The sales funnel is the path that a customer takes from the first interaction with a brand to the purchase of a product or service. In the classic version , it consists of four stages:
The name "funnel" is not accidental here. It is assumed that if you graphically depict the number of people who turned out to be at each next stage, you will get an inverted pyramid. Let's say a thousand people saw the advertisement, followed the link — 500, were interested in the product or service — 100, and paid for them — 10. The figures may be different, but the trend itself is quite expected: the further away, the less.
Depending on how efficiently the process is built at all stages, the funnel can end in a dead end or expand at the bottom and practically turn into a sales pipe.
It may seem that knowledge about the sales funnel is optional. In any case, the business will guide customers along this path, it is intuitive. But understanding the mechanism allows you to:
Therefore, it is important to calculate the conversion rate of each stage. This is done according to the following formula:
Indicator of the current stage / indicator of the previous stage * 100.
Let's say 10 thousand people saw the ad, and 100 clicked on it. The conversion rate will be 1%. Is it a lot or a little? It depends on many factors, so each brand will have to solve it independently.
To better understand how this happens, let's look at examples. Let's say there are two businesses. One ordered a marketing campaign for 10 thousand rubles, the second — for a hundred thousand. The first ad was viewed by 10 thousand people, 2 thousand went to the site, 700 customers made a purchase. The announcement of the second was seen by 5 thousand people, but only 20 came to the store, and five bought the goods. It seems that the second one is clearly a loser. Advertising cost him more, and purchases are much less. If we evaluate all the stages, then its conversion rate is only 0.1%, whereas the first one has 7%. But the situation will look different if it turns out that one company sells printed T‑shirts for a thousand rubles, and the second — expensive cars. Because the revenue of 700 thousand is much less than the multimillion-dollar profits.
It's more about finding weaknesses in your own processes and improving your performance compared to yourself. Imagine: potential customers responded well to the advertisement, and many went to the site. But only a few made purchases. This means that something is wrong at the stage when a person should have a desire to pay for the goods. The analysis will help to understand what exactly.
A lot will depend on the specific business. But there are also several universal tips that can be applied at different stages.
It so happens that there seems to be advertising, but customers do not have much interest. This is a reason to reconsider the campaign.
A person will not be attracted by advertising if it does not get into it. Therefore, it is necessary to study the target audience and its needs. This will allow you to target ads more accurately. It often makes sense to segment potential customers in order to act more effectively.
Let's say a company sells sticks for Nordic walking. This sport is available to people of different ages and training. Elderly people can sell it and, accordingly, equipment for it, focusing on the naturalness of movements, low load on joints and safety. But it will be more difficult to attract younger and healthier people with the same offer. But a story about the possibility of burning more calories can work M. Tschentscher, D. Niederseer, J. Niebauer. Health Benefits of Nordic Walking A Systematic Review / American Journal of Preventive Medicine compared to other cardio loads.
The better you know those to whom you want to sell a product or service, the easier it will be to interest them through a good unique trade offer (USP).This is what motivates the customer to contact you, distinguishes you from competitors, describes the benefits of the buyer. A high-quality UTP tells him: I will satisfy your need, I will close your pain. If the ad does not work, although it is tuned to the right audience, it may not contain these promises or they are not clearly formulated.
For example, the phrase "These headphones last a week without recharging" will surely be more effective than "The right headphones for the right music." The second thesis does not give any specifics, but only makes the copywriter suspect of snobbery. But the first one closes the understandable pain for many: there is no strength to constantly charge gadgets.
At this stage, there are even more options for steps, since each business has many nuances. But, perhaps, the most important thing here is to provide the buyer with a simple interaction with you and make sure that his expectation and reality coincide.
For example, a person clicked on an advertisement and went to the site. If he doesn't find what the banner or video promised him there, he will leave. Here the situation is like with sales: the buyer is attracted by the ad "everything from 99 rubles". And in the store, he discovers that only a handkerchief costs so much, the rest is significantly more expensive, and feels cheated. Therefore, it is important that the advertising message is truthful.
As for the ease of interaction, you will have to study this process to find errors. Maybe the site is not intuitive and the person just can't find anything. Or managers do not work out requests for a callback well. Or something else is happening that is noticeable only from the inside. In any case, this is an important stage, since the client has already come warmed up, so it makes sense to pay great attention to failures.
It would seem that if a customer wanted to purchase a product or service, what could prevent him? In fact, a lot of things. For example, a person has objections, but the manager does not know how to deal with them. Or an inconvenient site is working against you again. Or the conditions for the return of the goods are not prescribed, and the buyer is afraid. After all, he could put the goods in the basket and distract himself, and you don't have the function to remind him that he is one step away from a deal.
Therefore, it is important to make sure that the path from desire to purchase is simple and understandable.
