Sales funnel also known as a revenue funnel or sales process refers to the buying process that companies lead customers through when purchasing products. The definition also refers to the process through which a company finds, qualifies, and sells its products to buyers. Keep reading for more details.

In the digital marketing industry, the sales funnel is one of the core concepts which can take your business from the unknown to a multi-million-dollar marketing machine.

If you want to take your business from zero to hero in no time, you must learn what a sales funnel is and how it works.

Did you know some marketers have built a career around implementing this single marketing concept?

Simultaneously, many entrepreneurs, coaches, influencers, and even marketers find it hard to wrap their heads around this concept.

So, we decided to develop a comprehensive blog post, explaining the sales funnel, its importance, and how it works. We also added ways you can create and optimize your marketing funnel to make the maximum impact for your business.

Why Is Sales Funnel Important?

A sales funnel helps you understand what potential customers are thinking and doing at each stage of the purchasing journey.

These insights allow you to invest in the right marketing activities and channels, create the most relevant messaging during each stage, and turn more prospects into paying customers.

From the moment prospects hear about your product or service until the moment they make a purchase (or don’t), they pass through different stages of your sales funnel.

That journey through your funnel may change from one prospect to another, but in the end, they’ll evaluate it based on their interest level.

They’ll think about the problem they’re trying to solve and conduct competitive research to make sure your offering is the best solution.

Before you start building your sales funnel, it is essential to have a clear business vision, develop an e-commerce marketing strategy, and then define your target audience to work towards your business growth.

If, for example, you are looking at how to create an online clothing store, you need to follow specific steps to develop your business and stay successful.

Stages/Phases of a Sales Funnel

The typical sales funnel is divided into multiple steps, which differ depending on the particular sales model. One of the most common ways of dividing a sales funnel possesses seven phases including:

Stage 1: Discovery/Awareness Phase.

Stage 2: Interest Phase.

Stage 3: Decision Phase.

Stage 4: Action Phase.

Each funnel pushes qualified leads into the next stage and removes those that aren’t a good fit for your products or services. Let’s discuss the stages of a sales funnel to understand how sales funnel works:

Stage 1: Discovery/Awareness Phase

In the awareness stage, your ideal customer may realize they are going through a problem.

But they’re still struggling to identify their challenge. This person could have many questions about their problem and how your business can solve it. At this point, they need to seek resources that could educate them about the problem.

This is where having additional content will come in handy. You want to have content about your products or services that your potential client can find on the web or on social media.

If you’re a life coach, your prospects at this stage might be asking this question: what is the purpose and direction of my life?

Or, if you sell mattresses, your prospects at the awareness stage might be asking: why do I wake up with lower back pain?

So, at the top of the funnel, your audience needs information so they can articulate their problems and ask the right questions.

Your job at this point should be to create content that educates them on their challenges or problems. That’s the way you convert untouched prospects into leads and move them one step down the funnel.

Stage 2: Interest Phase

At this stage, your prospects understand their problem and know something about your business, but they want to learn more.

However, they’re not yet ready to buy or sign up for your products. They’re still looking for possible solutions.

People usually take into account all available solutions to solve their problems.

For example, they’re sure that they need to do something to fix their back pains, but they’re not quite sure whether or not your mattresses are the right product to buy.

In other words, they’re looking for types of solutions rather than evaluating solution providers.

This is where you need content that tells how your mattress can help them get rid of back pain and why they should buy them.

Stage 3: Decision Phase

This is where your potential clients are ready to buy. They might be considering you as well as your competitors. Now your potential customers are at the bottom of the funnel knowing everything about their problem and potential solutions.

And, most importantly, they’re ready to select the business to buy the solution. Their questions at this stage are vendor-driven. This is when you should be making your best offers.

Small factors like free shipping, a bonus product, or a discount can set your offers apart from your competitors.

Whatever you offer, make it so attractive that your website visitors or audience will rush to become your customers.

Stage 4: Action Phase

At the very bottom of the sales funnel, people take action. They buy your products or services and you finally convert a cold lead into a customer through a well-defined process. At this stage, you should be thinking about turning one purchase into five or ten.

If they decide not to do business with you, your efforts can still produce results. Create nurture campaigns to stay top of mind.

Also, make sure to create some remarketing audiences and lookalike audiences to get back in front of your ideal customers one last time.

You can further engage with your customers and encourage them to leave feedback. You can have another stage in your sales funnel that deals with customer retention.

Your story doesn’t end once someone buys your products. A customer can be turned into a repeat customer and brand advocate.

To keep your customers happy, you have to help them thoroughly with all aspects of their problem.

Do you have questions about the subject? Don’t hesitate to reach out and ask us. Kindly share and subscribe to our content.

Sales Funnel Optimization is the process of fine-tuning a sales funnel and its stages for the highest acquisition, conversion, and retention of prospective customers. To optimize a sales funnel, strategies and tips need to be employed. Keep reading to know more.

Before you start building your sales funnel, it is essential to have a clear business vision, develop an e-commerce marketing strategy, and then define your target audience to work towards your business growth.

This is where understanding the intricacies of a sales funnel comes in. Such intricacies include;

• Upselling
• Downselling
• Tripwire Marketing
• Paid Media ads
• Sales page
• Retargeting
• Email marketing, and various other tips strategies one can employ. Let’s glance at some of these.

Upselling

Basically, a Sales Funnel Optimization technique where a seller invites the customer to purchase more expensive items, upgrades, or other add-ons to generate more revenue.

While it usually involves marketing more profitable services or products, it can be simply exposing the customer to other options that were perhaps not considered.

Upselling is focused on upgrading or enhancing the product the customer is already buying.

For example, a housekeeping service might upsell a customer buying a weekly cleaning package by offering a package with more rooms, and cross-sell by also offering a carpet deep cleaning service.

Downselling

A downsell is the reverse of what is happening in an upsell, rather than selling a higher-priced product, you offer a similar lower-priced product.

These lower-priced products also help to increase the average order of the customer and bring more profit into the business.

Downselling is a sales technique where you offer an alternative to the primary upsell by offering a more budget-friendly or more convenient buying option to your customers after they must have rejected or declined the upsell.

To some, seeing a reduction in price or a slight change of offer to suit the atmosphere causes a negative impression about a brand or doubt in the authenticity of a product.

While that could be true in some cases.

It’s your call as a business owner to study your audience and present the right downsells to people you think aren’t fit at the moment for your core offer.

Tripwire Marketing

Tripwire marketing is the Sales Funnel Optimization practice of offering leads a low-cost product with the intention of selling them more expensive products later. Tripwire marketing is a common practice intended to increase first customer acquisition.

The term tripwire marketing might sound a little shady like you’re trying to get one over on your customer. That’s not the case at all.

Marketing and advertising experts have been using tripwire marketing for decades in one form or another, and it works just as well online as it does in brick-and-mortar stores. In fact, it’s even more effective because you can more easily stay in touch with the customer.

Let’s say you run a subscription service for which you charge $30 per month. Customer A has been a loyal subscriber for six months, then suddenly cancels his membership.

That’s a tripwire.

You can then use email marketing to reel in Customer A. Reach out via email to ask what went wrong or if you can improve your subscription service in any way.

Then you offer a can’t-miss deal, such as one month for $5 instead of the standard $30 — with the option to cancel at any time, of course.

Paid Media Advertising

Paid media is defined as the purchase of ad inventory on a media channel or publisher site to broadcast your brand message and reach your target audiences. It is a form of digital advertising that includes sponsored content to promote a brand’s products or services.

It is all about paid promotions on other sites to display your marketing message and influence audiences you could never reach before. This can be done on social media, websites, blogs, publications, etc.

An essential component of a digital strategy for brand awareness and revenue growth is media. Media acts as the channel and real estate that carries the brand message and promotes the brand or the brand message.

Sales Page

Not to be confused with a business website or blog, a sales page is a standalone page created with one specific purpose in mind, to secure sales for your product.

The product or service you’re selling on your page can differ depending on your industry or niche. However, the purpose of your sales page remains constant – getting visitors to convert into customers.

A sales page is a great opportunity to explain your products and services to visitors and make them want to buy. It needs to be attention-grabbing, informative, and persuasive, all at the same time.

And if it’s not optimized for conversions, you’re losing money. That means any marketing and advertising budget you’re spending to promote your products will be wasted.

Retargeting

Also known as remarketing, is a form of online advertising that can help you keep your brand in front of bounced traffic after they leave your website.

For most websites, only 2% of web traffic converts on the first visit. Retargeting is a tool designed to help companies reach 98% of users who don’t convert right away.

Retargeting is a cookie-based technology that uses simple Javascript code to anonymously ‘follow’ your audience all over the Web.

Here’s how it works: you place a small, unobtrusive piece of code on your website (this code is sometimes referred to as a pixel).

The code, or pixel, is unnoticeable to your site visitors and won’t affect your site’s performance. Every time a new visitor comes to your site, the code drops an anonymous browser cookie.

Later, when your cookied visitors browse the Web, the cookie will let your retargeting provider know when to serve ads, ensuring that your ads are served only to people who have previously visited your site.

Retargeting is a powerful branding and conversion optimization tool, but it works best if it’s part of a larger digital strategy.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing.

It involves using email to send advertisements, request business, or solicit sales or donations. We have created a concise article on email marketing. You should read it here.

Sales Funnel optimization is the process of fine-tuning a sales funnel and its stages for the highest acquisition, conversion, and retention of prospective customers.

While no sales funnel is perfect, there’s nothing to say that you can’t influence the purchase decision of potential buyers and improve your sales funnel conversion rate. Sales funnel optimization works best if it’s part of a larger digital strategy.

We hope this was useful to You. Do you have questions about the subject? Don’t hesitate to reach out and ask us. Kindly share and subscribe to our content.

Paid media advertising is that part of marketing and advertising that requires the purchase of ad space to promote a brand to larger audiences. Brands pay for content promotion to spread their message to audiences, at scale. Paid media advertising is part of a brand’s strategy to increase traffic, sales, and conversions through clicks, and ultimately increase revenue. Continue reading for details.

Paid media is marketing that you pay for. Paid media includes TV ads, print advertising, sponsorships, and other types of media.

In digital marketing, paid media includes pay-per-click (PPC) ads, paid social media ads, and search engine marketing (SEM).

Why is Paid Media Advertising Important?

Paid media is considered to be essential in a complete digital marketing strategy. Different from inbound marketing, paid media allows you to instantly get in front of your target audience and engage them where they are already spending their time.

Paid media is when a small business pays for placement on a platform such as a website, a search engine, social media, video ads, website pop-ups, newsletters, etc.

By using paid media, you can reach audiences that may never have discovered you on their own. Examples include; Paid search results, Facebook and other social media ads, Newsletter sponsorships, Influencer marketing, etc.

Types Of Paid Media Advertising

The concept of paid media has evolved to become the structured, multifaceted operation it is today. In this section, we’re digging into the various ways you can promote your brand through paid media. Here are the top five types of paid media.

Paid Social Media

Probably the most popular of the lot, paid social media needs no introduction. We see it in our everyday lives while scrolling through social media platforms.

Almost every social platform now offers paid options, where you can pay to publish ads for platform users to see, depending on their interests, behavior, demographics, location, etc.

Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat, and Pinterest are the top-performing channels for paid social ads.

Each offers a business account that lets you create ads, or boost existing posts. Some even let you prompt users to message you, like your page, and help you get more leads and site visitors.

Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat are also known for influencer marketing where an influential user is approached to promote brands/products to their loyal followers and fans in the brand’s niche.

Influencers are paid a negotiated amount or a percent of the sales, or some even accept gifts and goodies in return for a post about the brand.

Search Engine Ads

These include Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and Pay Per Impression (PPI) ads. PPC are those ads that appear on a publisher’s/media owner’s site but the advertiser is charged only when a user clicks on it.

These ads appear on search engine results pages almost like a native ad at the top, with an indication that it is an ad.

They also appear on websites and blogs on the top, left, or right panel – or even at intervals within the content itself.

To effectively use PPC, you will first need to identify the relevant keywords and ensure the bid amount is reasonable enough not to impact your return on investments negatively. Executed correctly, your PPC ad can guarantee you pay for high-value customers with a good chance of converting.

PPI ads are charged each time your ad is displayed on a site, irrespective of interaction or being clicked upon.

They are usually charged per thousand impressions, also known as CPM, as mentioned above. PPI ads can be cost-effective if your ad gets clicked on in addition to simply receiving an impression when compared to CPC ad prices.

Banner Ads

Banner ads, also known as display ads and web ads, are usually visual, image-based ads that show up on websites for a limited period and leads the user to the advertiser’s site or a specific landing page. This type of ad is embedded into the publisher’s website in the form of an image or gif.

The performance of the ad is recorded by its click-through ratio, that is, the number of clicks that come through to the targeted landing page from the publisher’s site divided by the number of ad impressions.

Native Ads

Native ads are those visual or text ads that match the design, typeface and look of the website they are on.

They show up on publisher websites as In-Feed, Sponsored/Recommended Content, Search & Promoted Listings, Promoted Stories, and so on. This type of ad also includes advertorials that inform and influence conversions.

According to Outbrain, native ads get 53% more attention than display ads. This is because ad fatigue doesn’t set in, and the ad doesn’t stand out as a purely commercial piece of content. Native ads are popular across social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

OOH and DOOH

Out-of-home (OOH) advertising and digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising reach users while they are outdoor and in public spaces.

OOH has been a part of traditional advertising to reach users while they commute, shop, etc. via billboards, posters, bus shelters, benches, cinemas, etc. This channel of advertising had no digital or programmatic involvement.

DOOH has taken OOH to the digital realm with in-store kiosks, digital billboards, digital signage, display screens, etc.

The DOOH ad process is becoming more valuable today owing to increasing capabilities and effectiveness.

The ads are no longer a printed banner but a neon board with fully functional screens that can even be interactive. DOOH is also programmatic, making it easier to use and measure.

Paid search enables brands to connect with consumers at the exact moment they are actively searching for information related to their products and services.

Paid media advertising can be leveraged to increase the effectiveness of content marketing, boost your online presence, and drive business performance.

We hope this was useful to You. Do you have questions about the subject? Don’t hesitate to reach out and ask us. Kindly share and subscribe to our content.

Social media management is the process of analyzing social media audiences and developing a strategy that’s tailored to them, creating and distributing content for social media profiles, monitoring online conversations, collaborating with influencers, providing community service, and monitoring, measuring, and reporting on social media performance and ROI. Continue reading for more details.

All tasks, which were once marginalized by businesses, have now stepped into the limelight of companies’ marketing strategies.

Why? Because social media provides great money-making opportunities – on the condition you manage your social channels in an organized, efficient way.

What Is Social Media Management?

Social media management is the process of creating, publishing, promoting, and managing content across social media channels.

Social media management goes beyond just posting updates to your company’s social media profiles.

It also includes engaging with your audience and looking for new opportunities to increase reach and visibility.

Why Practice Social Media Management?

SM management offers several benefits, including:

Cost: No matter your marketing budget, social media is a cost-effective initiative. It’s free to join social media networks, post content, respond to user comments, and more.

Even advertising offers a profitable channel for reaching your audience and building an online following.

Reach: Social media networks, from Facebook to LinkedIn, can connect you with users across the world. You can also use social media platforms, like Pinterest, to reach niche audiences.

Traditional marketing and advertising can’t match the reach — or price — or social. That’s why social media management is a must for businesses.

Users: Incorporating social media into your marketing strategy allows you to align your marketing initiatives with user behavior.

For example, 74% of people now use social media when making purchase decisions. Not to mention, 80% of people get advice about a purchase through social media.

Performance: Marketers and business owners alike agree on the performance of social media marketing and advertising.

Via social, companies can build their brand and even generate leads and sales. Almost 45% of business-to-business (B2B) marketers, for instance, have earned a client through Facebook.

With social media’s multiple advantages, it’s worth considering your marketing strategy.

Basic Social Media Management Strategy

Developing a social media strategy is an important part of making sure that each of your campaigns is helping you get closer to meeting your marketing goals.

After you have decided which channels you plan to use, you’ll need to consider how often you plan to post and what types of content you will post.

Start by considering what you know about your audience.

What type of content do they like best?

Develop content that’s engaging but also speaks to their needs and challenges. If you need help getting started, check out these social media marketing ideas.

You should also consider how you plan to make engagement and response a consistent part of your social media management.

Do you plan to reach out to fans and followers and start a conversation? How often will you respond to questions and concerns posted on your page?

Do you plan to use contests to engage your audience? All of this should be somewhere in your social media strategy. You should summarily practice these:

1. Creating a Social Media Schedule
2. Creating and Posting Content to Social Profiles
3. Responding to Fans and Followers
4. Engaging with Others on Social Platforms
5. Creating Social Media Advertising Campaigns
6. Managing Contests and Giveaways
7. Tracking Performance Over Time

Hire A Social Media Management Company

Knowing what the subject is and why it’s important is only half the battle.

Now, you have to put that knowledge to use and start making decisions about your company’s social media management.

For many small businesses, there just isn’t enough time or resources to dedicate to effective social media management.

Posting quality content consistently takes a lot of time and effort that some small business marketing teams just don’t have.

Not to mention, you may not have anyone on your team with the expertise or skills needed to implement effective campaigns.

This is where a social media management company comes in.

A social media management company like CHROMITE SOLUTIONS  helps supplement your digital marketing efforts by providing expert social media marketing services.

Not only do we have the time to dedicate to implementing your campaigns, but we also have the skills and knowledge needed to ensure that your social media efforts are a success.

By this point, there should no longer be a question about what is social media management.

Outsource Your Social Media Management

A lot of businesses try to launch and maintain social campaigns, including your competitors. Get ahead of your competition and use social to its full advantage by exploring and investing in social media management services.

The business potential of social networks is immense. Brands can leverage social media platforms to successfully drive their objectives across the marketing funnel, from raising brand awareness to increasing store visits.

But to be able to accomplish this, they need efficient social media teams.

The more goals you want to achieve through social media marketing, the more people dedicated to this channel you’re going to need. This demand will eventually lead to building complex social media team structures.

If you’re a large brand, you might even have multiple teams in different offices and regions of the world, leveraging different strategies to meet different targets.

We hope this was useful to You. Do you have questions about the subject? Don’t hesitate to reach out and ask us. Kindly share and subscribe to our content.