4 Steps to Build a Marketing Funnel

The key to building a successful home business is getting new customers and taking them through the process from prospect or lead to purchasing your products. Some people who discover your business will take a while to buy from you, so how do you convince them to order your products?

A marketing funnel is a process or system which takes your target audience from awareness that you exist, to learning about you and what you have to offer, to buying your products or services from you.

Through each stage of the funnel, your potential customer engages a little bit more with you and your business. Your prospect list might get smaller, but the quality of your prospects improves as their interest in your business increases.

There are four core stages to your funnel, that takes prospects and makes them customers, we’ll look at each one individually:
1. Awareness: At this point, they’ve just discovered who you are. They may have heard about you through a recommendation from a friend or come across your marketing activity.
2. Interest: Once they’ve realised you exist, you need to engage them. At this point they may be looking to find out about your business, your product range and pricing. It is key that they appreciate the value you can bring.
3. Desire: At this stage, they really like your product but are still looking for reassurance that they are getting a great deal, that the quality and price points are right and that you are a trusted provider.
4. Action/Purchase: If you’ve satisfied your contact’s questions and concerns, they will make the shift between being a potential to actual customer.

At each stage, prospects will drop out of your funnel, until only the serious customers remain. The great thing about this stage, is that a number of the processes in the funnel can be automated. However, your challenge here is to build up a rapport with your prospective customer so that they trust you to deliver what they are looking for and they perceive you to be a credible supplier. At each stage, you are building your relationship by providing added value and communicating effectively with them.

How to Set Up a Marketing Funnel

The widest part at the top has the most prospective customers. It’s where everyone who first encounters your businesses enters. All your marketing activities are designed to deliver prospects to your funnel. Whether you are using strategies such as social media, having a physical shop/office or a website, sending out emails, podcasting or writing an article for a publication or blogging. When you have got their attention, you need to draw them in further so they can find out what you are about and evaluate your business. If you’re successful, the prospect moves through the funnel to the end and buys from you. There are a series of steps you can take to help move this process along:

1. Set up a shopfront (online or real) You need a place to send potential leads. For some this may a ‘bricks and mortar’ shop front, for others this might be a website, online shop or social media page.
2. Add value to keep them interested The key to building the relationship is to provide information, valuable content and resources that will be of value to your prospects, this could be case studies, content, articles, tips, webinars, videos, competitions, trial offers or limited time discounts,
3. Provide channels for them to engage with you and encourage their active participation This is the first active step that requires action from the prospect. Get them to follow, like you or reply to you on social media, sign up to an email list (make sure you follow GDPR to include the right opt ins – see our separate GDPR module if in doubt) or use a squeeze page or an email pop up to get their attention. Once they’re following you on social media or are on your email list, you can continue to deliver valuable content, that will help to support the buying process and make the decision to purchase a lot easier.
4. Make your offer. Once you’ve built a relationship through content, social media and email, you can then make the sale.
The marketing funnel is an enabler, it helps people buy from you as they have confidence in what you offer.

To summarise:

The key is to maintain the relationship after the initial purchase, to encourage repeat sales and recommendations.