The world has changed, and it has changed very rapidly indeed in the last 2 years. It takes a world-changing event like the COVID-19 pandemic to accelerate certain trends so dramatically and B2B sales are no exception. Let us take a moment and remember what it used to be like when B2B buyers actually picked up the phone and called you. Now, let’s skip ahead to the real world of today where a vast majority of decision-makers skip the sales team altogether when making a purchase decision. By the time they are ready to make a decision to purchase and if you have not been engaging with them, you’ve lost the sale. That’s why B2B inbound marketing is so essential in lead generation. Inbound marketing strategies generate far more sales leads than other marketing efforts. Customer journeys and mapping them are an essential part of this effort.
A Customer Journey model for visualizing every stage of the journey a customer goes through while making any purchases. Optimizing Sales Funnel accurately is a critical task to achieve the goal of taking your target audience to the finish line in the way they need to be served. If you already have one, you need to understand the holes in your funnel that leak and never convert.
According to Envision Creative’s Founder and CEO, David Smith (https://www.envision-creative.com/blog/attract-engage-convert-retain-customers-economic-change/) – “In times of economic crisis, many brand’s first instinct is to pull back on marketing and advertising, which is a natural reaction. While everyone is doing their best to be cautious, it’s important to remember that maintaining a presence through thoughtful, (and sensitive) marketing communication is even more crucial during these times. While taking a broad approach to reduce or even eliminate your marketing initiatives might save funds in the short term, these actions may be at the cost of damaging your brand’s awareness with your ideal target audience during a time where top-of-mind awareness is critical. ”
Understanding a sales funnel before creating it is important to create one that best suits your business model and focuses on your target audience. With a clear business vision and marketing strategy, you can increase the awareness of your brand that attracts customers. At this point, onwards a business is required to have different stages in their funnel that engages and convert their prospects to sales. According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchase_funnel) – “The purchase funnel, or purchasing funnel, is a consumer-focused marketing model that illustrates the theoretical customer journey toward the purchase of a good or service. In 1898, E. St. Elmo Lewis developed a model that mapped a theoretical customer journey from the moment a brand or product attracted consumer attention to the point of action or purchase. St. Elmo Lewis' idea is often referred to as the AIDA-model, an acronym that stands for Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action”. It has not changed too much in the last 120 years although the methods, which support the process, have largely been affected by the digitization of our culture.
The first common stage of any Sales funnel is creating awareness about your brand in the market that catches the attention of customers. At this stage, your prospective customers are arriving on your websites, social media pages, word of mouth, or any other traffic source with requirements in their mind that they expect to be solved. This is the widest stage of the funnel where customers observe what you are offering or just in simple terms “Just Looking”. An ideal right place and right time scenario would be customers directly deciding to buy what you are offering, but practically it never happens!
Depending on your business model, there can be multiple stages post attracting your customers. However, all of them contribute towards engaging your prospective customers into your brand. If the customer has reached this stage of your funnel, it is a sign that they are interested in what you are offering and are probably evaluating and comparing it. At this stage, your product should be pushed to the customer to woo them. With established expertise, you can help your consumer to make an informed decision and proceed towards the final stage of your Sales Funnel.
At the final stage of your sales funnel where your prospects are about to get converted to actual sales, your customer is fully aware of your brand and the solutions you are offering for their requirements. While the customer is ready to select the best brand from their comparison, making the best attractive offers can be a good final step that will convert your prospects into your customers and become part of your business ecosystem. However, there is more to this stage that you need to do! Since your customer has chosen your brand over a lot of other available options, it becomes critical and necessary to earn their trust and commitment towards your brand. A post-purchase survey or a follow-up email can help you understand the feedback of your customers that will help you to attract more customers in the first stage of your sales funnel.
Once your build your sales funnel, it’s also necessary to measure the success and effectiveness of your funnel. The key funnel metrics that can help you collect quantitative and qualitative data such as Cost per acquisition – cost on marketing to acquire new customers, Customer lifetime value, conversion rates, and conversion rate per channel can be utilized.
Creating and optimizing a sales funnel is hard time-consuming work but a necessary step to ensure your survival in a competitive marketplace. Building a Sales funnel is not a one-time activity. Sales funnel cultivates over time by adjusting every stage approach with the feedback you receive from your metrics. A satisfied customer will give your repeat business as well as refer you and there are high chances, they might get into the funnel again due to the competitive nature of the market. Thus, it becomes necessary to keep your funnel stages updated at regular intervals of time. A good flow of customers right from the top all the way to the action stage will ensure you have a healthy business.
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