Sales funnel: what is it

How to build and calculate a sales funnel conversion

For doing a profitable business, you always need to use all available tools that really work. After all, nowadays, every potential customer has many opportunities and options to buy the desired product. Unless, of course, it is not something unique. How to make your product find its buyer, and how to convince him to buy the product? For example, you can use such a tool as a sales funnel. After all, this is one of the best ways to establish contact with a potential client.

Sales funnel. What is it? If you are reading this article, you had probably encountered this concept before and decided to use the search to learn more about it. Let’s understand how the sales funnel works, how to create it, and other things that will be useful to know about this approach to attracting customers. 

A sales funnel is a system that marks the customer’s journey from first contact with a product/service to purchase. The name appeared for a reason: the whole approach is based on the fact that the number of users involved is gradually decreasing. Therefore, experts construct this concept’s structure in the form of an image, using an inverted cylinder or something like a funnel.

The peculiarity of this system is the universality of the formula, which always works, regardless of the time and period when you use the sales funnel. The only thing that changes are the tools for analyzing and engaging the client. After all, 20 years ago, it was enough to launch a new product on the market, and it almost immediately gained popularity or found a client. As we said above, now we need new approaches and methods of selling our services and goods. For example, use such a modern way as an online sales funnel.

To understand how to build a sales funnel, you first need to know the stages and levels of the sales funnel. Let’s take a closer look at the levels of interaction with your future client. 

The structure of the sales funnel looks like this: 

• ignorance; 
• awareness;
• interest; 
• consideration; 
• intention; 
• purchase.

As you can see, the above stages of the sales funnel are designed to interest the customer. Qualitative use of this formula means to act slowly but surely. After all, everyone will agree that it is much more effective not just to tell about your product, but to find someone who will take advantage of the offer. There are now many services to create sales funnels.

Sales funnel: examples

Let’s look at situations where you can use this tool. Imagine a situation where one person thinks about buying a mobile communication device, and the other wants a laptop. In the first case, the customer can buy a smartphone, tablet, or laptop, but in the second, we already know that the buyer needs a specific product. Here you should pay attention to companies such as Apple, Amazon, and Netflix. After all, they gained popularity not only due to large budgets for advertising campaigns but also due to a competent approach to promoting their products. Their strategies are a classic example of how to build the perfect business. Therefore, do not neglect the history of world-famous brands.

Let’s look at the sites of successful companies. As you can see, customers are increasingly shopping online, and some stores do not even have an offline point of sale. In the case of digital products, such as movies, TV series, music, video games, etc., such stores do not exist at all. Thus was born the Netflix video rental service, which existed exclusively in the form of a website and warehouses from which the company delivered DVDs. The customer could place an order on a site that offered recommendations based on what you had previously viewed. The site is now their sales funnel. Its structure is simple, during the first visit, the visitor goes through the following stages: 

• short but effective slogan about the relevance of the service;
• tariff table;
• registration form; 
• payment form.

A few pages with an unobtrusive offer, a few simple steps, and a potential customer already pays for the trial period of service use. And all this is done without overloading the visitor so as not to scare him. 

Proper construction of the sales funnel should be present in everything. To do this, you need to analyze your possibilities or invite a specialist who will help you with this. This scheme works everywhere and always, both for the sales funnel and combines for harvesting wheat. You need to find your client, understand his features and offer him what he needs. 

Nowadays, a lot of sales are made through websites. They first appear in search engine results. And then, when you click on the link, you get into a whirlpool of characteristics, benefits, convenient terms of purchase and so on. It is how the online sales funnel works. The number of users on the Internet is growing, and you need to use it. Here we turn to the topic of online sales. 

Every business that aims to sell through an online store knows that developing and creating a sales funnel is the key to successful product promotion. That’s why successful entrepreneurs know that Google Analytics comes to the rescue. This service allows you to analyze the site or program to determine the audience/users and optimize the visibility of web pages. The same service helps to find out the conversion rates of the sales funnel.

The sales funnel conversion is the number of visitors who made a purchase. It is easy to find out this number. Let’s consider a formula that will answer the question of how to calculate the conversion of the sales funnel. For example, 3,000 people visited your site, but only 3 of them made a purchase. In this case, the conversion is 0.1%: divide 3 by 3000 and multiply by 100%. For calculation, you can use data for any period. Google Analytics performs all calculations itself, which makes it an indispensable tool. Here are the simplest features that Google Analytics displays. They determine the target audience and how you can influence it. 

So, here’s what you should pay attention to when analyzing your site:

1. Demographics of visitors. It includes gender, age, profession, and solvency;
2. Actions that the recipient of letters performs in the mailing list and on the site;
3. Purchase history;
4. Subscriber life cycle.

These are, of course, just basic metrics, but you should rely on them first.

We hope you understand what a sales funnel is, and the examples below will help you run your business more consciously.