Marketing a successful business requires strategizing, efficiency in execution & effective relationships with your target audience. In this article, You’ll be going to learn about a marketing sales funnel, which is an important term in marketing & sales.
What is Marketing Sales Funnel?
Marketing sales funnel is a method developed to track a lead’s journey through a company’s point of view for purchasing a product or subscription. There are several steps to a sales funnel, usually known as the top, middle & bottom of the funnel, although these steps may vary depending on a company’s sales model.
Top of the funnel can be described when a lead has checked on the website or the landing page.
Middle of the funnel is the place where the lead has visited & searched for an item or product.
Bottom of the funnel is when the lead has added the product to the cart & ready to buy the product.
Why a Business must develop a Marketing Sales Funnel?
Any business owner knows the pain of just missing a sale. After weeks of pitches and demos, chatter & charm, the prospect drops out of the sales funnel without buying.
It happens. But it happens less often when you have the right sales funnel management help. Many small business sales funnels are like sieves, with holes left by patched-together spreadsheets, sticky notes, missed appointments & forgotten follow-ups.
Sales funnels allow companies to visualize each step that prospects take on the path to conversion. Each step is a micro-conversion that can be optimized to increase conversions in the end. If one of these steps shows a higher-than-expected drop-off rate, it can be analyzed to see what’s wrong & test out possible improvements.
What are the Marketing Sales Funnel Stages?
Sales funnels vary in size and shape from company to company and industry to industry. However, a basic sales funnel can be described as consisting of six levels. Marketers can take inspiration from this basic structure to design a sales funnel that suits the needs of their organization.
1. Awareness & Issue
To get started with a lead, you will need to make the lead aware of the issue for which your product is providing the solution. The main aim of taking a lead at this stage should be to generate traffic to your website & more people get to know about your company. Apart from that, you must tell the audience what the problem is for which you have brought a product.
2. Interest & Information
The first interactions will hook some of these newly-aware people & draw them slightly deeper into the funnel. With their interest piqued, these people will spend some time getting to know more about your company & your offerings. They might browse your website or catalog, read your blogs, or peruse reviews from past customers.
3. Consideration & Analysis
Armed with knowledge gathered during the interest stage, your prospects will double down on their efforts to know your company & offerings better. They may reach out to your customer service team with specific questions, or fill out a form to access more information.
Remember, by this stage, they may have already compared your offerings to those of your competitors. So, it is important to clearly answer their questions and help them understand how your offerings can solve their problems or needs.
4. Desire & Intent
This is where they decide to make a purchase based on evaluations. It is also where you make them your best offer through discounts, free shipping or whatever incentive will lead them to choose you over your competitors.
5. Comparison & Purchase
The prospect has now almost decided to purchase your product or service. Depending on the nature of your offerings, they might begin a negotiation over the price, terms of purchase, or both. But it’s fair to assume that they have a purchase intention at this stage.
6. Retention & Review
The sale stage is not the end of the sales funnel. Soon a time will come when the sales contract is up for renewal. The customer must now decide if they want to continue with the same seller.
If so, there might be a fresh round of negotiations over price and purchase terms, followed by renewal or repurchase.
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