A lead generation sales funnel is the “magical” tunnel that keeps your business afloat. You need paying customers for your business to generate revenue to keep it afloat.
To acquire paying customers, you need sales. However, you cannot make sales if you don’t have new leads. And to generate new leads, you need an effective leads generation funnel. Because you cannot just sit and hope that paying customers will find you.
Therefore, though intimidating, building a strong lead generation sales funnel is an essential part of the marketing process. Here is how and why you should build a funnel.
What is a Lead Generation Sales Funnel?
Lead generation entails attracting and converting target audiences interested in your product or service. A lead funnel is a systematic approach to generating these leads. The funnel is the tool you use to move various prospects through the various stages to produce highly qualified leads that are likely to convert into paying customers.
The following is a representation of a lead generation sales funnel.
Source: Venture harbour
Why You Should Build a Lead Generation Sales Funnels
Before we even get to the part about how you can build yourself a lead generation sales funnel, let’s find out why your business needs it. Here are the top reasons you should consider having one.
1. It helps You Determine the Effectiveness of Your Content Marketing Campaigns
To determine whether your content marketing campaigns are working, you can use metrics such as clicks, views, reactions, and possible subscriptions.
However, while these metrics determine the effectiveness of your content, they may be less reliant when it comes to measuring performance. But when you establish the conversion rate of your content, it becomes easier to quantify their performance.
Marketing statistics reveal that over 67% of firms use lead generation as the primary metric for determining their content success. From the representation above, you can see content is vital at each stage of the lead funnel.
Therefore, the amount of customers you manage to convert at the end of the sales funnel is a good measure of the effectiveness of your content.
2. It Helps You Figure Out Who Wants Your Products and Services
You will start with a lot of traffic (prospects) entering the funnel at each stage. However, you will also lose some of this traffic along the way. That should not cause you to panic as it is a good thing.
It means your funnel filters out prospects that aren’t a good fit for your product or service. In the end, those that emerge at the end of the funnel will be highly qualified leads that are more likely to be paying customers.
You will be left with customers that meet your criteria. Hence are more likely to develop a long-term relationship with your business. It also helps you save on marketing costs by focusing on specific target customers.
3. It Helps You Develop Awareness of Your Products and Services
The art of developing a genuine interest in a firm’s products and services is something that has been a source of headache for marketers over the years. A well-developed lead funnel will help you counter this challenge.
Generating potential leads helps you raise awareness of your brand to a large audience. It also diverts significant traffic to your website and social media platforms.
How to Build a Lead Generation Sales Funnel
Now that we know why you need one, we can shift attention to how you can build your lead funnel.
Step 1. Define Your Target Audience
The purpose of the gospel is to convert people into believers. The purpose of marketing is to convert prospective leads into paying customers.
You want your funnel to be efficient in doing that. As is the case with the gospel, you cannot convert those who are not ready to receive the gospel.
Therefore you need to research and establish your perfect custom fit by identifying the ideal market niche for your products or services.
Your customer profile data can help you determine your preferred targets if you are an existing business. Researching your competitors’ customers may also help you determine your target customers.
Step 2. Identify Your Target Audience Needs
You may have to expand your research into the target customers to understand their specific needs. Since you are trying to convert them into your paying customers, the least you could do is understand their specific needs.
What are the significant challenges the target audience currently faces?
Remember, those leads that come out at the other end of your lead funnel trust you because you understand their specific challenges. And customers who believe that your product and services are best suited to help them.
Step 3. Determine Campaign Goals
Every of your marketing effort should have KPIs. It is no exception for your leads funnel. You must develop specific goals you intend to achieve with your sales funnel. For example, to achieve a 20% lead conversion rate within 4 months.
You should also develop sales goals tied to your lead funnel. For example, how many leads can your sales team manage to convert into clients? How does this rank against the industry benchmarks?
Step 4. Create a Lead Magnet
Now you have determined your target audience and their specific needs. It is time to develop a plan to attract your target customers.
A lead magnet includes solutions to the specific challenges you identified with your target customers. The idea is to capture their interest in what you have to offer.
Therefore, you have to be creative in developing your lead magnets and how you convey your message to the target audience.
Make customers feel they have gained something valuable from your lead magnet. An example of lead magnets include.
E-book
Video course
A how-to-do guide
A cheat sheet
An email course
Step 5. Create a Landing Page for the Lead Magnet
Your lead magnet requires a persuasive standalone landing page. The landing page is created with the primary role of convincing visitors to act (sign up, buy, download).
The following are essential components of a landing page.
A catchy headline
Sales copy
Social proof
Call to action button
Step 6. Start Driving Traffic to the Lead Magnet Landing Page
Again traffic will not magically appear on your landing page. You have to find a way of diverting it into the page.
There are several ways you can accomplish this.
Social media posts
SEO content marketing
Paid ads
Social media ad campaigns
Step 7. Analyze and Adjust Accordingly
There was a reason you set specific goals for your lead funnel campaign. They are the goals you use to determine the progress of your campaign.
Your analysis should focus on issues such as.
Ad conversion rates
Landing page conversion rate
Lead to customer conversion rate
The data you receive will inform your decision on areas that require improvement to make your lead generation sales funnel.
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