This article aims to clarify for those who have a business, but are not marketing technicians, the concept of sales funnel and its application in marketing (not just web).
It's one of those topics we've all heard about, but often without having looked into why it's necessary.
But let's start from the basics
Funnel means "funnel" in English (how the hell these Anglo-Saxons always manage to find the right image to represent processes) and metaphorically represents the progressive decrease in the number of people who actually become customers starting from a potential audience (thus avoiding old-fashioned selling ).
We talk about a sales funnel when you carry out marketing campaigns on groups of people who have never heard of your company to ensure that some (those who show interest) become your customers over time .
The key elements of a sales funnel are therefore:
The correct creation of starting audiences
The progressive accompaniment towards the purchase with the right (web) marketing campaigns with retargeting and then remarketing
Path length : How long does it take someone to become your customer?
All over the web you will find different definitions and names for the various “stages” of a funnel.
A funnel is not a ready-to-use recipe , at most a strategic thinking method: so be wary of anyone who wants to sell you their funnel (it even sounds bad!).
We use the Connection Funnel®, for example, which codes the paths as: problem discovery, reference, information acquisition, purchase, satisfaction/dissatisfaction. Often you find attract, engage, convert, retain (or delight)... or other labels.
But what does it mean?
Yes, the question arises spontaneously, but why should you create a sales funnel? And when is it necessary?
When you need it
Let's start from when a structured sales path is needed: in all those cases in which the customer's purchasing process presents complexities in choosing your product (or service).
So you need to ask yourself whether your customer needs more information to decide what to buy or whether they already have the knowledge necessary to make a decision when they come across your ad.
When you don't need it
If the purchasing path is short , if your product is needed at specific times, if you refer to primary needs, well... you don't need the funnel .
What happens if you don't?
I'll answer your (mine :-)) question now: why do it?
Because otherwise you don't sell!
And I don’t say this to bash you. I mean it! My team and I have been doing this since 2008, and there have been times when sales funnels were not needed, or you could have done without them.
It was enough (if I may say so) to create campaigns in Google Ads and we found clients from all over Italy for us and our clients. Really.
At some point, all of this stopped working. Now there are so many competitors, sub-categories of the service, free information and free services that we can even pay €9 for a click (because in our sector these are the prices) to find ourselves at the end of the day with an empty wallet and without even a phone call.
Why? Because especially in Italy it is difficult to immediately gain the trust of potential customers .
The trust needed for purchasing must be built progressively
And then we resort to a progressive approach with a sales funnel.
A practical example, training
It's a market we know well , even for the sale of expensive courses. Now: imagine you want to sell a course to someone who wants to change jobs, acquire a degree or simply wants to update themselves.
Imagine a market where the customer has access to free courses, alternatives to official degrees, low-cost courses, online courses, etc.
And you have to sell an expensive course offline. Well, what would you do? Yes, the answer is a funnel, because for this type of customer the choice is complex.
And so you should probably understand well who are the people who can actually be very interested in your courses (remember point 1? It's the market research ).
And then? And then if you tried to sell them a €6,000 course in the first instance, what do you think would happen?
Exactly! The customer doesn't buy.
You will therefore first have to intercept those who are informed about that area (e.g. with an open day or articles on your site or on other sites). Once you have sifted the audience, you will then have to give those who have participated or read the article more information about who you are (e.g. individual interviews or marketing automation), and then make your course well understood by those who have participated in an interview or read the emails (e.g. classroom participation or video extracts).
How long? Maybe even spreading this work over months if people get informed well before the courses start.
A person who gets to the bottom of this mixed online/offline sales funnel is ready to dig deeper into pricing and has ultimately shown enough interest to be “sales-worked.”
Of course this is just an example that doesn't show the thousand nuances you will have to think about and implement, testing different lengths, but I hope you get the idea.
What about you? Do you sell cold or do you have your own funnel?
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