Digital marketing is a buzzword that gets thrown around a lot. But allow us to ask you something: do you know what a digital marketing sales funnel is? Not sure? Maybe you’ve heard the word in passing as you talked about your business?
Well, sit back and relax! We’re going to take you on a learning journey! Not only are we going to help you understand why you and your company need a digital marketing sales funnel, but we’ll tell you exactly how to form a killer one. Ready? Let’s jump right in!
The Core Goal Behind Your Sales Approach
In this highly competitive era, no business can survive without a strong digital presence—which requires creative visuals, interesting and optimised content and a well thought through marketing plan. Therefore, businesses require the services of experts who can implement strategies that compliment your sales funnel for digital marketing success.
The core of all your digital marketing efforts is to create a sales funnel. It’s a route map designed to convert a lead into a customer, starting right from the first interaction. Since it’s a strategic model based on a buyer’s journey, every piece within it is aimed at generating sales.
Stages of a Sales Funnel
Before you devise your digital strategy, it’s best to find where your prospects are in the buying journey. Your sales funnel starts at awareness and ends at turning your customers into brand advocates. Let’s go through the entire cycle before we jump into succeeding at digital marketing.
Typically, there are six stages of a sales funnel, and prospects move from one level to another. Moreover, the number of prospects decrease as they move closer to the sale.
- Exposure/Awareness
- Consideration
- Preference
- Conversion/Purchase
- Customer Relations/Loyalty
- Retention/Advocacy
Steps to Creating a Sales Funnel for Your Business:
Even after knowing the stages of the sales funnel, not everyone can create one that ensures the success of your digital marketing strategy.
First and foremost, you need to establish your goals – it could be increasing sales, generating ROI, creating awareness, or retaining old customers.
Next is to visualise the stages of the sales funnel. Once you’ve conducted marketing research, you now know the stage at which most of your prospects are. Use this data to create a successful marketing plan.
On average Google handles 750,000 queries every second
Lastly, devise a strategy to generate more traffic and navigate your audience to the final stage of the buying journey.
The Right Content for your Digital Sales Funnel
Not that we’ve covered all the essential points; let’s focus on the type of content appropriate at each stage of the sales funnel. This will ensure accurate results while optimising the company’s resources.
Discover
Every aspect of your sales funnel strategy helps prospects understand what your company is selling. The first step is ‘discovery.’ None of your marketing activities will reap any benefits if your prospects are unaware of your business.
On average, Google sees 750,000 queries every second, which means if you have a valuable product offering, chances are someone on the internet is looking for it. But, competition is high, and it is difficult to rank on the top of SERPs. So, what can you do to get discovered online?
- Blogging
- SEO
- Paid Advertisements
- Social Networking
The goal is to captivate the attention of your audience through educational content and infographics. Your content should talk about the problem and offer a solution in the form of your products or services.
Consideration
Now that you’ve successfully captivated your potential customer, it’s time to move onto the next step: consideration.
Your audience is now actually a potential customer. At this point, they’re looking at your products and/or services, asking themselves, ‘do I really need this? Should I get it from here or somewhere else?
That’s where your expertise comes in! The best way is to offer lead magnets or incentives to get the contact details of prospects. It can be done by:
- Landing Pages
- Subscriptions Forms
- Call-to-actions
The objective is to create an email listing that you can use in different stages of your sales funnel. Introducing new products, promoting sales, sending newsletters, or thanking customers on product purchases.
Purchase
If you’ve successfully enthralled your prospects, they’ll put your name in their list of options and move onto the third step; purchasing.
There’s no doubt about it; no matter what your business is, you’ll need a wide range of marketing touchpoints. We jump from one option to the other until, at last, we’ve contemplated the pros and cons. That’s where you need to step in with the right content that sells your products.
You can do so by:
- Ecommerce Promotions
- Targeted content marketing
- Monitoring ROI
The objective is to convince leads to buy your product or service.
Loyalty
The most important aspect of building your business is customer loyalty. Now that your customer has finally decided to make a purchase decision, you need to provide validation to assure them that they have made the right choice. You can entice them by:
- Reselling
- Upselling
- Sending Reminders
- Offering Discounts
- Showing Gratitude
The main objective is to make them feel that they are cherished and remembered. Moreover, your old customers need a slight nudge to make a new purchase. You can also ask them for referrals to get new customers.
What Is A User Persona And How To Create One?
Part of an effective digital marketing strategy is constantly finding ways to improve. And for that, you need to know what your customers want from you.
That’s precisely what a user persona helps achieve! Typically, these are fictional characters that provide you with all the relevant data of the user. It, in turn, enables you to get constructive feedback from the users.
While user personas can vary, there are several things all user personas include. These are name, photos, summary quotes, demographic profile, personal and professional background, user environment and goals, and scenarios.
Finding Users At Different Stages Of The Funnel
To gain organic traffic, you need to pay close attention to every detail of your well-constructed sales funnel.
With how technology has advanced, your consumers can do a little searching, and they’ll find an array of options to choose from. It means every small move of yours will cause a ripple effect.
That’s why you always need to be one step ahead of your customers. Make sure your content is fantastic, have pre-made FAQ’s, keep your customer service top-notch, and work on the constructive criticism you receive.
How To Create A Marketing Mix
The last part of your digital marketing strategy includes coming up with a stellar marketing mix. Marketing mix refers to the basic 4P’s essential to effectively sell your products while helping you strive for your goals.
These are:
Product:
It could be a service or physical product that your company sells. You need to creatively describe your product to stand apart from the competition and attract customers. You should focus on the features and highlight the values your product offers. Moreover, talk about how it is different from other brands and much more usable.
Price:
It is how much you charge for your product or services. You need to be creative with your pricing policy. Many brands offer seasonal sales throughout the year, while high-end brands connote price with value, making it a value-based purchase.
Place:
It is the geographic location where the products are available, and the business is based. Your business could be US-based, serving customers worldwide. Your location should be where your target audience is to ensure sales.
Promotion:
They are the entire marketing efforts on the online and offline media, designed to generate sales. The higher the traffic you have on your online and physical store, the higher will be the chances of generating revenue and making your business sustainable.
Conclusion
When it comes to establishing a business, there is no easy way out. And just like you use the digital world to benefit your marketing strategy, consumers use the internet to find multiple solutions to their problems.
All in all, your digital marketing strategy should make you stand out, look unique. And that’s precisely what we’ve tried to help you out with!
