What is a sales funnel system?

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The Guide to Building an Automated Selling Machine.

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What is a sales funnel?

Sales funnels – what do they give your company and how to create it?
The sales funnel is nothing more than a way to acquire the customer, divided into main stages or critical moments in acquiring the buyer.

Having a sales funnel through which contacts and sales topics will pass, and structuring the process will ensure you have a well-functioning business and healthy sales analytics.

Consider sales funnel as a metaphor that helps you understand the sales process. After all, all users visiting your specific industry’s websites go through a sales funnel.

Therefore, as the name suggests, it is wide at the top.
However, only Internet users who take advantage of your offer, and thus transform into actual customers, exit the sales funnel from the bottom, much narrower side.

This illustrative way of presenting the whole process helps in classifying potential clients into appropriate groups and in taking necessary actions, whose ultimate goal is to finalize the transaction, i.e., moving Internet users to the lowest level of the marketing funnel.

A significant value of the sales funnel is the ability to determine the duration of the sales cycle and create an accurate action plan to achieve its business goals.

The sales funnel lets you organize and evaluate the value of individual activities in terms of their marketing effectiveness.
It is critical to the health of your business and the way you continue operating.

But what characterizes a well-structured sales process?
What features should be taken into account when constructing it? And how to effectively control and manage sales through a well-created funnel?

We often treat the sales funnel only as a tool to control our sales forces.
But what if the company operates in e-commerce mode or has only one salesman in the company? Does this mean that such a funnel is unnecessary? On the contrary!

Every potential buyer goes through a particular process and path before becoming your customer.
The sales funnel is key in every business, small or large.

A sales funnel is a series of marketing activities, divided into successive stages, which are aimed at selecting customers interested in the offer and finalizing the sale to complete the transaction and take advantage of the seller’s offer.

The name of the whole process is not accidental and comes from the shape.
Let’s try to imagine how it looks in practice – at the top of the sales funnel are all potential customers who visited the website, so it is wide at the top.

However, the narrower end represents shoppers who have taken advantage of the offer. In subsequent stages, the marketing funnel narrows. In CRM systems, it is referred to as a sales funnel.

By visualizing the entire process, we can observe precisely how customers visit our website and what actions they take into account the next stages of the transaction.

What links do they click? What route do they take through your site?
Appropriate analysis and division of potential new customers into groups will provide us with the necessary guidelines.
We will be able to take appropriate actions tailored to the expectations of relevant consumer groups and finalize the transaction by moving them down the sales funnel to the lowest funnel level.

One ​​of the sales funnel’s essential values is the ability to specify the length of the sales cycle that allows you to create an action plan to achieve your business goal.
Besides, it will enable you to determine the effectiveness of actions taken.

Build a sales funnel tailored to your business!
Not all industries are alike.
You can check exactly when you lose a significant number of potential customers based on such a funnel.
If you see that you lose a substantial number of buyers at a particular stage, then you know you need to take action on this specific stage and figure out how to retain those consumers that you are currently losing.

Remember, the more people are interested in the offer and fall into your funnel, the higher the chance of increasing the statistics of purchases made.

What is a sales funnel system – Aida

AIDA

The general structure of the funnel is well described in the scheme known as AIDA:
Stage 1: Awareness
Stage 2: Interest
Stage 3: Decision
Stage 4: Action

ToFu, MoFu, and BoFu

When it comes to functionality the funnel can be divided into three main stages: ToFu, MoFu, and BoFu.

ToFu (Top Of the Funnel) – are users who, for some reason, interact with the content you publish.
The main goal here is to answer questions asked by users and reach the broadest possible audience.
Increasing your awareness is key.
This group is not filtered; the primary source of traffic generated from ToFu is usually publications in the form of a blog or e-books.

At this stage, we can take the following actions:
Social Media entries – if your offer is directed to B2C clients, it is worth focusing on marketing activities on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

If you want to reach clients from the B2B industry, use Linkedin.
Remember that the quality of posts affects how consumers perceive your brand. Upload high-quality photos, exciting infographics, and valuable content.

SEO, Google Adwords – by undertaking advertising activities in the field of SEM, you reach recipients who are already interested in a given product or service and are looking for them on the Internet.

This is most commonly referred to as content marketing – research conducted by GetResponse has shown that content marketing is most often used for promotional activities.

Appropriate content optimization influences the page ranking in the search engine.
Another important element at this stage is word-of-mouth marketing, i.e. activity on internet forums – acting as an expert in your field, YouTube videos are also helpful.

All these activities are aimed at promoting your brand and presented an offer on the Internet so that it could reach a wide range of people.

MoFu (Middle of the Funnel) – users who have received answers to their questions are trying to deepen their knowledge.
As valuable information for them has been published on your website, they count that you will continue to share relevant experience and will be happy to come back to your site.

In published content, you can encourage users to buy products or services offered in your business.
These consumers are serious buyers who are close to making a decision about a purchase.

BoFu (Bottom of the Funnel) – is a group of users ready to make a purchase.
Their activity on your website is increasing dynamically.
BoF users expect interest from the seller.
At this stage, the published content is usually limited to the purchase procedure and the basic description of the product or website being sold.

What is a sales funnel system – Micro Conversions

Part of the funnel are small steps called micro-conversions.
Micro conversions are all activities that make the customer move from the top of the funnel to the bottom.
However, they do not have to be related to the purchase itself.
Micro conversions include, but are not limited to, subscribing to the newsletter, clicking on the link of interest to us, throwing the product to the basket in the e-store, or sending a query via the web form.

According to the Nielsen Norman Group, “micro-conversions help measure the impact of changes and improvements affecting user-experience.

Often, the effect of small changes cannot be detected at the macro conversion level. ” That is why it is worth analyzing each element of the funnel and checking how many leads are flowing to its further part, i.e., to BoF (Bottom of the Funnel).

If we assume that 10% of leads make a purchase and 90% do not reach the funnel, then our task is to focus on this 90 % and use micro-conversions to analyze how many leads we lose and why.
Maybe the problem is the wrong contact form, the lack of relevant information on the site, unattractive price, or no live chat opportunities?

Example of micro-conversions:
If you have to shop online, you follow a path that looks something like this:

1. Visit site
2. Display category pages
3. Display the subcategory page
4. Display individual product page
5. Add product to cart
6. Go to check out
7. Enter your delivery address
8. Choose a shipment
9. Enter payment information
10. Submit your order

Steps 2-9 are micro-conversions, and step 10 is macro-conversions (or simply conversion).
Of course, you can skip some of these steps when looking for a specific product or product line, but your path would still be a series of micro-conversions that ultimately lead to macro conversions.

What is a sales funnel system – common mistakes in marketing funnel

The most common mistakes in marketing funnels

• You will not avoid mistakes
  The sales funnel consists of so many elements that you will not prevent mistakes even if you are already a master at creating them.
  This is normal and must be accepted. At the same time, you can’t give up if something isn’t working at the moment.
  
  For example, someone says that Facebook ads don’t work without even trying them.
  You must avoid this approach, and not avoid avenues that you have not given a try.
  
  The whole process requires work and commitment. But the next versions of your funnel will be better and better.
  You will get to know your clients, learn from your mistakes, and draw conclusions.

• Skipping the stages of the marketing funnel
  The “interest” stage is often overlooked.
  Most small business owners immediately go on the offensive and offer expensive or missed products in their first ad.
  Then they say that Facebook or Google ads are not working.
  
  Since such essential stages are omitted, that’s right – they don’t work, and they won’t work. And all sales will be more difficult because of that. Frustration will increase, and reluctance to lead
  your business also
• A narrow line between failure and success
  Each stage of the funnel is a series of activities that are carried out during customers’ travel along the funnel.
  And in every place, you can make mistakes, and thus lose these potential customers.
  
  Let’s look at Facebook. You have your ad there, which encourages you to click and enter the site.
  The advertisement consists of its image, headline, description, and link, and target group to which it is directed.
  And in each of these small elements, you can achieve success or failure.
  Sometimes it is enough to change the photo of the ad, and sometimes one word in the headline to make the results change entirely.
  
  Remember, at each of these stages where you can lose customers, and you can also recover them and gain new ones.

• You count on high profits from advertising too quickly
  This is probably the biggest mistake when you broadcast ads. You rely on running an ad for $ 100 and pulling out $ 1000 at the end of the day.
  Yes, it is possible. But first, you need to meet several conditions and remain realistic.
  
  Everyone wants to achieve such results. In the end, you simply care about your company and its successes.

Advertising, which is only aimed at getting the attention of a person who did not know you before, does not work immediately, offering expensive items.

The goal here is to create awareness.

The first advertisement is about getting the client at all.
And only at the later stages of acquaintance will you earn on it. That is why building a company is not a sprint but a marathon.
It’s best simply if you have different people at different stages of your marketing funnel (or funnels) at the moment.

The moment the customer passes through your first sales funnel, you can transfer them to the next funnel, where the goal will be to sell a more expensive product.
But you can also have several parallel funnels.

Remember that just building funnels and sales processes are not enough. Nowadays, sales analysis is the most significant value that a business can receive.

It will give you details about every aspect of your business.
The sales funnel is a tool that is worth using in virtually any business. Its preparation and analysis require work and optimization of processes in the company.

However, when done well, you will be able to quickly analyze the quality of customers, their behavior, and the efficiency of the sales department, which is essential data for business.