One of the most important strategies in marketing is the concept of a sales funnel. The concept is a simple one. It is a map of how you take a person who is completely ignorant of your products or services and move them closer towards and eventually past the point of sale.
Awareness
At the very top of the funnel is awareness. A person who is unaware of your company is the furthest away from buying anything from you. The first necessary act is to make customers aware of you.
Interest
The second step is interest. If you have awareness without interest you can not progress. Now that you have customers who are aware of you, provide them with reasons to notice you and your content. Provide trustworthy, interesting content that rewards viewers for the habit of clicking on it. Train your customers to click your content. Build a relationship with them in which the content has value that they expect.
Decision
This stage is a difficult process. We have gained an audiences awareness and also their focus. Now we need to provide customer reviews, and testimonials. It is more important than ever for our audience to see that our customers are pleased with their decision to chose you and to know true examples of what they can expect. Nobody wants to make the wrong decision, make sure you take the time to fill your audience with positive feelings, let them know why they will be making the right decision with your company.
Below are methods to help you work through and improve your performance during this stage.
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Reciprocity
This is accomplished by providing a great amount of value. Remember to focus on quality of content, and providing positive, clear value for those who have discovered you.
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Commitment & consistency
Getting a customer to make a commitment. By getting a customer to agree to something, even something small. They are far more likely to commit to a sale if they have committed to something smaller first.
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Liking
If people like you, they are more likely to purchase things from you. People avoid buying things from people they dislike.
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Authority
Are you an authority? Is anyone else in your community respected? Having respected people endorse your products is a great way to legitimize them in the eyes of your customer. What about evidence that it works? Presenting data as evidence is helpful as well
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Social proof
In the past this was referred to as the “band wagon approach”. Simply put, are others endorsing you? Are people on social media mentioning you?
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Scarcity
Limit your offers. They have to be limited or there is no reason to act. People don’t want to miss out on an opportunity and if you let every opportunity go on forever they will never make a decision.
Action
This is the final stage in the funnel for your customers, but not for you. At this part of the process you need to record and measure your conversion rates and you should be learning from this data.
As an example; If you know from studying your data that it costs $100 for every 200 visitors brought to your site, and you know that for every 200 visitors you will generate 2 new sales. If each sale earns you $100, then you will receive $200 dollars for each time you spend $100 using this method.
With this knowledge you can now infinitely grow your business.
