Building Digital Marketing Sales Funnel Template for the Year 2017

Sales funnel, a concept that a sale starts with a huge number of potential
customers and ends up with a few conversions. It is a visual representation
of the steps involved in your sales process that identifies prospects,
leads, potential customers and final customers with an objective to guide
your customers through the buying process.

It filters out your leads and let you identify satisfied customers who are
willing to make a purchase decision. Marketing sales funnel not only give
you potential customers but also has benefits like,

• It defines the sales volume.
• Identifies the cracks in the conversion process where you could
  make improvements.
• Increases the sales conversion rates.

Here how it works,

What is a digital marketing sales funnel?

With the change in technology, marketers are now selling everything online.
A digital marketing funnel is the journey of the buyer from getting
familiar with the product or service to the final stage of the buying
process where the customer buys your product or service. For example,

Think about the Walmart purchase funnel. Here how it works,

• A customer visits the site.
• Views the products.
• Adds the product to the cart. The popup window shows up other
  products relevant to your interest (Here, marketers put in
  additional products to attract and trigger customers’ attention so
  they could add more products to their cart).
• The last is the checkout process where a customer pays for the
  product and checks out of the purchasing process.

No matter what type of business you are running, either you are a digital
marketer, an e-commerce store, a startup or any else, sales funnel is for
all. Just not to make you confuse, let me introduce you to the other names
of the sales funnel which are,

• Sales Cycle
• Conversion Cycle
• Marketing Funnel
• Sales Process
• Marketing Pipeline
• Sales Pipeline

So, now you must be having a clear idea that every business has some sales
process that may vary in names but are same for all.

Who is your audience?

Before you start selling, you need to identify who are your customers, what
are their interests and what are they going to buy.

Steps for a Digital Marketing Sales Funnel

Sales funnel, a journey of leads to potential customers and to becoming
final customers.

First Step- Creating Awareness

The first phase of the sales funnel is the awareness stage where your
customers are becoming aware of your products or services. Here, digital
marketing comes into play because the customers are attracted by the
marketing efforts, paid advertising and search engine optimisation.

Marketers are putting in their efforts to bring up their offerings
in the top ranking for which they have been using a different medium such
as:

Paid Advertising:

Digital Marketers follow paid advertising to drive traffic to their site,
their landing page to convert their leads into potential customers.
Moreover, marketers also use social media channels and email marketing
tools to promote their brands.

Blogs Posts:

Blogs Posts build indexed pages on your site, creates awareness and gives
an opportunity to show up in the search engines. It helps you in
strengthening your social media presence because your blog gets maximum
shares on such channels giving you an exposure to a wider audience.

What Kind Of Content Should You Create?

The content you create depends on the needs of your audience, and each
stage of the buying process has different content based on the customer’s
interests and actions, and it is pretty obvious that customers get
attracted to products that elicit their needs. Relevant content more
precisely is the dynamic content and it leaves a positive effect than a
standard content, one of the marketing tactic the marketers are using these
days.

Steps To Create Relevant Content:

Digital marketers create precise forms where they collect few pieces of
information like,

• Contact information
• Demographics
• Interest and browsing activity

With such information and recommendation system, you can look up for
customers’ interests and show up content and offerings relevant to them.

Second Step- Information Search

In the second phase of the sales funnel, the customer looks for a product
that satisfies his needs, checks and explores for alternative products. It
is more of a surveying step of your site.

Third Step- Showing Interest

Moving to the third stage which develops the interest of the visitor where
he is looking to fulfil the needs for which he has landed in your funnel.

When the customer engages with our offerings, they are likely going to fill
out the lead forms to get associated with your site. Here, they will
probably going to consider the alternatives, the value of the offerings and
how well do they fulfil their needs.

How to Develop User’s Interest?

The customer has landed on your site through your paid advertising, lead
magnets, and call to action buttons, don’t let him switch. You have already
collected relevant information of your customers so show them products
related to their interest.

With an approach of dynamic content, you can change content for the type of
customers. Just like, when a visitor visits Amazon.com and looks for some
products. The next time when he comes to the site, he will see relevant
products to his choice.

Fourth Step- Decision Making

The final stage is the decision making stage where the customer has ended
up buying the product. It starts with identifying a need, deciding the best
product after considering alternatives and getting the best thing for
yourself.

How Digital Marketers Create Awareness?

Digital Marketers have creative minds that look for a fresh and innovative
way to stand out in today’s increasingly competitive world.

Three questions that the digital marketers ask themselves:

• What will activate the interest of the audience?
• Are the offerings relevant to the need of the customers?
• Do your products offer value to your customers?

How to Check the Highest Possibility of Purchases?

The middle part is likely to turn leads into potential customers whereas
the lowest part of the sales funnel has the highest possibility of a
purchase decision.

Post Purchase Behaviour:

It is a misunderstanding that the digital marketing sales funnel ends with
the acquisition decision. The digital marketing specialists are equally
concerned about the post-purchase behaviour just as acquiring leads. You are
surely going to retain a lead if they are treated well and moreover if the
post-sale experience turns out to be good.

Tip: Avoid disappointing your customers, make them feel that they have made
the right choice as negative feedback and refund requests lower your
brand’s integrity.

In A Nutshell,

Creating marketing sales funnel will help you promote your offerings in a
systematic way where you can track your customer’s journey from the initial
step to the last step. Building up a sales funnel will let you analyse the
steps you are doing well in and the steps you need to improve. The
companies that make a strategic approach to marketing and sales practices
are more agile, efficient, productive and achieve growth in a short span of
time.

The heart of every marketing strategy is where the customers stick at, if
you know your customers well, you can easily create relevant content and
strengthen your online presence.

Author Bio:

Loius Martin is a Marketing Manager who brings his skills and experience in
the marketing campaigns he does for his company. He has a team of
professional logo designers, marketing executives and bloggers who always come up with new ideas to promote the brand. Apart from the marketing activities, he writes guest blogs to share his knowledge with others, follow him at @loiusmartin1.