The sales funnel is no longer as simple as it used to be since there are so many new elements thrown into the whole process now, mostly brought on by the rapid advances made in the various aspects of digital marketing. However, as long as the core funnel is properly augmented with new elements in digital marketing and sales, it’s still as infallible as ever. So on that note, let us now take a look at a number of important aspects that will help in optimising your conversion rates through the various stages of the sales funnel.
Defining the Sales Funnel: 6 Stages of Conversion
Although several other factors have now become relevant in each of the stages, at its core, the sales funnel still has six primary stages, which come together to constitute the pipeline. These stages of the classic base can be briefed as follows.
Awareness – The target customers are made aware of the company/product/service through branding strategies. It creates the first and often, the last impression for start-ups.
Education/Discovery – At this point, the target customers are already interested, but the company still needs to educate the prospective buyers regarding why their product/service/business is relevant and useful to them, as well as how the same can be utilized to serve their needs or solve their problems.
Consideration/Evaluation – The customer is weighing options and evaluating your proposal against their own needs. The seller usually begins to answer the customer’s various questions at this point, if they have any.
Intent – Extremely close to conversion, at this stage of the pipeline, the customer has every intent to buy, and the decision to do so has already been made in most cases. However, it’s also the negotiation stage, where the customer might be expecting lower prices and a special discount from the seller, when applicable.
Purchase/Conversion – There is still a stage left in the funnel, but as far as immediate conversion is concerned, this is where it culminates into a purchase, aka, conversion of the prospective customer into a customer.
Loyalty – The final stage is arguably, the most important difference-maker of them all. Any business can make a few sales, but unless they have customers who come back to meet their other needs, refer their business to others, or return after a certain period for another purchase, the model is not sustainable in the long term.
Retention of customers depends on aftersales service, quality of the sold item and various other aspects of customer relationship management, which are all vital to maintaining customers and growing revenue generation.
Establishing Belief During the Awareness Stage
It’s an old expression that a first impression is often the last impression, which is actually not that far from being accurate, especially for start-ups.
The awareness stage is where the target customers first come to know about your company, products/service, history in the industry and more. Therefore, the kind of impression made during this stage is probably going to play one of the most key roles throughout the various stages, leading up to conversion.
The idea is not always to establish the product/company/ service, etc. as industry-leading, but to create a positive image that is tailored to meet the needs of your target audience. Some of the most effective tools to do so can be defined as follows.
- Blogging
- Content marketing
- Social media marketing
- PPC
- PR campaigns
Identifying and Setting the Right Budget
This is where it gets particularly tricky, especially for smaller companies that have only just started out in the sector. Guiding in this regard without knowing the goals, prior strategies, field of business, size of the company and various other crucial details could be misleading, but there is a common mistake that newcomers often make, and regret soon after.
Cutting costs is not a good idea, especially if it means eliminating key components of the campaign. As long as you know what your strategy should be and what areas should be covered, you need to set a budget that is just right to make the branding and marketing campaign fruitful.
Provided that the difference between the budget you have and the one you need is not that great, consider getting small Payday Loans to invest in your campaign with more conviction. Be sure to keep the loan repayment schedule as small as possible and the interest rate should be more than acceptable, given the usual ROI of a properly strategized and budgeted awareness or marketing campaign.
On the other hand, if the difference is far too big, you need to scale down the size of the project, instead of removing key elements from it. As a general rule, it is always going to be better to have a small but well-rounded awareness, branding or marketing campaign, than to invest in a large but incomplete one. Reaching a lot of the target audience won’t work if your marketing material isn’t good enough to begin with. Instead, it could end up harming the company’s reputation or in case of new establishments, may leave a poor first impression.
Adaptive Sales Strategy
Adaptive sales strategy can mean different things to different sales teams, but it is usually applied during the “Intent” stage, in the B2B sector in particular. When the customer begins to negotiate, it is of utmost importance for the sales team to be adaptive and flexible. Therefore, instead of setting strict guidelines for what they can and can’t do, devise your entire sales strategy to be an adaptive process.
What that means is that there should be some ground rules of course, but aside from those, the sales reps should have the freedom to adapt and customize a deal to best suit the needs of the customer and the seller simultaneously. On-the-fly decisions should be based on the present and future prospects of the specific customer, more than anything else.
Increasing revenue generation is not an overnight process and it may take a significant amount of time before you begin to see any improvements, but as long as it’s a rounded strategy, it will work. When you do begin to see the revenue boosts expected, do not be hasty to expand your operational strength, without a plan to grow it sustainably.
