One of the most important things you can do for the long-term success of your business is to make sure that you have a solid sales funnel in place. Sadly, this is an area that I see so many business owners struggle in because they’re simply not sure how to walk their customers through the journey that a funnel entails . . .
So today, I want to talk to you about the four stages of a traditional sales funnel, how you should use them, and the best way to walk a potential audience member through it with the best chance of conversion!
1st Stage: Awareness
If someone is going to become a follower and a customer of yours, then they’re first going to need to know who you are, what your business is, and how it relates to a problem/solution they need in their life.
Think of this as the “top of the funnel,” where you’re basically making an introduction of your business to the masses. Great places to do this are on social media, through ads, and in-person events.
The main thing to remember is that this is an introduction, NOT a sale. Too many people try to rush the sale and instead of introducing their brand, they try to push their products and services. YOu want customers for life, which means putting in the time to add value to their lives and build relationships with them.
2nd Stage: Interest
Once someone lands on your social media page or is introduced to you and your brand in some sort of way, it’s on you to create content and copy that moves them from the awareness stage to the interest stage.
So how do you go about doing this? You do it by creating the types of content that will interest them. Typically, the four types of content are educational, entertaining, engaging, and emotional. It’s on you to figure out a blend of these types of content that will resonate with your audience. If you’re not sure, I’d always start with entertaining and educating content, because these are typically the reason people seek out businesses anyways.
First, social media has become about entertainment. If you don’t believe me, let me share a stat with you: the average user spends 64 minutes a day on TikTok. Isn’t that crazy!? But the reason is that the videos are funny and keep you entertained for long periods of time.
Second, if people are seeking businesses out, then it’s because they have a problem and they’re look for a solution. So make sure you’re painting a picture of the problem that they have, as well as value to help them, and the solution that you can provide them in the way of your product and service.
3rd Stage: Decision
The next stage of the funnel is the “decision” stage. This is where a person has decided that they need to buy a product or service in order to solve the problem that they’re having. I also like to refer to this stage as the “research” stage.
The goal is here to be one of the options because let's be honest . . . there are so many options out there, it’d be silly for any business owner to assume they’re the ONLY one that sells a certain kind of product or service.
The way you make yourself one of the best options in a person’s eyes is by doing the following consistently:
Building relationships with your audience
Adding great value in your content
Having an irresistible offer
And when I say have an “irresistible offer,” I don’t mean it has to be the cheapest . . . it simply has to be an offer that makes people FEEL like they’re getting so much more than they’re paying. Now that we’re into the holiday season, really think about how you can make your offer irresistible in the eyes of your potential customer.
4th Stage: Action
Finally, we have the action stage, which means the potential customer is ready to pull the trigger and buy your product/service. When I speak on stages or for various companies, I always tell them there are two things they want to do when it comes to the action stage:
The first is to offer legendary customer service to show their buyers how grateful they are and how much they care about the product they put out into the world
The second is customer retention. It can cost up to 20x more to find new customers as opposed to selling to repeat customers.
If all you focus on is new customers, you’ll eventually run out of customers. However, if you constantly have repeat customers, you’re turning that one-time customer into a lifetime customer, which can be an average of $50k over the lifetime of your business!
When you understand each stage of the funnel, you understand what’s going on in the minds of your audience, which allows you to create better content and marketing to allow them to move down the funnel and eventually buy your products and services.
If you have any questions, drop them in the comments below, or you can always reach out to me on Instagram @1sassymassey