What is a Sales Funnel, Examples and How to Create One

Sales funnel is a marketing jargon used for a sales technique that's designed to turn cold prospects into long term customers by funneling them through five stages. Funnel here is a metaphor for beginning with a broad audience of prospective buyers paired down to highly targeted, high-value customers.

A well-designed and properly executed sales funnel has four stages: Awareness, Interest, Decision, and action. Sales funnel is created to assist prospective customers in their buying journey and convert them into paying customers.

A sales funnel is all about figuring out how to get a lead to click on your free offer or sign up for it. To give out a real-life example, Netflix used this same strategy. For a long time, they offered a month free trial to incorporate the habit of watching series and movies into millennials. Later on, people just got addicted. The process is not easy, but it is essential. Let's dig further to know how to create a sales funnel that converts or how to modify your existing one.

Important pages in a sales funnel

Home page: A home page should clearly explain the risk-free trial you want your leads to sign up for. You can do this with the help of a progress bar timeline design. You should clearly state that there is no commitment, emphasize risk reversal, just like Netflix.

Pricing page: It's essential to mention your free trial or newsletter in the FAQ section so that people get a clear idea that it's just an offer, not a trap. It would be best to have multiple payment options like gift cards and all central banks' credit cards. Provide a safe passage to your clients to go back and edit the information to know that they are not locked in. There should be a great emphasis on security as people are naturally risk-averse.

For a small business, you may start with one or two free products. For an extensive B2B, you can add multiple offers nurturing new leads through a sales cycle, sales pipeline, or a sales team.

How to modify your existing funnel:

Many companies create a sales funnel deliberately or accidentally. Some do it to make their presence in the market evident, and others do it to boost sales but most of them. When you approach a bundle of leads to convert at least 2% of it, you create a sales funnel, but if you don't follow it to the end, it won't work. Small businesses often neglect this. When you lure your leads to your website, the traffic is increased considerably by the somewhat interested people in your products. Now the prospects will start dropping. There are numerous reasons for technical errors like disconnects from your ad and your landing page to the pricing range. It's important to fix those leaks in the way to get more loyal customers. Modifying your sales funnel requires you to carefully check all the critical elements of your website, including technicality, review, design, and price range. Fix all the snags so you can lead a customer from the "I don't know you" stage to the "let's do business" stage. And to make this happen, you have to identify prospects, qualify them, and lead them to sales.

How to create a sales funnel:

Step 1: Attracting Customers

The first step is filling the funnel. Depending on your goal, you can either choose to quickly fill the funnel with quantity, even if the leads are of low quality. Or you can wait to fill your funnel with good quality leads; it would help if you dealt with the human element. You should know about your goal in advance.

Step 2: Encouraging Action

Once the person has reached your landing page, it's the job of your copy and your design to impress the visitor and let them explore all that you offer. But as tempting as it sounds to let your pages do the heavy lifting, you can enhance your efforts by creating an emotional connection with your visitor.

Step 3: Crafting a Content Plan

A content plan does not mean presenting well-edited content that you "think" will resonate with your audience. This step is about delivering what the audience wants precisely. A clash of opinion can prove fatal at this point. At every stage of the conversion, funnel customers need to change their assumption about your business is getting a lot better, so it's vital to understand your readers at each process.

Step 4: What Happens Next?

We are hoping to sell our product as we are at the end of our content marketing stage. We are desperate to sell. But remembering the people part of the equation is essential as overselling your product is not the idea here. All the efforts we have made are not to make a one time sale. The leads here are identified as potential loyal customers. It's essential to maintain that relationship.

Step 5: Testing Your Funnel

Conversion optimization experts are focused on the top level of the conversion funnel. The concentration dilates while moving from the acquisition part to the bottom of the funnel. Where online sales happen, and the conversion rate increases. It's essential to focus on increasing your prospects at each stage.

To conclude the overall theory about the 'Sales Funnel.' The process takes dedication. It involves modification and improvement in your business. You have to incur costs to make it possible. A business owner can not just read about it somewhere and start distributing free samples the next day to begin the process. It has to be well planned and executed. If designed carefully and marketed ethically, it's a long term solution to your business problems as it does not focus on increasing sales but acts as an all-rounder solution to your business. And the final goal is not to make a single sale but create a loyal customer base that keeps on returning for a lifetime.