Finding ways to optimize your sales funnels can help you increase conversions. When people land on your website, do they know what their next step should be? Is the path clear that they need to take to learn more? When you push users through the sales funnel in the correct order, you increase conversions.
McKinsey recently reported that focusing on both brand building and performance elements helps with ad spend ROI. By improving your funnel and other factors on your site, you could see a 15 to 20% return on marketing investment.
It might seem like common sense to optimize this portion of your business, but it’s hard to know where to start. So, here are some things Charley Grey suggests you do to improve your funnels and sales processes today.
What Are the Levels of a Sales Funnel?
The sales funnel is an automatic process your customers go through to do business with you. They can enter the funnel at any stage, but the funnel starts with awareness and moves toward decision making.
The goal is to qualify prospects and then push them through the funnel until it narrows to customers. The first stage is awareness of the product, then interest and evaluation. During the interest stage, you’ll want to educate your users about the company and the product.
Next is the desire phase. The goal of the desire phase is to tap into user psychology and figure out what drives them to buy your product. Finally, you want the user to take action and order your product or sign up for a mailing list.
How can you ramp up your efforts down the entire funnel? The more you refine the process, the more success you’ll have.
1. Know Your Audience
No matter what aspect of marketing you’re looking at, knowing who you speak to is vital. You can’t optimize your sales funnel if you don’t know what drives your users. Know your audience as well as you know yourself.
Take the time to study demographics and psychographics. If you understand the pain points driving your visitors, then you can address their fears on an emotional level and solve their problems with your product or service. Survey your customers and find out little-known facts you weren’t aware of before.
2. Celebrate Holidays
Your customers’ needs may differ based on the holiday and time of year. You can draw visitors to your site by offering relevant topics. Don’t forget often overlooked holidays, such as Valentine’s Day. You can use the lesser-known events to reconnect with your audience.
Offer a special during the decision stage or send an email offering a discount for various other holidays. But, always remember to try and tie a holiday back to your brand. This will not only further your brand awareness, but will also help people think of you in a different light.
3. Answer Questions
What are the top questions people ask about your product or service? Collect queries from customer service calls, emails, and study search phrases. Then, create content answering the most common questions. Not only will people begin to see you as the go-to authority in your industry, but you’ll also improve your ranking on search engine results pages.
The more you put out there, the more likely your target audience is to find your sales funnel.
4. Convert Visitors
Think through the result you want when someone lands on your website or visits your social media page. You may simply want the opportunity to stay in touch and send additional information about your brand. Or you may have an upcoming promotion that you want to offer people.
The best way to entice people to hand over their emails is with witty calls to action or anything free. Once you have the person opted into your mailing list, you can send them details and additional offers.
5. Focus on Appearance
Around 50% of the people who visit your website aren’t a match for the products you sell. However, you can make your sales funnel more attractive to the ones who will convert by adding images, cutting clutter, and choosing the right color palette.
Look at your design through the eyes of your user. Is it clear what the next step is? Can the user move smoothly from one part of the funnel to the next without stopping to figure out the process? Everything should be intuitive and easy to understand.
6. Utilize Engaging Elements
Once you have your user’s attention, work to keep them engaged and learning. Add product photos, videos, and other elements that pull the person in and make them want to learn more.
Furthermore, you should always be thinking about how you can answer common questions in new and interesting ways. Keep in mind people learn in different ways – Some are kinetic learners and others visual. Cover all the senses to ensure you don’t miss any groups.
7. Sprinkle in Reviews
Do you want to stand out from your competitors? Sprinkle in reviews and testimonials within your sales funnel. Imagine you are the customer and trying to decide whether to make a purchase. You still aren’t fully convinced but you see dozens of positive reviews about how the product works. Because of these reviews, you’re more likely to purchase the product or service, aren’t you?
If you feel this way, then you’re not alone. Most people check the internet for reviews before making a purchase. You can get as elaborate as you wish when adding these to your funnel, but make sure you have at least a few if you want to convert people into buyers.
Optimize Your Sales Funnel Fast
The best way to make your sales funnel more efficient is to spend time testing it. Remove anything that bogs the process down and ensure all buttons and links work as they should. If you’ve embedded a video, play the clip to make sure it doesn’t lag or cut off anywhere during the clip.
By making small changes daily until you reach your ROI you can build a successful sales funnel that works in your favor. But, if you’re busy like most business owners, and would really like some help in this department, then contact Charley Grey!
We specialize in creating customized sales funnels that save you time while generating more high-quality leads and sales for your company. To learn more about what we offer, give us a call today at (317) 659-7587. Who knows: Maybe we can even set you up with a great new website!