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The New Year is an important moment of reflection for entrepreneurs. What will we do differently this year to reach the next stage of growth? You can zoom in on social media trends, your team, or any number of other factors, but let me focus your attention on the heart of the action: the sales funnel. A sales funnel is similar to your marketing structure. it contains the structure of the customer journey that takes them from first contact to purchase.
Maybe your potential customer is lost somewhere and it's up to you to find and fix it. If you don't know where to start, here are some tips for you.
Over the past 24 years of running a business, I've overhauled my own sales funnel that averages 2,000 leads per week and generates seven-figure revenue. I share my sales funnel secrets with my clients and I want to share them with you. Here is what I discovered.
GET IN TOUCH: 3 tips that will dramatically improve your sales funnel
Discover Marketing Tactics That Warm Up Cold Leads
Imagine spending hours in sub-zero temperatures and then going straight to the sauna. Isn't it better to wrap yourself in a nice warm blanket or sit by the fire and warm yourself gently? But that's what some companies do when they first reach out to cold prospects with less than warm marketing tactics. The worst examples are sales people, cold calls, text messages, or email spam.
To get potential customers to welcome you, you need to loosen up your strategy. Consider wrapping him in a warm blanket instead of throwing him into a scorching ring of fire.
Popular entry points include radio/TV ads, cold emails, but here's why I like using direct mail the most when it comes to casting that wide net at the top of your sales funnel:
It's not that email is bad. I strongly encourage my customers to use email as a follow-up method. However, it is not the most effective form of advertising. First, cold emails can end up in spam folders. Second, they cannot be opened. Third, drown in a sea of emails from other companies doing the same. Not to mention, your prospects may be wondering how you got their email. Unless they volunteer, they are unlikely to contact you.
Direct mail, on the other hand, doesn't need to be opened (assuming it's a postcard), so recipients have to look at it, they can read it themselves whenever they want ( nobody likes to be distracted by boring emails while sending them). ). . working day) and you will also have more opportunities to stay in the hands of potential customers. According to a 2020 MarketReach study, 75% of business email stays at home longer than 4 weeks and is visited an average of five times.
But I found all of this information purely through research and from my own experience and consumer preferences. My most personal experience is that I've repeatedly tested direct mail as the first step in the sales funnel and built an $83 million business on it.
While this is my truth, you have to learn cold selling tactics yourself. I recommend constantly experimenting with direct mail and monitoring the results, then comparing it to another chosen strategy, such as Google Ads or social media.
See also: 5 tips to reach any potential customer instantly
Automating your follow-up leads to sustainable ROI.
Consistent marketing is the key to long term growth. However, it's much harder to be consistent when you or your team members are overseeing daily (or even hourly) tasks.
Automating follow-up will save you a lot of time and help you stay consistent in your communications with prospects and customers. I learned this quite early in my business when I started growing exponentially and didn't have time to do things on my own.
So, as soon as someone is interested in your business, they will go to your website for more information (which is why an amazing website is so important). Then they start deciding if you are worth their time, their money, and ultimately their actions.
If they make a purchase or contact you directly, great! Some people act fast and you're lucky to have a very hot lead that acts immediately.
Of course, most consumers won't buy right away or even call right away (to make a sale if necessary), but some potential customers are more appealing than others. A minority will be interested enough to contact you in some way, sign up for a discount on your site (hopefully you have a good lead capture offer on your site that makes it easy to conversion), send you an e-mail or even pick up the phone. and call you. these are leads that have moved a little further down the funnel. The rest of your funnel needs to monitor it regularly.
You can do this by automating emails that are sent every few days, every week, or every month. You need to find what works for your business. Personally, I follow the links I enter until someone asks me to unsubscribe due to the number of people responding to the funnel email. I also automate the follow-up of these leads by using a nicer card and setting an alarm to call them if they give me their number. There are many automation platforms that can be connected to your CRM (customer relationship management) software to make it easier for you to manage.
However, if prospects don't make their first purchase or conversion on your site, you can still drive them through the funnel and send multiple follow-up messages in a variety of formats.
Today, native cookies are among the most common tracking methods that enable digital advertising to drive impressions on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Google. This impression will then remind them to reconsider your opinion and react accordingly. It will also help drive them to your website to find more information about your products and services and bring them closer to the bottom of the sales funnel i.e. conversions.
Typically, these native cookies are created in my sales funnel after a buyer receives a postcard in the mail and visits the website.
I'll give you a quick overview of how this sales funnel finds my customers. We call this funnel campaign Small Business Everywhere.
Prospects receive a postcard encouraging them to call or visit the website.
Marketing coordinators placed digital ads on thousands of websites, including Facebook and Instagram, targeting the same people who received the cards before they shipped.
Call tracking captures all incoming phone calls so agents can monitor them and improve customer service.
Even if prospects don't initially become customers, they will continue to see digital ads in their online feed for at least three months after introduction.
The fact is, the more you present yourself to your potential customers, the more they will remember you and think about making a purchase.
MAKE CONTACT: Follow Up is the best-selling superstar weapon
Maintain your sales funnel by updating and improving it regularly.
They say, "The only thing you can count on is change." This is always truer in marketing than in any other field, as trends change faster from year to year. The marketing tactics you relied on last year to move leads to conversions might not work this year.
A sales funnel is a living, breathing structure that either stagnates or functions depending on how much money you invest in it. You can create a set-and-forget social media campaign, but it won't last forever. The best marketing strategy is the most personalized one that speaks directly to your audience and follows the latest trends.
So how do you know what needs to change? You can research new marketing strategies all day, which is probably why you're reading this right now, but the real proof of the pudding comes after A/B testing. Choose new sales funnel ideas and test them. That's how I found what worked for me, and what I still do today, with the direct mail innovation I'm working on.
By regularly reviewing your sales funnel and adjusting it based on performance, you'll see higher ROI and ultimately better relationships with your customers.