A Complete Guide for Beginners: Everything You Need to Know About Sales Funnel Stages

Have you ever wondered about the journey of a customer before they finally decide to make a purchase? The journey of a customer is mapped through a sales funnel that goes through many checkpoints. From engaging with the brand to conversation and commitment.

Throughout the sales process, your business sales funnel should be top-notch without any compromises. The marketers must ensure that each customer moves from one stage of the sales funnel to another without a hitch. The better experience, the higher chance of converting a lead into a customer.

If you desire your sales funnel to work perfectly, make sure to execute the strategies smartly. Without intellectual marketing, LinkedIn lead generation is not possible at all. To capture the leads, nurture and strengthen them, and converting into paying customers, the sales funnel must be managed logically.

Understanding Sales Funnel

Sales funnel is a concept that narrates the journey of a customer. The point when they were just a prospect lead to the point where they convert into a loyal paying customer. It is a step-by-step process that tells a business the position of the target lead. How close they are to becoming a regular customer of your business. Every step of the potential lead is reflected prominently to help marketers in identifying the opportunity and utilize it.

The sales funnel is called a “funnel” as it depicts the analogy of a real funnel. A large number of customers are always at the top, whereas only a few proceeds and finally, become a customer. The wide area is where there is a cluster of leads. The narrow area is where the conversion happens; a target lead becomes a client.

For instance, a customer seems interested in purchasing some pants. They are at the first stage. They will shuffle through the rack and check the ones that attract them the most. This is the second stage of the funnel. The customer may pick 2 to 4 pants and try them out. Here is the third and second last stage of the sales funnel. If everything goes right, that customer will purchase one or two pairs of pants as per need. Finally, a potential client turned into a paying customer.

Is Sales Funnel Important?

This is one of the most common questions marketers ask! Especially for the LinkedIn platform where they seek LinkedIn automation tools.

Every business owner and marketer knows the pain of losing a potential lead and missing the opportunity for sales. Even after adding interactive content, webinars, lead magnets, and much more, many targets lead simply drop out without purchasing.

In such a situation, the sales funnel can help. The sales funnel is a path that illustrates your prospective leads’ journey. It helps in identifying where a lead becomes a customer. And what conditions cause loss of lead and restrain them from becoming a customer.

The sales funnel will help the business in understanding what a potential lead is thinking, looking at, and imagining. This will help later in providing customized or personalized solutions, that can convert such leads into customers.

Without understanding the sales funnel, it is impossible to optimize it. Without an optimized funnel, the chances of converting the majority of the target lead into paying customers are minimal.

How Does the Sales Funnel Work?

Let us understand how a customer goes from being a visitor into a prospect leading to a customer. It will help in better understanding and gaining more knowledge on the sales funnel.

For example, a random visitor with some requirements lands on your website or LinkedIn profile. As soon as they start browsing, they will convert into a prospect with a possibility. They may check some blogs or web pages on the website. Or will read your LinkedIn profile which is already optimized with complete details.

On the website, they may fill out a contact form or use a CTA. On the other hand, on LinkedIn, they send you a message. It is where a random customer becomes a lead. When you revert back to them with an email or message with offerings, the lead will start getting educated and become a prospect lead.

At this point, if you offer a coupon or other incentive, they will become more curious to know. A better chance to mature and nurture the lead.

From the point of inception, the sales funnel is narrowing down. When the potential lead reverts back to you via email or message and shows interest in your offering, it becomes a celebration. Voila, a random visit nurtured into being a paying customer. The sales funnel for this customer ends and you managed to sell.

Different Sales Funnel Stages

There are four different sales funnel stages every customer goes through. However, at each stage, the business needs to approach the prospect with a different strategy. At any point in time, if you send a wrong message to your prospect, there are higher chances of losing them forever.

Thus, the sales funnel stages help in understanding and evaluating the needs and requirements of the customer at each stage. Since there is always a difference in the buyer’s persona, niche type, and products, the journey of the prospect to prospect may be different. Manage it accordingly!

Since there are four stages, the easiest way to remember them is AIDA. It is:

• Awareness
• Interest
• Decision
• Action

These four sales funnel stages represent the mindset of your prospective customer. Let us evaluate each stage in more detail.

Awareness

It is the first stage of the sales funnel where people become aware of your brand’s solutions, products, and services for the first time. They will also become aware of the existing ways to fulfill their needs and possible ways to deal with them. The awareness stage is where your business will make the first impression on its prospect. So, make sure it is prominent and intriguing.

Being the first sales funnel stage, the number of people involved is also large. Random people learn about you either from LinkedIn, Google search, a post on Facebook, word of mouth, or paid traffic. They will educate themselves by researching you and your offerings.

If everything is perfect, 1% of the visitors become directly paid customers. This happens only when the potential lead has already researched you and comes on board with a plan to make purchases instantly.

Interest

This is the point where a prospect starts researching your business. They start comparisons and weigh their options. Since they come from the first stage i.e., awareness, it is never smart to push your product with a salesy tone.

Initially, start building a relationship with them with information that can help them. As soon as a prospect enters the interest stage, they start actively looking for solutions to their existing problems. They will show interest in your brand’s offerings.

At this point, to ignite their interest to the next level, marketers must make sure to write incredible content. Each part of the page must deliver the information your prospect is looking for. The better the content, the higher chances to move them to the next stage.

The motive of this stage is to help the prospects in making an informed decision. Never deceive your potential customer with fake promises.

Decision

It is time to convince your prospect and convert them into potential leads!

When a prospect enters this stage, they are already aware of your brand interest. They simply look for areas that can persuade them to become a customer. Even though it looks like an easy stage but this is the hardest sales funnel stage. At this point, many prospects leave due to a lack of information.

At the decision stage, your prospect will start looking for more information such as your pricing, shipment charges, terms of plans, etc. They will compare it with other competitors and weigh which offers better value for money.

The prospect here has the urge to purchase with a decision that is not 100%. A slight mistake and the prospect lead will be lost. Businesses can include some sort of incentives and rewards to attract them and lure them to the final stage. Offerings such as:

• Free consultation
• eBook offers
• Free trial
• Webinars
• Promotional offers like free shipping, discounts, bonuses
• Testimonials and reviews by authentic customers

Action

Always remember, at the bottom of the sales funnel stage, the customer acts. They gained awareness, showed interest, made a decision, and now it’s time to implement it. As soon as they make a purchase from you, they enter your business’s ecosystem.

Many marketers and businesses believe that after the purchase is made, the work is done. The customer did reach the bottom of the sales funnel stage. But shouldn’t they return back for repurchases? This is where the work of retention comes that leads to additional purchases, future suggestions, and repurchases.

However, if the customer doesn’t buy from you, don’t think you lost them. You can create a nurturing campaign later to make sure your brand stays top in their mind.

Crucial Part of Sales Funnel Stage — Customer Retention

The overall experience your customer had from being a prospect to the buyer determines their next move. Either they will become a loyal customer or it was just a one-time thing. There is no denying that product quality as being the determinant for gaining loyalty. But the service and experience also narrate their trust which translates into remaining loyal.

When a customer comes on board, it is the responsibility of the business to do everything to retain them. Provide them with such quality services that they become your brand’s advocate. There is nothing more powerful than the word of mouth with positivity.

Brands can provide tailored services to keep them engaged. It will help in retaining them and staying in their mind. Send your customers promotional offers, product usage guides, eBooks, customer feedback forms, etc.

Being an important part of the sales funnel stage, retention leads to becoming the market leader with dominance. For this, businesses need to stay focused on providing their customers with a seamless journey. They must invest in optimizing their content, website, and the soft skills of service providers.

Utilizing the Power of Content in Each Sales Funnel Stage

It is essential to know what type of content is necessary at which sales funnel stage. Without proper information, it is difficult to take your prospect to the final stage of the funnel.

Only the right content is going to provide you with the action your brand desires. The right type of content at the right time is necessary for the success of the sales funnel. Tailored and customized content helps your target audience to associate with your brand.

Choose an effective and efficient type of content only to reach out to your prospects at the awareness, interest, desire, and action stages. Optimize your brand persona accordingly to retain and convert prospects into customers.

Create optimized meta decryptions with terms like: how do I, what, where, hacks, tutorials, the best way to, should I, etc.

Curate interesting content through eBooks, different guides, checklists, templates, PowerPoint presentations, tip sheets, etc.

Build Your Sales Funnel Swiftly with Prominence

Businesses once understand the sales funnel stages have an urge to work on it fast. They want to implement the process at the earliest with a desire to get prominent results. But they are always worried to take the first step. Let’s resolve the apprehensions once and for all. There are five steps businesses need to follow religiously to build their sales funnel perfectly.

Step # 1: Analyze the Behavior of Your Audience

It is vital to know your audience. As the more you know them, the better you can optimize the sales funnel. Without understanding them, it is difficult to provide them with the solution they need.

Use different applications to track user behavior and monitor their activity on your website. Google Analytics can help in tracking where your prospect clicks, how they are scrolling through the site, and on what page they are spending more time on. With such data, businesses can easily refine their brand’s presence in contrast to buyers’ persona.

Step # 2: Capture Attention of the Audience

Once you have analyzed the behavior of your audience, it’s time to capture their attention. The normal attention span of a person is just 10 to 20 seconds. In such a small time your content needs to be on point. It must be compelling enough to capture the attention of your target audience.

Choose the organic pathway and post tons of unique content across every platform possible. Diversify your brand’s content portfolio with infographics, informative videos, and other interesting work.

With time, run paid advertisements to gain inorganic traffic. Choose platforms smartly to run these paid ads. B2B lead generation tools work great at LinkedIn.

Step # 3: Build a Captivating Landing Page

Run ads that have content with the ability to excite your prospects. Ideally, different landing pages have golden offers that keep the attention of your prospect for much time. However, it is not a sane idea to push sales at this point. At this sales funnel stage, capture more leads that you can nurture later. The more leads in the sales funnel, the better chances of paying customers.

Your landing page should keep the visitor excited, invoking a feeling of becoming a customer. Use highlighted call-to-action buttons with interesting offers like free eBooks or some unique downloadable material.

Step # 4: Email Drip Campaign

You can also market your leads via email. Provide them with entertaining content to keep them reading your email. Go for it regularly but not frequently. The ideal capacity is twice a week.

If you desire to increase your brand’s reach, educate your target audience first. Tell them about yourself and how you are different from others? How your brand can solve their pain points with convenience. End your drip campaign by providing an irresistible offer. For instance, reduced prices or coupons.

Step # 5: Stay in Touch

As mentioned above, customer retention is essential to building your sales funnel brilliantly. Therefore, never forget about your existing customers at all. Continue reaching out to them with new offers. Thank them for being loyal and appreciate their presence. Show them their value for your brand and what they mean to you.

The more your existing customer feels appreciated, the better your chances of them retaining and availing of new offers.

Final Verdict

It takes patience and hard work to build a fascinating sales funnel. However, it is essential to survive in the competitive market. Without generating and nurturing powerful leads, the sales of any business are not possible.

With these sales funnel stages, your brand can get the recognition it deserves. Just don’t forget that random and prospective customers should always be on top of the funnel while established customers who hold some potential must be at the bottom.