When we first started our company, we had a lot of technical experience. I had been coding for over 20 years and now add the rest of our team’s experience on top of that and we had an impressive technical resume. I thought that with our combined talents we should easily be able to create and sell amazing products. I was wrong.
Creating an amazing product is one thing, but finding the right customers to sell it to, well that was something totally different. We were making websites, and we knew how to design an attractive site layout, we understood how to make a site’s content flow well and convey the right message, we knew how to write the code on the backend, but we struggled to nail down our marketing message, find leads, and turn them into customers.
Many people start their own agencies, firms, and businesses because they have found a skill or service that they are amazing at and assume if they just start selling it then customers will flock to them to buy it. But reality is never so simple. An amazing product that is unknown will underperform an average product with good marketing every time. In today’s competitive market, the ability to create and execute a proper sales funnel is what sets you apart from your competition; without this, even an amazing product will fail.
What is a Sales Funnel
A sales funnel is basically a visual representation of the journey that a potential customer takes from discovering your product or service to actually making a purchase. It is used to illustrate the different stages of the buying process and help businesses understand and optimize how they find potential customers, follow up with them, and convert these leads into paying customers.
The Initial Hook
A sales funnel usually starts with an “elevator-pitch” styled hook that is used to generate interest, this can be on social media, a blog post, a paid advertisement, or even something that you literally say to someone in an elevator. This hook needs to connect someone with a landing page for your product or service.
The Landing Page
Your hook should ideally connect people to a landing page that shares exactly what you offer and how it makes your customers lives better. This is not the place for insider language that won’t be understood by people who are unfamiliar with your company or brand. Keep it simple and short while focusing on how you make your customers’ lives better.
On this page, you need to ask your visitors to do something very specific. It might be “buy our product now” or “schedule a consultation,” but most people won’t be ready to make a financial commitment yet, especially if you are asking for a larger sum of money. It is often better to extend the sales funnel and give people time to grow familiar with your company and earn their trust by providing a high-value lead generator.
The Lead Generator
A lead generator is basically something that you offer to potential customers for free in exchange for their contact information such as an email address. This can be a PDF document, and eBook, a video course, a webinar, or anything else that your target customers would be interested in. Whatever you chose for a lead generator, make sure it is well-produced and actually provides some benefit or value to your customers. If you are asking your potential customers to give you their email address and then you send them a poorly formatted, AI generated document, that you haven’t even proof read, then you will not earn their trust, you will simply be seen as a scammer rather than a legitimate business that can actually help them. If, however, your lead generator is providing real value to your potential customers then you will start earning their trust and opening up an opportunity for easy follow up marketing.
Follow Up Marketing
If you have created a high-quality lead generator that is actually getting clicks and collecting email addresses then you have done a good job so far, but the job is not done yet. Now that you have their email address, you need to send them follow up marketing emails. These don’t have to be long and complex emails; they are simply used to build familiarity with your company and brand. Customers often need many connection points with a company before they will commit to a purchase, especially if you are selling a higher priced product or service. Each time someone opens their inbox and sees an email from you is another connection point that helps build familiarity – even if they don’t open it.
Don’t overthink the content of every email. Just send out short emails that provide real value by addressing and solving real problems that customers have. If you run a gym, send out workout advice. If you are running a grocery store, send out recipes. Make sure to include a call to action for your customers in each email, but don’t make them all sales emails through and through. We like to do about one sales email in our normal newsletter updates per month and have the rest be just focused on building trust and familiarity. This brings up another important question though – how many emails should you send out?
In a normal sales funnel, we generally recommend starting with an email drip campaign where you send out emails every two days for the first two weeks and then moving people to your regular newsletter where you email them at least once per week indefinitely. There are two main times when you land new customers in email marketing. The first is in the initial drip campaign because that is close to the time when people were searching for your services and expressed interest by downloading your lead generator, so make sure to include plenty of opportunities for people to buy from you in this initial campaign. The other time appeals to a second type of customer who might be interested in what you have to offer, but needs more time to build trust and familiarity, or maybe the timing for your services isn’t quite right yet, but it will be in the future. The purpose of sending weekly emails is to remind the second type of customer that you can solve their problem when the time comes. Because they are already familiar with your company, when the window of opportunity opens, they are far more likely to move forward with you instead of returning to a Google search.
Why It Matters
The reality is that if you are not tracking your customers in every stage of your sales funnel and sending out frequent follow-up marketing messages then you are missing out on many sales opportunities. Most people need time to build familiarity and trust before they will do business with you, if you don’t give that to them, then you will miss out on most of your sales.
