In this User Guide to Marketing Funnel Builders, I’m going to be cover the many benefits and pitfalls of using a sales funnel.
My goal is to give you a better idea of what to expect using a funnel-building service, but this is by no means an exhaustive coverage of the subject. There are many fine articles out there going into it much deeper.
This article is broken down into four parts.
1. What is the Customers Journey:
Understanding User Search Intent.
What Are The Five Stages Of A Sales Funnel?
What You Should Know About Leads
2. How Customer Relationship Management will 10X Your Business.
3. Four Advantages Funnels Have Over Websites:
Better Conversion
Better Sales Forecasting
Continuous Customer Engagement
Value For the Money
4. Quick Reference Guide To Avoiding Common Mistakes.
The Customer Journey
The Customer Journey starting with three kinds of search intent:
Informational Search intent: When users perform this kind of search, they are looking for information such as “how to stay healthy,” and “how to choose the right sports shoes,” etc.
Navigational Search Intent: This is when specific names are searched, “Facebook,” “New York Times,” and “Google Maps New York,” etc., are examples of phrases meant to help users find sites and web pages.
Transactional Search Intent: This is when someone wants to buy a product or particular service. Examples of keyword phrases they might use are “Adidas shoe coupons,” or “Best blenders Amazon,”
The Five Stages of a Sales Funnel
What Are The Stages Of A Sales Funnel?
Stage One: Awareness
The awareness stage is the first stage of a marketing funnel. This may be your only opportunity to grab attention with your offer.
At this point, people become aware of their problems and your product because of the solutions our brand offers.
Research shows that 96% of your website visitors are not ready to buy anything from you at this stage. But many of them are happy to give you their contact information in return for informative content.
As a starting offer, many marketers choose to offer a low-dollar item to build trust.
Stage Two: Interest
The second stage of a marketing funnel is the Interest Stage
In this stage, people start to understand their problems but still fear making a buying decision without more information.
To appeal to people at the interest stage, you need an emotional hook. People need to feel an emotional connection with your product.
Address customer’s chief concerns to show how your product can solve their problems.
Relevant content at the Interest Stage includes data sheets, how-to guides, ebooks, email campaigns, and case studies.
And since 59.3% of marketers find videos to be a more effective tool for driving engagement, throw in some how-to videos.
Stage Three: Evaluation
78% of marketers believe that customer engagement occurs in the middle and end stages of the marketing funnel.
This stage provides one of the best chances for engagement and leads conversion. Think of it as the pivot point in the sales process.
During this stage, prospects also research other similar brands. Their goal is to come up with a shortlist based on their predetermined criteria.
Your goal, at this evaluation stage, is to make the buying decision as easy as possible, have great sales copy, answer all the objections before they’re asked; remember a confused mind will always say no. People want to buy at this stage, make sure you don’t give them a reason not to.
Stage Four: Decision
During this phase, your potential customer decides to buy or not.
They will also decide on which pricing packages and payment options to choose. In a traditional sale setting, you could expect them to negotiate for the best deals. With online funnel builders, this feature is built-in.
For potential customers at this phase of the funnel, offering Free Product Trials, bundled discounted packages ( as many Amazon sellers do), and even bonus giveaways to help them decide on your brand. Coupons are also great at giving customers that little push to try your brand.
Stage Five: Sales
The closing stage is one of the most challenging stages of the sales process. And that’s no surprise. People don’t want to part with their hard-earned money. As Russell Brunson likes to say ” You must give customers more value than you’re charging”. And customers will decide if you’ve delivered, or not.
So how do you give away more value without losing money?
More value doesn’t necessarily mean free. Example: If you sell a product that needs assembly you can easily add an inexpensive instructional video on putting it together. Or just make it free.
Adding value is easy when you think in terms of; if I were the customer what would make my life easier? Once you figure out what makes life easier for them, just add it.
Note: But, what if your competitor has better products? In this case, you could point out that people don’t often use their competitor’s advantaged features for one reason or nothing. And in most cases, customers are just paying for benefits they never use. This was exactly what KeySearch.co did going up against the industry leader Ahrefs. KeySearch concentrated on a few things and does them so well. How you may ask? By just making it plain easier to use!
In the example above, make sure you can offer social proof or case studies. You don’t want to put down your competitor’s products directly. Acknowledge them, and move on to the benefits of your own products and how you’ve improved on them in some way.
Five More Ways to Add Value
You should consider:
- Offering installation services
- Live coaching
- Access to an online community as incentives
- Upsells through bundling accessories are also a win-win.
- Email to follow up with the customer offers a personal touch.
Make sure there is good customer support; I don’t care what’s trendy when I have a confusing issue I want a person to talk with.
10X Your Business with Customer Relationship Management
What Is A CRM, And How Will It Reduce Your Workload?
CRM is an acronym for Customer Relationship Management. It usually refers to combining all systems, strategies, and actions that organizations use to manage their relationship with their potential and existing customers.
CRM systems should provide insight into the purchasing behavior of prospects and customers. When salespeople access relevant data, they can shorten the sales cycle by an average of 8-14 %.
So these systems will help you boost your sales and ensure you have repeat customers.
Source: TRUJAY
A good CRM must align with any sales funnel you use. It must provide corresponding relevant information about prospects at every stage until they eventually become customers.
Source: Cratio CRM
One significant difference between CRMs and sales funnels is that the former offers customer-related data behind the scenes. You can use CRMs to identify and score leads, increase your customer base, and improve customer services. They provide a subtle way of marketing while providing information to the sales team.
On the other hand, a sales funnel is a more aggressive model for attracting prospects and converting them into paying customers. Its ultimate goal is revenue generation.
A CRMs and sales funnel usually work together.
You can use a CRM system to stay in contact with prospects and provide them with meaningful content at each buying process stage. In addition, the information that these systems offer in real-time can help sales reps to close deals.
Companies that invest in CRMs experience an ROI of $8.71 for every dollar spent. And some CRMs can improve company sales by up to 29% and forecast accuracy by 42%.
So, if you want to spend less time digging through prospect-related data and more time selling, then you need to incorporate a CRM into your sales funnel.
Many of the funnel builders I listed below offer intigreated CRM in there funnels. I haven’t evaluated each of them
Four Advantages Funnels Have Over Websites
Four Advantages Funnels Have Over Websites
- Better Conversion
- Better Sales Forecasting
- Customer Engagement
- Value for the Money
Every business should consider having a website and a marketing funnel. But what if budget or time limits you to only one?
Here’s why you should consider a marketing funnel over a website: Marketing funnels capture an extensive audience accommodating more prospects at the beginning. You can create awareness of a problem even among people who don’t realize they have it yet. That means you’ll be in a better position to nurture your leads, generating sales later.
Marketing funnels lead to better conversion rates.
The average website conversion rate is about 2.5%. But the top-performing sites have conversion rates of 11% or more. And that’s where you need to be, but these are top converting sites with high domain ratings. It can take a year or longer to get a website to a 70-plus domain ranking.
With websites, search intent is the key. Visitors to your website come for different reasons. Some will come to look (Tire-Kickers). And others will visit to see what you’re offering. For this reason, it’s not easy knowing where to insert a call-to-action on the website because you’ll never know if someone is a true lead or just a tire-kicker.
But, with marketing funnels, this is not the case. Instead, funnels push people in one direction, and that is towards a purchase.
You can insert strategic calls to action at each stage of the funnel.
Marketing funnels allow for better sales forecasting.
Analytical and tracking tools calculate conversion rates to dial in your progress at every stage.
You can quickly tell whether your funnel or team is meeting its quota. You can also see where a funnel step is losing potential customers and fix the leak.
During the last stage of the sales funnel, you will continue to engage with your customers. Helping them at this stage will instill a level of trust and reassurance. I feel many sales funnels overlook this step but don’t!
Good or bad people never forget how they were treated.
Why Continuously engaging with customers is everything.
You will need to spend five times as much money to attract a new customer than keep an old one. The lesson here is timeless.
Many business owners believe they must keep pouring people into the top of their funnels, mistakenly confusing quantity as the only factor in a funnel’s success.
However, by taking the time to learn the needs people have, you’ll serve them on a higher level winning their trust and loyalty to your brand long into the future.
There is a goldmine in each customer, and they’re happy to share it with you if you’ll only take the time to engage with them and truly serve their needs.
Value For The Money
When choosing funnel-building software, money is always a factor.
Research shows that 81% of customer engagement is a result of price alone. And 80% of customer engagements are driven by quality.
Therefore, you must consider the value you get for your money and your ROI.
You need to think about the number of features the software offers at each price point. Are there any hidden fees?
Sometimes what you don’t get is just as important. Would you need to pay more for useful features, such as training or buying other apps to work with the software?
Sometimes, cheaper is more expensive. So be wary. Find something that provides the best value for your money without charging hidden fees.
Four Common Mistakes When Choosing a Sales Funnel Builder and How to Avoid Them
What to Look For in a Sales Funnel Building Software
Does it provide product updates that factor in user feedback?
There is a reason why 90% of customers are influenced by positive feedback when making buying decisions.
You can tell which companies take user feedback seriously based on the company blogs, how often software updates, and user ratings and reviews. If a company doesn’t allow any negative reviews on their own site, this would be a red flag for me and, I’d be hesitant to do business with them.
Ease Of Use
Most funnel builders are drag and drop. But you may have a learning curve. These are the questions I wish I’d asked upfront:
- How easy is the dashboard to work with?
- Is the dashboard navigation fast? Can you move back and forth without lag time?
- Are the buttons/options easy to find and well-marked? Are they intuitive? Or are buttons hidden under many sub-layers? (Which begs the question. How in the heck was anyone supposed to find that?)
- Will you have access to a built-in email autoresponder? If no, then check the ease of compatibility with the brand you pick.
- How quickly can you build landing pages?
- Can you carry out A/B testing? Will you need to pay more for A/B testing?
- Are there readily available templates you can customize? If not, how easy are they to build?
Compatibility With Supporting Software
Sales funnel building software needs to be compatible with any supporting software, like CRM software that you may already be using. It should integrate into existing software seamlessly.
Please do not buy any sales funnel software without researching its compatibility with existing software.
Also, check to see what kind of tech support is offers; this will make integration easy to carry out. Most tech support is by on-screen texting; make sure you or with what is offered before buying. Some companies like Clickfunnels have really upped their game by offering live screen-sharing while you talk on the phone.
Scalability
I found a lot of companies will want to charge a lot more as your company grows. As you acquire more contacts, customers, and employees, what will these additional charges be?
- As you add new customers, many funnel providers will charge more. This may be an important buying point?
- Can you quickly add sub-domains for employees to handle workflow?
- Is there an additional cost for sub-domains?
- Would you need to get accounts for each employee added?
- Can you purchase a package that accommodates many team members simultaneously?
Getting this sorted now will save you lots of future headaches.
Content Ownership
You must have guaranteed security and ownership of your content from the outset.
- Who owns the content within your sales funnel software? You do, of course, so make sure you can backup your database somewhere other than the funnel servers?
- Are there backups if you lose your data? Are redundant servers ready to go with a copy, and how fast will they be up and running again?