Whether you’re selling products or services, adding a well-structured sales funnel is key to building a robust sales strategy and taking your business to the next level.

The question is not whether to have a sales funnel or not — it’s how to build one properly that fits your business and speaks to your audience.

In this article, I’ll explain what a sales funnel is and provide a step-by-step guide to build a sales funnel in 2023.

What Is A Sales Funnel?

A sales funnel is a series of stages that turns your prospects into paying customers. So, a sales funnel depicts the journey that your prospects take to become a customer.

There are multiple stages of a sales funnel, usually referred to as top, middle or bottom funnel. The way that a sales funnel works is that you get a large amount of prospects to your funnel and as they go through your funnel, some of them drop off, get unqualified…so, only a fraction of your initial prospects make it to the bottom of your funnel which is the purchase stage.

Why You Should Have A Sales Funnel:

Now that you know what a sales funnel is, let me list here the benefits of having one, so your prospects turn into leads and then finally paying customers:

1. Generate New Leads:

Building a strategic sales funnel that is tailored to your business is one of the most effective ways of generating new leads that will potentially become your paying customers.

If you provide the right content that is resonating with the right audience, showing how you can resolve their pain points, you’ll hook them into your funnel and turn them into leads. And those leads will become your most valuable assets of your business later in the funnel.

2. Qualify Leads:

It’s normal that not all of your prospects and leads coming your way are qualified for your business. So, the best thing to do is to qualify the right ones and focus on them. And, that’s where a sales funnel shows its power. You can use your sales funnel to filter out the unqualified leads and continue your focus on the right ones. This will help you save time and money in your whole business.

3. Nurture Leads & Build Relationships:

After generating leads, the next step should be to nurture them by feeding the most valuable content that touches their pain points. All the content that you use to nurture and educate your leads should be clustered around the solution you can offer them. So, they start trusting you and connecting with your brand closely. You’ll later reap the benefits of building this relationship with your leads.

4. Track Customer Behavior:

Another great benefit of having a well-structured sales funnel is that you can track what actions your customers are taking and at what stage they drop off. By tracking so, you’ll be able to spot your leaks in the funnel and know where you need optimization in your full customer journey.

What are the sales funnel stages?

Here are the 4 funnel stages your prospects go through:

1. Awareness
2. Interest
3. Desire
4. Action

Here’s quick summary of what each stage means:

1. Awareness: This is the stage where your prospect, ideal customer barely knows your brand and what products/services you offer. In this stage, you try to grab their attention via Facebook Ads, Google Ads and various other ways, so they come and check out your landing page. The key to get their attention is to use a hook that resonates with them, which can be a headline, ad creative or the intro section of your ad copy.
   
2. Interest: In this stage, you give your prospect valuable content and have them consume your content to create interest.
   
3. Desire: So far, your prospect has learned about your brand, your products/services and shown interest by consuming your content. Now is the time to touch their emotions by telling inspiring stories, benefits that would be expecting them—so they feel the desire to get your product or service.
   
4. Action: This is the final and most important stage of the funnel where you will be asking your leads for their business. Since the heavy-lifting has been done in the previous stages and they’re all warmed up and emotionally connected to your brand, it should be easier now to sell your products/services. One of the methods to do so is to offer them an incentive (discount, special bonus….).

How to build a sales funnel (Step – by – Step)

A smart, strategic sales funnel takes your prospects from the awareness stage where they barely know your company all the way down to the action stage where they are ready to buy from you.

Now, are you ready to create your own sales funnel for your business? Follow these steps below:

Step 1: Create your ideal customer Avatar:

The very first step to start selling your products/services is to know WHO your ideal customer really is. Only then will you be able to speak to their needs and wants which would lead them to having business with you.

You should be able to define your customer avatar by answering the following:

1. Who is your ideal customer? (age, gender, income, job, hobbies…)
2. What are their current challenges?
3. What are their current pain points?
4. What are their goals and aspirations?

Step 2: Create An Appealing Value-Based Offer:

In today’s digital world, your prospects will not usually buy from you unless they trust your brand. And in order to gain their trust and ask them to take your offer, first you need to give them some valuable content that helps them solve some part of their current problem. This is usually a free guide or any other form of gated content that you offer in exchange for their email address.

Step 3: Create A Landing Page:

The next step is to create a landing page that includes messaging around what you’re offering a valuable content and how that piece of content can help them solve their problem or answer their questions for a specific challenge they’re facing.

On this landing page, you should have a form that your prospects will need to fill out in order to access your valuable content. And ideally, you should integrate your landing page form with your email & CRM platform, so that each lead enters into the email platform automatically when they fill out the form.

Step 4: Create Your Messaging Right:

Make sure your messaging on the landing page is resonating with your ideal audience. It reflects the exact pain points that they are facing and the solutions they are hoping to find.

Step 5: Create An Email Drip Campaign:

As having collected the email addresses from your leads, the next step is to educate and nurture them via email. You should be implementing an email sequence that introduces your company, tells your inspiring success stories, how your products/services can help, and what results you can deliver for them. Make sure that the tone of voice is right and the content is engaging for your audience.

Step 6: Offer Your Products/Services:

This is the bottom of your funnel where you finally get to introduce your offer to your leads who have been nurtured, educated and fully warmed up. By the time they get to this stage, they’ve consumed your content, engaged with your emails, and have started trusting your brand, so they are now ready to buy what you’re offering.

Depending on your business and products or services you’re selling, you can try to invite them for a consultation call, invite them to a free webinar, start a free trial, or offer time-sensitive discounts to turn these highly-engaged leads into customers.

Conclusion:

Sales funnels help you streamline your sales and marketing efforts by attracting new leads and guide through their customer journey to eventually turn them into customers. If you have a sales funnel that is created with you ideal customers’ needs and wants in mind, you’ll get better conversions than ever before and also know what to optimize in your customer journey.

If you need help with creating your sales funnel or optimizing an existing one, I’m here to help—contact me today for a free consultation.