Why do I need a sales funnel?
It’s a shame when companies spend good money on a website that then doesn’t result in converting visitors into prospect and ultimately more sales.
That would be like owning a shop with all your products on display beautifully for your visitors to view yet not having a shop assistant there to guide them through the sales process, offering up sells and cross sells and newsletters and one off specials exactly as you stipulate, every time, without fail, until the visitor/customer checks out.
You’ve never seen or heard of people opening up shop with no sales people working there for good reason. Yet, many websites are just that, a website with no salespeople.
A sales funnel is like a set of programmable and automated salespeople that you can insert into different places around your website to sell your products and services for you 24/7/12/365.
What is a sales funnel?
A sales funnel is a process or system that automates, simplifies and streamlines the sales journey for your visitors and clients and at the same time aims to increase the cost per acquisition and reduce the cost per lead for your company.
They aren’t unique to online marketing as sales funnels describe any purchase that you make. When you go to a shop you are led through aisles full of products, presented with special offers like buy 2 get one free, and are then taken to a checkout to pay for your items. You might even be given a coupon to entice you back again to make more purchases.
Sales funnels are sometimes referred to as ‘marketing funnels’ or ‘conversion funnels’, and each step is designed to lead your visitor or customer to the next one seamlessly and naturally with the ultimate goal being to make a sale or multiple sales and convert your customer into an ambassador for your company.
Breaking the buying cycle into mini steps allows you to be more precise about what and when you present an offer to your visitors and customers. It also allows you to measure key conversion rates and being digital you can sometimes see results change almost immediately when running A/B split test campaigns.
The benefits of sales funnels
Let’s take a look at some of the main benefits of an online sales funnel.
A sales funnel:
- Helps you improve your customer conversions
- Earnings Per Click (EPC)
- Gross Sales
- Average Cart Value
- Page Views
- Opt-Ins
- Sales
- Earnings Per Pageview
- Automates your sales processes
- Helps you improve your overall engagement
- Qualifies your audience
- Helps increase average sales value
- Allows you to implement up-sells and down-sells
- Maximises the return on your ad spends
- Helps create and build brand awareness
- Helps you to split test your offers
There are two funnel software providers that I would recommend. the first is Clickfunnels. Excellent company. Great product. The second is Thrivethemes, and it’s Thrivethemes that is used to build this website and sales funnels.
If you would like to know how they compare to each other, you might like to read this article:
Sales Funnels – Thrive Themes Vs Clickfunnels – My Story