When your sales mechanism doesn’t provide the expected results even after having high-quality sought-after products, it’s high time for sales funnel optimization. Selling products online is not that easy as it sounds to be. You have to take your audience through several stages before they actually turn into your customers.

What is Sales Funnel?

Sales funnel is basically a tool, demonstrating the stages that a prospect goes through before becoming a customer. The top widest part of the digital sales funnel represents all prospects engaged with the brand after aware of it. Eventually, the funnel narrows down in every stage filtering out the prospects, ending up with the most potent customers who make the purchase decision.

Different Sales Funnel Stages:

The sales funnel comprises different stages where each stage gives an idea about what is required to convert a prospect into a customer. Depending upon the business model, a sales funnel can have different levels. The most prevailing model includes the phases mentioned below:

• Awareness
• Interest
• Desire
• Action

Significance of Sales Funnel

A few of your prospects cease their buyers’ journey in each sales funnel stage. Hence, it is important to figure out the grounds of discontentment of the audiences.

To have a clear insight regarding the disquiet of the prospects, you need to analyze the sales funnel properly.

Let’s explore the benefits of creating sales funnel.

• Through the lead generation funnel, you can identify which customers abandon the purchase process at what stage. This will help you to send personalized messages to your leads at the right time.
• According to the statistics on e-commerce sales, only 1.94% of website visitors turn into paying customers. Through evaluating the sales funnel you can understand which stage is most unappealing for the leads.
• As it points out the customer behavior, you can plan strategy according to your prospects’ needs.

How to Optimize Sales Funnel to Channelize Prospects to the Action Stage

Optimizing the sales funnel thoroughly will enhance the possibilities of higher conversion. To compel your customers to go through the action stage, you need to optimize every step of this funnel. The rest of the article will explain Sales funnel optimization strategies for each stage of the funnel to maximize the conversional rate.

Stage 1: Awareness

Awareness is the very first stage of the buying process in which a person becomes aware of the requirement of a product. The awareness stage does not guarantee that the person will show interest in having that product.

People at this stage try to get a solution to their problems. Here you need to grab their attention, giving them solutions. At this stage, you are only trying to teach your prospects about their problem without forcing them for a sale.

Goal for Awareness Stage

Here, you need to make people aware of your existence, presenting yourself the foremost in the field. To get the attention of your prospects, you should have answers to all their troubles.

Here are the marketing tactics for the awareness stage to build trust among the prospects, compelling them to come back to your site again.

Post Informative Blogs

You should start your blog with some solution-oriented topics. You also can pick some related topics. For example, if you sell window blinds, you can write blogs on interior decorations or on interior colours.

People, who want window blinds for their house, are definitely craving for a modish interior. Hence, such related tips may attract them more than content on the same product repeatedly.

Social Media Posts

Social media is a great platform to spread awareness of your brand. According to research, 54% of social media users use social networking sites to analyze products. Be there to directly answer their questions in form of posts, infographics, white paper, etc. Represent yourself as a human being, not a brand

Informational Videos

Video marketing is an eminent technique for marketing funnel optimization. A survey reveals, 86% of brands consider videos as their prime marketing tool. Videos bestow a better understanding of the subject matter. Besides drawing viewers’ attention, it helps to retain them. Video contents get more likes, shares and comments as compared to any other form of content. Thus, videos act as a key tool to engage the masses.

Paid Campaign

Through PPC ad campaigns, you can get the top place on SERPs with ease, establishing your brand awareness. Again, your ads will show on various popular websites, emails, Youtube, enhancing the possibilities of getting more leads.

Other than Google Ads, you can post your ads on search engines like Yahoo, Bing, etc. You may also find potential leads through social media campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn, etc.

Stage 2: Interest

At the interest stage, a prospect is aware of his requirement and seems more willing to have that product. Here the prospects start gathering the information about his requirements and products which are available to fulfill those requirements.

Companies require coming up with a detailed list of product features to maintain the interest of prospects. Case studies and demo videos can be helpful at this stage as they show the functionality of the product.

Goal for Interest Stage

People at this stage have already recognized your brand. Now you need to demonstrate the potentials of your products. Publicize your unique selling point to influence the opinion of your prospects.

At the interest stage, people start visiting your website. Provide them a better user experience, optimizing your website.

Evaluate Your Landing Page

A landing page is also known as a lead capturing page. Hence, the website owner should be very particular regarding the landing page.

The landing page only focuses on converting prospects into leads. It doesn’t consist of plentiful navigational links like a general webpage has. The main intention behind creating a landing page is to collect the contact information of the visitor.

Sign Up Form

A contact form is a very crucial tool to gather the information of the visitors for promoting the business in the future. Filling up this contact form implies that the subscriber wants to receive your email newsletters.

The contact form should have the correct headline with easy-to-understand texts. If your form appears with a pop-up window, then it should contain a close window button. Otherwise, your potential customers may leave your site right away.

Call-to Action Button

The CTA button plays a vital role for every website. To get the desired result, you need to figure out what action you want from your visitor on that page.

Avail free trial rather than freemium. Allowing free trial boosts conversion by 328%. However, trying to sell products directly can lead to a sharp increase in bounce rate. Again, the CTA button should properly mention how the prospect is going to get benefited from such action.

Stage 3: Desire

At this stage, the prospect evaluates the available options and tries to find out the best fit. This stage works as the brand filter and prospects keep filtering the product that does not meet their expectations.

Points of differentiation can leave a long-lasting impact on their mind. Companies need to show these attributes to their prospects at this stage.

Goal for Desire Stage

When there are a plethora of options available in the market to choose from, people used to choose such product which has brand reliability. Hence, besides hyping your product features in front of your prospects, you need to show evidences of your brand’s popularity.

Email Marketing

Sending email newsletters regularly to your email subscribers helps to convert drastically. It is the most cost-effective marketing strategy which generates 4200% ROI. It enables you to showcase your products and features. You can educate your prospects about any discount offer or seasonal sale. You can also answer the question that may arise in your leads’ mind regarding your service through email newsletters. For example, during the pandemic Zomato have assured their customers about food safety in this way:

Genuine Customer Reviews and Testimonials

Customer reviews highly influence the purchase decision. Buyers trust that brand which already has satisfied thousands of other customers with their products.

It’s become easier for buyers to compare product reviews on third-party websites. Having a huge number of positive customer reviews help to gain the trust of the leads. Recognitions and compliments by followers on social networking sites also build trust.

Specify Additional Benefits

Okay, you have convinced your leads about your product quality and reputation, the next step is to show them the after-sale support you render to your customers. Clearly specify the service information like return policy, availability of cash on delivery, customer care support detail (if the product requires any installation or demonstration) etc. Think about what assistance your customers will require from your after making the purchase and answer them precisely.

Stage 4: Action

This is the stage where prospects finally decide to purchase the product. This decision of buying a certain brand is the result of factors like brand awareness, product variants, features, price etc.

Here companies require demonstrating the implementation of products to make this process smooth. Companies should also try to impress the customers to retain them.

Goal for Action Stage

It’s very difficult to sell your product even at this stage if the action funnel is not optimized properly. According to a survey, 69.57% of customers leave the shopping cart without completing the checkout procedure. The cart abandonment rate is even worse on mobile surfing.

Here, you need to simplify the checkout procedure to help your customers make the purchase.

Optimize Checkout Page

It’s very distressing if your prospects end their buyer journey at this stage. There are a few reasons why people don’t purchase the product even after adding it to the cart, such as

• Compulsory sign up to purchase product
• Increase in price due to extra shipping cost or other hidden charges
• Not having the option to review the product again before purchase
• Unnecessarily long checkout form
• Any discord regarding payment procedure, return policy, etc.

Eliminate these inconveniences from the checkout form to streamline the purchase procedure.

Be Available on Live Chat

Whenever your prospects need assistance or answers to their questions, you need to be there to ease their problems. Having live chatbots or a sales representative can help them completing the buying process, enhancing the user experience.

 

Wrapping It Up

It’s not about creating a digital sales funnel; it’s about having a healthy sales funnel that converts. Always track the performance of your sales funnel and make iterations whenever required.

It is essential to understand what your audience likes, what they expect from you, etc. If your sales funnel can bring you good returns then it means that you have successfully achieved your goal. If you want really nurture from the market then you should definitely take the advantage of sales funnel.