Sales funnels are a crucial component of any successful marketing campaign but are also something that beginner marketers tend to struggle with. To help you out, we’ll be showing you our sales funnel example, strategy, and tips that will push you in the right direction.
We’re also going to be showing you what the bottom of a sales funnel should look like if you want to maximize your campaign’s abilities. So, let’s jump right in.
What is a Sales Funnel?
Let’s start with at the very beginning and ask, what is a sales funnel? Simply, the sales funnel is the journey that cold traffic takes in order to become a satisfied customer.
These people go from having never heard of you all the way to being a happy customer who converts and will give you a referral (or at least, we hope they will).
A sales funnel doesn’t have to be strict either. Some people can skip certain stages or go straight from being a cold customer to a paying customer. However, we can’t rely on this, and creating a sales funnel will give you more reliable results.
Sales Funnel Example - What KonvertLab Does
We developed our own funnel based on our own experiences running online marketing campaigns, and it involves five equally important stages. This is the sales funnel strategy that we use for our own clients so rest assured that this is the right strategy to follow.
Stage #1 - Traffic & Awareness
The first stage in our sales funnel example is traffic and awareness and it’s at the top of the funnel. You have probably already heard of this as the awareness stage, and it involves getting visitors to check out your website/store.
This can be done in various ways. You could get visitors from paid traffic using Facebook Ads, Google Ads, or LinkedIn Ads. Or if you’re trying to be conservative with your budget, you could get traffic organically by publishing blog posts or sharing your content on social media.
Interim Stage - Retargeting & Follow-Ups
This interim stage is retargeting and follow-ups, and this is a unique stage because you should be doing it in between every stage.
Think about it. As you progress through your funnel people are going to fall off along the way. You could give up on them. However, it’s your job to reengage and get them back onboard, pushing them towards the next stage in the sales funnel. This can be achieved with cold emailing or personalized outreach where you encourage them to go to the next stage.
Doing this is what makes our sales funnel example so successful – it helps increase your conversion rate. On the other hand, if you neglect this interim stage, your funnel will be weaker.
Stage #2 - Leads & Opt-Ins
Now we’re onto the second stage of the funnel, the leads and opt-in stage. Ideally for this stage you will have done retargeting, but it also works if the customer becomes a lead or opted-in from the first stage.
This could be someone who opted in for your eBook, someone who signed up for a cheat sheet, or basically just anyone who has shown interest in your brand.
One of the exciting things about this stage is that you actually get to see real emails and opt-ins coming in from people who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer. Even if it’s just a micro commitment, it still shows that those people are interested enough to hand over their information.
What makes this stage even more exciting is that you get to dive into the crucial question of, “Okay, how do I take someone that’s a lead that has came from relevant traffic all the way down to a sale?”.
Stage #3 - Tripwire Event
The answer to that last question is also the third stage: a tripwire event. A tripwire event is the first conversion or commitment that you get from someone. Now, at this point, you’ll have a list of emails from your leads and opt-ins.
However, just because they gave you their email for a free eBook or guide, that doesn’t mean they’re ready to jump on a call. So, what you would do here is more retargeting to push them towards a tripwire event. You wouldn’t (and can’t, really) rely on them to convert into a call themselves. This means you have to push them along the funnel.
You might be thinking, “Well do I really have to keep pushing them along the funnel, surely the funnel is designed to do this for me?”. The problem here is that people get distracted and if you don’t constantly remind them that you exist, they’ll forget about you no matter how close they were to converting.
So, you need to be on top of your retargeting game if you’re using this sales funnel example to increase your conversions. You’re so close to the selling stage so it really is worth putting in the extra effort here.
Stage #4 - Purchase
Here we are, the sales stage – seems easy enough right? Making a sale or getting a new client is a great feeling and nothing beats getting more money in your hand. Realistically though, it’s a tough journey even if you have the best sales funnel strategy.
As you’re progressing through the funnel you’ll run into some challenges, and you’ll notice that some people skip certain stages (maybe some of your audience went straight to the tripwire event). Maybe you had to retarget 4 or 5 times to refine your targeting strategy.
Regardless of what your journey looked like, you’re now ready to start targeting your audience with ads specifically to convert them into sales. Feels great, right? You’re at the end of the funnel and all the stress was worth it. Ready to put up your feet? Well, before you do that, there’s actually another stage of the funnel that most people completely forget about.
How Important is Retargeting?
Many sales funnel examples will undervalue retargeting but it’s a key part of the success our agency has. It’s not just retargeting either, this also includes following up after they booked a tripwire event. All you have to do is send them a personalized email and offer some value to help tilt the scales in your favor.
They made it this far in the funnel so you know that they’re interested. All they need is an extra nudge to push them over the edge and become a customer. That’s what your job is here, and you can do it through further retargeting.
One tactic is to retarget them with customer testimonials (preferably video testimonials), in-depth case studies, and breakdowns about how you got previous customers from A to B. Essentially, you’re gloating about yourself and how great of a product/service you have to offer. This will increase the confidence they have in you and make them comfortable enough to hand over their credit card details.
Stage #5 - Leverage Success
As we were saying, most people will think that their job is done now. They’ve managed to get the customers, payments are being made, and everything looks good. It might even be time to take a few days off and mentally reset. We’re not quite there yet.
The final stage of our sales funnel example is the leverage success stage, and this will help you to optimize your conversion rate for future campaigns that you run.
As long as you went above and beyond and provided a genuinely impressive product/service, your customers should have no problem with recording a video testimonial, getting you referrals, allowing you to create a case study around the work you did for them, or even just writing a basic review.
This type of content will actually improve your overall sales funnel’s conversion rate because it makes it easier to move people between stages.
Now, if you’re struggling to get customers to engage this way, you have to work on your delivery. If customers are happy, they rarely refuse this gesture, so going above and beyond is really worth it when it comes to this. Not only will this keep your customers happy but it will put you in a prime position to upsell to those customers.
The Importance of a Good Sales Funnel
A sales funnel should be a core feature of your marketing strategy. This is just one example but some quick research and you’ll find an abundance of sales funnel examples out there. The funnel we’ve outlined above is the one which we use for our clients and we could also use it to further your business goals too.
KonvertLab has years of experience running Facebook Ads, Google Ads, and LinkedIn Ads, all of which require a well-thought-out sales funnel. Hop on a call with us (just click the button below) and we can brainstorm some ideas to come up with a sales funnel strategy that works for your business.
