A marketing funnel is the process of converting potential customers into repeat customers. Sounds easy enough, right? Wrong. We will walk you through the marketing funnel process to help you better understand how to get, and keep, new clients.
Step One
Just think about the steps you take before you commit to a new product or service. If you’re like us, you probably do a little research – maybe do some Googling, price compare, even check out some reviews. Some of you may base your purchase strictly on price, others may put more weight on customer service. Because we’re all a little different in how we make decisions, the marketing funnel gets tricky here.
The message you convey to potential customers is step one of your sales process. Whether it’s in person, on the phone, or through your website or blog, first impressions matter. This is where your prospecting begins. Having a clear vision of who you’re marketing to and why your product or service is better than the rest will help you put together an effective message to your prospects.
At this stage, what you should be doing is encouraging people to subscribe to your newsletters and follow your social media pages. Why? Because this gives you 100% control over the image of your company you would like to portray. It gives you an opportunity to not only stay in constant contact with prospective customers, but allows you to track your interactions and, if needed, make changes to your marketing plan.
Step Two
Converting sales requires you to convince consumers to make an investment in you. This requires trust on their part. They not only need to believe in your product or service – they need to believe in your company. Delivering a consistent message in step one makes this conversion much easier.
We like to refer to step two of the marketing funnel as the WHY phase. You’ve done your tracking, you can see visits on your site and time spent investigating whatever it may be that you’re selling. But…no sale. WHY? This could be for any number of reasons – maybe they found something similar for less money, maybe they weren’t really ready to buy anything, or maybe you just didn’t have a convincing message.
Step two allows you to reach out to these prospects. Follow up with a call or email and simply ask WHY. Opening the line of communication at this point is crucial. It allows the potential client to see that they are important to you and allows you to have another chance to sell to them. This may take multiple attempts with the same person and it may not work at all. This is where you now know a new strategy should be implemented.
Step Three
So, here we are. You have a successful marketing message, you’ve converted the prospective sale to a sale. Now what? Creating a lifelong client is the ultimate goal. In order to do that quite a few things must happen. The client must be satisfied with their purchase, they must have a need for your product or services in the future, and they must trust your company. How you control all of that is probably the easiest part of the marketing funnel. Track it. Knowing who bought what and why is Retention 101. Stay in touch with previous clients. See what their needs are now, and learn about what they will want in the future. This allows you to, once again, adjust your marketing strategy to target existing clients, have them continue to do business with you, and will present opportunities for you to upsell.
If you feel your current strategy needs to be tweaked, contact Debra Lopez Public Relations.