What Is Sales Funnel? The Process of Automating the Sales Process

“Innovation needs to be part of the culture. Consumers are transforming faster than the imagination, and if businesses don’t catch up, there would be trouble.”

In this era where online businesses are running the rat race, having an effective marketing strategy is a must. What does a business do to ensure that a website visitor turns into a loyal customer? Have you ever thought about it? No, then it is high time that you reinvent your content marketing strategies.

Thanks to technology that everything has become simpler and automated. So is the case with sale conversions. A strategy called, “sales funnel” has become quite popular in the recent times. This one strategy ensures that a user ends up buying your product or services.

Sales funnel has become one important strategy for attracting huge profits from your business. Still not clear about what exactly is being talked about? Let’s explore the area in depth for better understanding.

The Concept of Sales Funnel

Sales funnel may seem like a complicated process, but it is not. The process is a mere visualization of a customer’s journey from a browser to a buyer.

It all starts with a user hearing about your existence to him becoming a loyal customer. The question is how to work through the process? How do you accomplish the bigger goal and turn traffic towards the sales funneling process?

Don’t continue to do what you’ve always done just because it’s easy to do! That is why opting for the sales funnel management could prove to be one important decision. Generally, the sales funnel is a four-step process. What processes? Let’s explore each of them in detail.

Sales Funnel- A Four Step Process

1. Awareness

You may start an online business today, but the real work starts when a customer gets aware of your existence. If people do not know you how can you expect any sales on your portal? Therefore, digital marketing strategies should be readily adapted to spread the brand awareness.

An important part that goes into awareness is creating an online reputation. From maneuvering through the social media funnel to the email newsletter, make sure to target as many people as you can. Opt for SEO practices as that can help you list yourself on the top charts of Google search results.

The moment a user enters the bandwagon, the next steps follow. As a business, you should be making sure that the user who gets aware of the business, leaves as a satisfied and a loyal customer, thus more rooted into the sales funnel process.

2. Building Interest

Awareness is one thing and retaining the traffic is another. Now that people know you, you need to make sure that the people like you too. But how do you do that is the question here? Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories, you tell. You just need to make sure that the story is enticing and catching.

There is competition in the market. Every business is creating an online presence that is progressing towards betterment day by day. The thing is what do you do differently matter. Here keeping your target audiences’ tastes, preferences and requirements become important.

You need to know your customers. You can also implement data mining strategies or the Omni-channel strategies to know customers better.

Using these innovative strategies you can move on with building a customized platform so that your customers can trust in you. And, one should know that trust is one sole attribute that can lead to better sales and a loyal customer base at the end.

3. The Favorable Decision

By now a customer knows you, they have built their interest in you, now what? The next stage in the content marketing sales funnel is when the customer decides to trust you with their money.

While you may scratch your head in confusion, reading through the following principles can help aid in knowing how to lead your customers to the important decision.

• Reciprocity: If you are providing anything for free, customers are likely to purchase. This could be the first purchase offers or discounts that you offer along the product/service.
• Commitment: Standing on your words is the key here. If you have committed to your customers to offer free shipping or a reasonable discount and you provide it at checkout, that’s how you are helping them decide better.
• Liking: Whether it is you as a brand or the variety of your products; a user should like it all. Once they can relate to your story or the product, they would undoubtedly move on with the purchase.
• Authority: Are you trustable? This question is the most important that runs down a customer’s mind. Show your potential user base that you are real people with real products and services.
• Social Proof: Focus on getting positive customer reviews as people are likely to follow the crowd. What others say about you, is where your online reputation stands.

Recommended: The Need for Social Proof for your Business

• Scarcity: This is a psychological trick. Once you tell your customers that the product they like is running out of stock, they would surely grab the opportunity.

4. The Valuable Action

This is the last stage of a sales funnel process. The step is all about your customer pulling out their credit/debit card details to make the payments. Bingo! That is all you wanted, right? The content marketing sales funnel would be a success in all the aspects.

The journey from awareness to purchase would be a long one, though fruitful. One should keep in mind that success can never be achieved overnight. If you think that all the traffic that enters the funnel would filtrate to the end stage, you are wrong.

Sometimes it takes years to build up a platform where buyer count turns out to be overwhelming. All you need to do is keep following the sales funnel strategy consistently, throughout.

Conclusion:

For every business, the sky is the limit! But what do you do to reach that sky is what matters at the end. Always remember to follow the four-stage sales funnel management and you’ll get your business to heights where you always envisaged it to be.

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