What Are
Sales Funnels?
The concept of a
Sales Funnels has been around in business for so long that it’s easy to take for granted what it actually means. For some business owners however, particularly those who are new to business and growth strategy, there remains some confusion about just what a sales funnel (sometimes called a lead funnel) actually is and what it does for a business. We intend to clear up some of this confusion in the following article.
Sales Funnels 101
A sales funnel is, essentially, a digital version of an actual funnel. At the top enter the raw materials, in this case your leads and prospects who have come across your business and are eager to take a look around. Along the way, the sales funnel delivers these prospects to various landing pages, sends them emails, gives them little pushes. Each action is part of the lead funnel, which inches them towards them becoming a conversion, i.e. sales that have been successfully landed. Unlike a real-life funnel, not all prospects that enter your lead funnel is going to end up converting at the bottom, but when you build your sales funnels on solid buyer psychology, your chances are still pretty good.
The Importance Of Landing Pages
If you’re intending to use
lead funnels, you need to know about landing pages, particularly how landing page design can impact the success of any lead funnel you implement. Landing pages are a key part of lead funnel strategy, and there are tried and testing landing page designs you can adapt to work at different points in the funnel. A landing page is a web page that encourages your prospects to take a specific action. This action is generally linked to lead funnels that are running, and could be anything. Getting your landing page just right is a practiced art, and many businesses find they need expert help to get a landing page that really works well within their sales funnels.
What
Lead Funnels Are Really Good For
The ability to make regular sales is what separates successful businesses from their failed peers. Sales are not just little bonuses in the business world, they are a necessity, the source for all your income towards future growth. Capturing leads is one thing, but converting them into sales is entirely another, and now you know that’s where the sales funnel comes in.
The fact is, converting prospects and leads into sales is a big job. It takes time and effort on the part of the business. The question that people often ask when they’re implementing a lead funnel is, how much of that time is needed? With one or more lead funnels, your business can automate considerable parts of the process for converting leads to sales. Customers generally take the same journey when they’re committing to a product. They start out unsure, they do their research and show interest (at this point, they’re often called prospects), they dig deeper and are even more interested (now we could say they are leads) and finally they are ready to convert (sales). Potential customers might enter your sales funnels at different points and, while some may drop out, automating the process allows businesses to save a lot of time and effort.
Of course, there’s a lot of work involved in setting up a series of lead funnels, and each lead funnel requires careful consideration of buyer behaviour past on research and past knowledge of actions. However, with the right approach you might find that a sales funnel (or several) can free up time for your business to explore other growth areas.