The roadmap you should follow to grow your business

Every business has the goal of trying to turn visitors into leads and leads into paying customers. The path that a customer takes to purchase from a business is known as a sales funnel.  Think of it as the building blocks to grow your business; the road map or blueprint you should follow if you are trying to get a business off the ground or grow your business.  A sales funnel that is intentionally crafted is vastly more effective than a sales funnel which is left to random chance. 

Benefits of a Sales Funnel:

Sales funnels work for everyone whether you are entrepreneur, business owner, marketing director, or graphic artist. Sales funnels:

• are inexpensive
• provide enormous returns on investments
• improve conversion rates
• result in consistent sales 
• win over clients without being pushy
• reveal exact deliverables

The Sales Funnel Stages (and helpful tools to use):

1. Awareness: The prospect becomes aware of their problem and potential solutions to it. This is the point where customers first learn about your brand, and it’s where lead generation takes place.  It is important to build a landing page that a potential customer will arrive at if they click on an ad, sign up for a webinar, or download an e-book. The landing page should clearly communicate who you are as a company, what your unique benefits are and capture their email address.  A few ways to build awareness are through social media posts, guest posting/blogging, infographics, and webinars.
2. Interest:  Once someone has become aware of your brand or business they are likely to take an interest in it if it solves their specific problem.  Prospects will evaluate your brand based on their interest level.  This is an important stage since you have ‘hooked the fish’ but not yet ‘reeled it in’ and you don’t want it to get away!  To start nurturing those leads, create an email campaign to share educational content about your offering.  Other useful tools to stimulate interest include blog posts, tutorials, and customer stories (be sure to state how the customer overcame a problem and experienced success with your brand).
3. Decision/Desire: The prospect is familiar with your brand or product and begins to evaluate whether it meets their needs. Now, it’s your job to convince them that a product like yours presents the best solution to their problem.  Now is the time to use sales techniques such as upsell campaigns or referral programs.  The goal is to nudge them into the direction of a purchasing decision.  This could include a product demo, extended free trial, or special discount.
4. Action:  The prospect decides whether that brand or product meets their needs. If it does, they become a customer and make a purchase.  At this point, sales teams take over to manage transactions and close the deal.  It is important to keep up communication with new customers by focusing on engagement and retention.  For new prospects, build a nurture campaign to check in with them every few months.
5. Loyalty:  Your new customer is excited to have a tool to solve the problem they’ve been struggling with, but after that excitement dies down, they need to know they can rely on you to help them get the most out of their purchase.  Now is the time to have loyalty offers, surveys, and email marketing.

Digital Consultants is here to help you build a marketing campaign that works and to optimize your sales funnel. Download this free PDF to guide you, and help you get better results.