(And why your marketing efforts are being wasted without one)

Are you familiar with the term sales funnel?

If you just had to low-key Google search “sales funnel“, have no shame. This is a judgment-free space. After all, one of our biggest writing tips is never to throw around jargon unless you’re 100% confident that everyone in the room knows what you mean, otherwise it’s meaningless. 

But back to sales funnels. We’ve worked with many clients who haven’t heard of a sales funnel before. So let’s talk about it, define it and help you combat any marketing shame you might be feeling.

What is a Sales Funnel?

In our work as content writers, our first question is how any piece of writing or marketing content is going to fit into a high-converting sales funnel. These sales funnels can get pretty complex, as they span across a variety of different platforms such as email marketing and social media. When you’re ready to take it to the next level, we even recommend creating sales funnel within each platform so that you can create multiple touchpoints with a prospective client.

Although a sales funnel should be customized to the nuances of every business, here is a brief look at a foundational sales funnel we would rely on to make sure the essential steps towards a sale are met. Think of this as your sales funnel “strategy.” It’s more like the overall theory of how it works (don’t worry we’ll get to the tangible action steps shortly).

This sales is based on the AIDA model (awareness, interest, decision, action) and can be adapted to many different context and environments.

And remember that between each of these steps in the sales funnel there can be many others. For example, there can be entire additional sales funnels between step one and two, which are dedicated to creating leads out of an existing target market. (Ps. We’d call that, “warming up your audience” which is where social media can play an important role.)

But we digress …

Let’s turn next to this excellent definition of a sales funnel from Wild Audience: 

“A sales funnel is a step-by-step process that allows you to bring your potential customer one step closer to your offer and a buying decision through a series of marketing actions like automated emails, videos, articles and landing pages that will do the selling for you.” – Wild Audience.

So, in other words: 

• A sales funnel is especially important in the age of digital marketing
• A sales funnel is a map of the path your customer takes from lead to a sale
• You use it internally to guide your communications externally
• A sales funnel is based on the assumption that most consumers do not impulsively buy what you’re selling on their first interactions with you

• A sales funnel is a series of touchpoints a potential customer has with your brand that helps you gain trust with them 
• A sales funnel spans across a variety of different marketing platforms, ranging from social media, your website, visual marketing, your email platform, print materials, in-person interactions, phone-calls … etc. 

How is a Sales Funnels Different From a Customer Journey?

We find many of our clients confuse a “sales funnel” for a “customer journey” map. Although they may look similar, they are different because of the perspective they are made from. We find it is best to first create a sales funnel, one that incorporates all the platforms and resources you have available in order to make a sale. Your sales funnel is what a customer looks like from your business’s perspective.

For now, we’ll stay focused on sales funnels, and why your business needs one in order to grow. 

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What You Need To Create a Sales Funnel

So how does the overall strategy of a sales funnel translate to actionable steps? How do you actually create awareness, interest, call-to-actions, sales and return customers?

Here is what we recommend at Crafted:

A sales funnel is comprised of these five pieces:

A key messaging guide

A clear website

Lead generating content

Email automation sequence

Strong sales letter

This can get intricate really quickly (and it should so that you’re always growing your business). But for the purpose of this blog post, which is to explain what a sales funnel is and why you should start using one in your business, we want to help you get a sense of where to begin. Now that you know what the big picture is, we would recommend asking yourself several questions …

1. What is the nature of the product/service you’re selling and who is the target audience? 
2. Which communications mediums will you be using to promote your business? 
3. On which platforms is your business able to complete a sale? 
4. What is the minimum number of steps your customer needs to take to buy something from you? 

These are questions you will be able to answer even if you’re just launching your business, and don’t have any primary data you’ve collected through Google Analytics or social media insights yet.

If you’ve been measuring your marketing for a while and have data available to you, you’ll want to ask these questions: 

5. How do most of your clients first hear about you? Any other ways smaller segments might hear about you? 
6. How many steps do clients typically take between first hearing about you/your product and finally making a purchase? 
   1. And what about in between first purchase and recurring purchases? 
7. What are the demographics and psychographics of the audiences on each platform? 

Through gathering data, you will be able to develop a sales funnel that not only reflects the resources your businesses has to offer, but also the way customers interact with your brand’s marketing assets. This of course, will strengthen your sales funnel, but we would never want marketers to shy away from ever starting just because they don’t have all the information they need. It’s never too late to start measuring.

What You Need to Make an Effective Sales Funnel:

• A template to map out your sales funnel that is flexible and adaptable to changing consumer trends (update it regularly).
• Multiple marketing/communication platforms where you can reach and be reached on in diverse ways.
• Raw/Primary Data. The more data you have from your own accounts, google analytics, surveys, polls and interactions with customers, the more refined your sales funnel will be.
• Market research. Know how customers behave within the wider market you’re operating in by researching public or commercial sources
• Marketing research (yes, it’s different than market research). Learn how effective particular concepts, messaging and marketing platforms work through testing.
• Knowledge of your customers through personal experience. (This means personal interactions are essential! Remember conversations, save emails, collect the words people use to ask you questions and give you compliments or constructive feedback. Use the words your audience uses to describe you!)

And why do you need a sales funnel? 

• Communicating without a plan usually results in marketing-narcissism (brand-focused material that doesn’t help your customer) 
• A sales funnel lays down clear paths to communicating with your customers so they know exactly what you can offer them, and why it can help them solve a problem.
• Helps you remember the big picture you have for your business and your clients. You started this business to change lives, make the world better, solve a problem for someone… don’t leave yourself or your customers stuck without solutions. Form your sales funnel today. 

When it comes to sales funnels, we know it can be overwhelming. It’s okay to begin wherever you are at.

Here are a few situations you might find yourself in today, and where we recommend going from there: 

1. You’re in the process of launching a business from scratch and you’ve started thinking about marketing. This is a great time to build your sales funnel, and you can begin by collecting information about the market you’re serving and making a list of all the ways customers can currently reach you.
2. You’ve built a business without a defined sales funnel, with great momentum, but then you plateaued and you feel stuck. First of all, congratulations! You have a lot to be proud of. Now you can reinvigorate momentum by developing a sales funnel with everything you’ve learned about your audience. It’s never too late to start measuring your work and see which platforms are serving you well, and where you may want to communicate more in the future.
3. You’ve been in business for years and have been working with the same sales funnel since the beginning. Is it still working for you? Does it include digital platforms? Or does it feel outdated? Developing a fresh sales funnel that is reactive to your audience’s changing needs is your next step. 

Conclusion:

Start sketching out your sales funnel today and turn it into actionable steps to communicate across all your channels. Figure out what you know, and what you need to learn when you come across a hole. Figure out where you want to go, where your audience is going, and how you can create a sales funnel to meet those needs!