7 Bold Ideas to Boost Sales at Each Step of the Sales Funnel
Are you among the 37% of marketers who hate prospecting for their ideal customer?
Why not? Roughly 50% of your prospects are incompatible with your ideal customer profile anyways.
Worse still, roadblocks at the Top of the Funnel divert nearly 40% of your expected conversions.
Fortunately, we have 7 big, bold strategies for optimizing your Sales Journey.
And we start by flipping your sales funnel on its head. ??
In this article, we’ll reveal:
How to Build a Profitable Sales Funnel: A Complete Guide for 2023
Experienced business owners may want to skip to the 7 Bold Ideas below. To ensure we’re all on the same page, though, we’ve got to review the basics.
What is the Buyer’s Journey and How is it Evolving?
The Buyer’s Journey describes your consumers’ experience as they progress through your “sales funnel.” How do they become aware of your brand? What features do they compare against your competitors? What is it that motivates them to take action?
What is the Framework of a Buyer’s Journey?
The steps in the Buyer’s Journey include awareness, consideration, and decision. The sales funnel splits these steps into 6 stages among 3 levels. The three levels of a sales funnel are:?
The six stages of the Sales Journey are:
How to Optimize Your Sales Funnel: The Basics of CRO
If you’re new to conversion rate optimization (CRO), there are some basic starting points for any campaign. First, the components of a successful CRO campaign.
The 4 Phases of Conversion Rate Optimization
CRO experts conduct optimization campaigns in 4 phases:
1) Conversion Research, including:
2) User Experience (UX), including:
3) Compelling Copy, including:
4) A/B Testing and Personalization, including:
Create Buzz at the Top of the Funnel
To make prospects aware of your product or service, you must generate traffic to your website or online store. This can be done through search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, social media marketing, and email marketing.
Make sure that your content keeps visitors on your site. A high bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your site after only viewing one page.
Create content that addresses pain points and provides more detailed information about the product or service. Encourage customers to share user-generated content (UGC) of their firsthand experience.
Keep Your Name Circulating in the Middle of the Funnel
While customers evaluate your brand and compare you to competitors, it must be easy for them to find trust signals for your products or services. Highlight your effectiveness with social proof in the form of customer testimonials, user reviews, or case studies.?
Demonstrate your unique value with commercial blog articles. In these articles, highlight the features and benefits of your product or service and compare your product to similar products on the market. Why is yours the ideal solution?
Form Loyal Relationships at the Bottom of the Funnel
At this level, potential customers have decided to purchase and are actively looking for solutions that fit their needs. To close the sale, you must have a strong offer, a well-designed sales page, and minimal time to checkout. Why should they invest in your product or service?
Additionally, have a solid follow-up system in place to nurture your relationship with the customer — whether they complete checkout or not. After a customer has made their first purchase, you must maintain and strengthen the relationship.?
Offer exclusive benefits to customers who make purchases to show them that you value their relationship. Create shareable media that's useful to your buyers, such as blog articles, infographics, GIFs, and videos that demonstrate:?
7 Bold Ideas to Maximize CVR at Each Stage of the Buyer’s Journey
Let’s reverse-engineer your Sales Journey and start from the bottom. In fact, why stop there if we’re going bold? Why can’t we make your customers come to you?
领英推荐
In The Optimum7 Letter from last week, we discussed the value of “niche-ification.” If you offer unique value to a specific niche of qualified consumers, then, to some, you’re an exclusive club.
So let’s call this bold strategy, “The Secret Society.” And we’re not starting with the Awareness Stage; instead, why should the market be aware of you in the first place?
Bold Idea #1: Start a Secret Society for Your Most Loyal Customers
Your customer experience (CX) compels nearly 75% of your conversions. So, let’s build on that.
Facilitate loyalty among your most qualified customers with restricted access to your most valuable resources. Offer exclusive content that resolves the obscure issues that are only encountered over extended usage.?
You could also reveal the unknown “best practices” that are likely to be understood only by expert users. However, this is the “everyday” value that loyal consumers demand from you; a real Secret Society requires a private meeting place.
Host Private Webinars and Engage on an Exclusive Discord Server
Host private webinars for loyal clients regularly, make them fun, and offer incentives for appearing and participating. This is a great source of ideas for improvement and video clips of first-hand social proof.?
Similarly, you should acquire an online space for discussion among your loyal customers. Engage with them, resolve their issues, and reward them for sharing their experience with your product or service — and utilize AI to assist with heavy call volumes .
Finally, once your culture is established, you’re ready to launch your Secret Society. With clever copywriting, and participation from your clients, you can create snippets of content that tease the existence of an exclusive community.
But remember:
Bold Idea #2: Reward Temporary Membership at the Action Stage
Like Reddit’s exclusive r/lounge, your private club is so desirable that temporary membership is enough to incentivize engagement. But this isn’t something that’s handed out for any old UGC.
No, your Secret Society is only awarded to the most engaged users, for the most popular comments, or at the conclusion of a social media contest. So imagine how delighted your buyers are when they receive temporary membership as gratitude for conversion.
In the right hands, your Secret Society boosts your average order value (AOV) by providing limited access to valuable resources. You compel customers to engage more, buy more, or spend more for access to advantages that only membership confers.
Bold Idea #3: Use Your Private Club to Motivate at the Intent Stage
At the Intent Stage, your prospective clients are shopping for the best value. Discounts, special offers, and free trials only go so far — but an exclusive community of engaged experts is hard to imitate.
If your digital marketing team is doing its job at the BOFU stages for the Secret Society strategy, you have a library of UGC at your disposal. With these, you can resolve late-stage roadblocks or highlight the impressive ways that experts use your service.
Your expert buyers can demonstrate the advantages to applying your product in a variety of situations. This empowers your indecisive shoppers to imagine how their lives are improved.
Bold Idea #4: Get Social Proof for Shoppers at the Evaluation Stage
Savvy marketers know they must incentivize consumers to share their feedback, including why they finally made the decision to purchase.
Without identifying your competitors, you should compel your customers to reveal why they felt you were the ideal solution to their pain points.?
Experienced video marketers can combine these testimonials with proprietary media and stock footage to create shareable content that answers specific questions. These are perfect for consumers in the Consideration Stage who are comparing your product to competitors.
Bold Idea #5: Get Nerdy for Your Prospects at the Interest Stage
We’re just going to say it: no big, bold, CRO strategy can ignore heat mapping, data analysis, and custom development. Your strategy may not require every element, but you still can’t ignore their functions.
Because, at the Interest Stage, your prospects browse your customer experience. Understanding their behaviors, and how to capitalize on those behaviors, accelerates the Buyer’s Journey.?
But yeah, you still need the UGC. Here, and at the Awareness Stage, you must encourage buzz around your brand.?
Bold Idea #6: Be Present at the Awareness Stage
We’ve ventured backward through your sales funnel, finally arriving at the initial stage. This is the point at which your internet marketers must generate buzz around your Secret Society.
This is also when your shareable must be more fun than self-promotional; incentivize and share fun, funny UGC from your audience. Offer value, unconditionally, but make it clear that this is only the beginning.
Because rumors insist that there’s a private club for elite shoppers with access to exclusive resources. They’re the first to access new products, they have a voice in suggesting future features, and 24-hour access to a community of informed experts.?
Bold Idea #7: Be Humble at the Planning Stages
This strategy isn’t about you, it’s about your customers. They rely on you for expert solutions to their problems. So they deserve retailers and service providers who know when to invest in expert solutions to customer service problems.
That’s what conversion rate optimization is: designing the perfect customer experience for the niche that only you can serve. Collaborate with CRO experts to maximize the effectiveness of your campaign while minimizing setbacks and effort.
Design a Sales Funnel that Maximizes Revenue with Optimum7
That’s how you advertise for every stage of the Buyer’s Journey to boost conversions with minimal effort. Flip your funnel, utilize your expert buyers, and establish a desirable community.
To optimize your sales funnel & maximize your CVR, speak with our CRO experts today!
And subscribe to The Optimum7 Letter for more insider insights into the dynamic world of e-commerce development and marketing.