below, we’ll discuss the details of the funnel. But for now, you can influence the flow of visitors through it and whether they convert.

How the Sales Funnel Works

Many words can be used to describe the different stages of a sales funnel. We’ll stick to the most commonly used terms to explain how a consumer moves from a prospect to a buyer to a visitor.

Your website is accessed by a visitor via a Google search, social link, or other means. The visitor is now a prospect. A visitor may visit your website and browse through your product listings. You offer the visitor an opportunity to sign up for your email newsletter at some point.

When a visitor completes your form, they become a lead. The customer can be marketed to via email, phone or text, or both. 

If you offer leads, special offers, information about blog posts, or other interesting messages, they will return to your site. Perhaps you have a coupon code.

As visitors go through the sales funnel, it narrows. This is partly because there will be more buyers at the top than prospects at the bottom of the funnel, but also because your messaging must become more targeted.

Learn the 4 stages of the Sales Funnel

The acronym AIDA stands for Awareness, Interest Decision, Action, and is easy to remember. These four stages are indicative of the mindset of your potential customer.

Marketers need to be creative at each stage. You don’t want the wrong message being sent at the wrong time. This is akin to a waiter asking for your dessert preferences before you have ordered any drinks or appetizers.

Let’s take a closer look at each stage of the sales funnel.

Awareness

This is when you catch a consumer’s eye for the first time. It could be a tweet or a Facebook post shared with a friend, or a Google search.

Your business is made known to your prospect.

Sometimes consumers will buy right away if the chemistry is perfect. This is a right place at the right time scenario. The consumer knows you are offering something valuable and affordable.

The awareness stage is often more like a courtship. The goal is to get the prospect to return to your site and engage more with your company.

Interest

Consumers reach the interest stage of the sales funnel when they do their research, compare shopping and think about all the options. This is when you can jump in with amazing content that they will find useful, but not sell to.

Prospects will be turned off if you push your product or service right from the start. This is where you need to demonstrate your expertise and help the customer make an informed decision.

Take the decision

The customer is ready and willing to purchase at the decision stage. The customer might be looking at two or three options, hopefully including you.

Now is the best time to offer your best deal. You could offer free shipping when your competitors charge, a discount code, or a bonus product. No matter what the situation, make it so compelling that your leads will want to take advantage.

Take Action

The customer is the final step in the sales funnel. The customer purchases your product/service and joins your business’s ecosystem.

However, just because a consumer is at the bottom of the funnel doesn’t mean that your work is finished. Both the marketer and the consumer must take action. Do your best to convert one purchase into 10, 10, and 100, respectively.

This means that you are focusing on customer retention. Thank your customer for their purchase. Invite them to share their feedback and be available for technical support if necessary.

A Sales Funnel Example

Imagine you have an ecommerce store that sells vintage signs. Your target audience is males between 25-65 years old and you know this.

A Facebook Ad is a great way to drive traffic to your landing page. In exchange for a lead magnet, you ask your prospect for their email address. It’s that simple.

Now prospects are no longer leads. They are moving through the funnel.

You will be sending out content over the next few weeks to educate your subscribers on vintage signs, share design inspiration, and help customers hang these signs.

You offer a 10% discount on each customer’s first order at the end of your email blast. Bang! Vintage signs are being sold like mad. Everybody wants what you are selling.

Next, add the same customers to another email list. The process is repeated, but this time with different content. You can give them ideas for gallery walls and advise them on how to care for the signs. They are asking you to keep them coming back.

It’s there!

1. Awareness: To increase awareness, you created a Facebook Ad to direct people to your site.
2. Incentives: You can offer something in return for lead capture.
3. Decision: Your content informs and prepares your audience for buying.
4. Take Action: Offer a coupon to your leads, and then market to them again to increase retention.

How to quickly build a sales funnel

Are you excited now? You want to quickly create a sales funnel. Don’t worry. It is not as hard as you might think.

Step 1: Analyze Your Audience’s Behavior

Your sales funnel will be more effective if you have a better understanding of your audience. Marketing to everyone is not the right strategy. Market to people who are good fits for the products you offer.

Register for a Kobe Digital account to start creating Snapshots. These reports provide insight into user behavior and help you monitor site activity.

Where are they clicking? What time do they scroll? What is their average time spent on a page? These data points will help to refine your buyer personas.

Step 2: Attract the attention of your audience

Your sales funnel will only work if people are enticed by it. This means that you must put your content in front of your target audience.

Post tons of content on all your social media platforms and go organic. You can diversify your content with infographics, videos, and other types.

Run a few ads if you are willing to spend more money. The best place to advertise depends on your target audience. LinkedIn ads may be the best option if you are selling B2B products.

Step 3: Create a landing page

Your ads and other content should take prospects to the right place. You should direct your prospects to a landing site with an offer they can’t miss.

These people are still at the bottom of the sales funnel so focus on capturing leads and not pushing the sale.

The landing page should direct the visitor to the next step.

A bold call to action is needed that tells people exactly what they should do, regardless of whether they are downloading an e-book for free or watching an instructional video.

Step 4: Create an Email Drip campaign

Send amazing content to your leads via email marketing. Send it out regularly but not too often. It should be no more than one or two emails per week.

Your market should be educated before you can sell. What are they looking for? What are the obstacles and objections they need to overcome to convince them to purchase?

Make an amazing offer at the end of your drip campaign. This is the content that will motivate your leads to take action.

Step 5: Keep in touch

Keep in touch with your customers. Continue to reach out to your existing customers. You can thank them for shopping, give them additional coupon codes and include them in your social media network.

Measurement of the Success of a Sales Funnel

As your business grows and your customers become more knowledgeable, your sales funnel may need to be adjusted. That’s okay.

Track your conversion rates is a great way to measure your sales funnel’s success.

For example, how many people sign up for your email address after clicking through to a Facebook Ad?

Each stage of the sales funnel should be carefully considered. 

• Is your content attracting enough attention from consumers?

• Are your prospects able to trust you enough so that they give you their contact details?

• Are you able to secure purchases through your email drip campaigns and other marketing efforts?

• Are your customers returning to you?

These questions will help you determine where to improve your sales funnel.

How to optimize your sales funnel

The truth is that your potential customers have many options. While you want them to choose your products and services, it is not possible to force them. You must market effectively instead.

You can’t guess what your prospects want without a well-designed sales funnel. You lose the sale if you make a mistake.

To see how visitors interact with your site, use Kobe Digital Records. What do they click on? Is there anything that seems to be confusing them? Do they seem to be focusing their attention on what you want?

This is especially important for landing pages, which we discussed earlier. They won’t convert if they aren’t optimized for conversions.

How to optimize your sales funnel

There are many ways to optimize your sales funnel. You should pay attention to the points where consumers are moving to the next stage of the funnel.

We have already discussed Facebook Ads. Do not run one ad. You can run 10-20 ads. You can run 10 or 20 of them.

A/B test your landing pages. Although it takes some time, you will reach more people and more prospects.

Your email campaigns can be A/B tested. To find out how your audience responds, you can change your language, imagery, and layouts.

The best way to optimize sales funnels is to focus on the results.

Start at the top of your funnel. To get people to click on your CTA and get attention to your brand, you create content. Try another piece of content if one piece doesn’t work.

Next, move on to your landing pages. Move on to your landing page. Make sure that the offer and CTA match the content of your Facebook Ad or blog post. To find the best headline, body copy, and images, test your CTA.

Ask people to buy from your company in the Action stage. A/B-test your offer. Is free shipping better than a 5 percent discount? These small things can make a big difference in your sales.

Finally, monitor your customer retention rate. Are they returning to you for the second, fifth, or twentieth time? Do they recommend their friends?

It is your goal to keep your brand top of your mind. Your audience won’t look elsewhere if you don’t disappoint them.

Conclusion

It takes time to create and optimize a sales funnel. It is hard work. It’s necessary to survive in a competitive market.

It’s true, even a small detail like font choice can have an impact on conversions. You’ll also lose people if they don’t buy from you fast.

It is important to take the time to create a sales funnel that reflects your goals and the needs of your audience. It will take time to cultivate, adapt your approach to different stages of the sales funnel, and discover why your efforts aren’t working.

Register for a Kobe Digital account today to begin collecting relevant, real data about your website visitors. Raw data is the best way to get your sales to funnel started. It should be unique to you.