You dreamt up your business, so you know better than anyone what makes it truly unique! But the qualities that make your business special can also make it difficult to navigate traditional marketing plans. It’s important to carefully map out each part of your marketing approach, especially your funnel strategy.
The sales funnel strategy you use has to be tailored to your goals! Using the “best” sales funnel only works if it’s going to perform for your business.
What Is a Sales Funnel?
A sales funnel is the journey your clients take from discovering your business to making their first purchase with you. While most funnels have similar components, there are different types of funnels that you can create depending on what your business needs.
For example, most funnels focus on marketing to attract new leads to your business. But all marketing campaigns look and work differently. Some marketing strategies begin on social media, while others rely heavily on searchability and landing page design.
The middle portion of a sales funnel is probably the most variable, as it consists of anything and everything to steer your clients towards a purchase. You could drive people to read through your about page or you could offer a free trial of a service.
The narrowest part of a business funnel is the sale—the ultimate goal for all entrepreneurs. Whether your clients choose to make purchases quickly or slowly, the key is to build a relationship that keeps them coming back.
Why Is it Important to Have a Sales Funnel Strategy?
Even if it all seems pretty basic, the more specific your funnel strategy, the better. The advantages of a well-calculated funnel (using your business data) are endless! Have a look at a few key advantages to mapping out your business funnel based on your analytics.
You’ll Build Targeted Marketing Materials
Leveraging your business data to create a targeted funnel strategy saves you time and money in the long run. This is because your data speaks to what’s already working for your business (and what definitely isn’t).
You can test different calls-to-action, brand voice pieces for your copy, or even graphic design. What garners the most engagement? What CTAs lead to the most clicks?
That data allows you to hone your marketing strategy from the top of your funnel to generate the most leads possible.
You’ll Increase Sales!
Data helps you understand your potential clients so you can cater to their needs more closely. Use your data to uncover where your leads spend the most time on your website, where they click the most, and what purchase trends are happening in your business. This will all help you increase your overall sales.
Without data to direct your marketing efforts, you can’t facilitate steady growth. You might make some lucky guesses or arrive at the right conclusions by chance from time to time, but data is the surest way to keep business climbing.
You’ll Be Able To Pursue Your Strongest Leads
You probably realize that some of your online visitors make purchases right away while others browse but never commit, and so on. Examine your data on things like visitation times and click patterns to determine who is closely circling the narrowest point of your sales funnel.
You can use your data to bucket your potential clients into categories:
- Not interested in purchasing right now
- Almost ready to purchase
- Ready to purchase! (Needs a gentle nudge)
Target the leads who are closest to purchasing when you design your funnel strategy! They may be waiting for an exclusive discount or limited-time offer. Be sure to send them your best deals to help them take the next step.
How Can You Use Data to Improve Your Sales Funnel Strategy?
Data can take your sales funnel strategy from mediocre to sensational—if you know how to use it! Have a look at these three strategies to leverage data when designing your next sales funnel.
Pinpoint Your Weak Areas
When running a business, you generally shouldn’t make big plans based on a hunch. Use your key metrics and analytics instead to identify your weakest areas and design a plan to improve them.
Examples of weak business areas include:
- Low website traffic
- High rates of cart abandonment
- Low opt-in and sales conversion rates
You can easily identify your weakest areas by checking out your Google data dashboard. If you’re not sure what to do once you set your eyes on the problem, sign up for Measure & Maximize to learn how to strategize solutions!
Determine Which Marketing Tactic Is Generating the Most Results
It helps to know your strengths, too! You can leverage data to see which parts of your funnel strategy are the most and least effective. Not only does this shed light on your smoothest marketing moves, it also teaches you about your clients and how you can better market to them in the future.
Feeling unsure of how to maintain your success or repeat what’s working in a different funnel strategy can be really discouraging. That is one of the reasons why we made Measure & Maximize. In our course, we teach you how to understand and utilize your business data to improve your bottom line every time you design a new funnel!
Focus on Nurturing Your Leads at Your Weakest Funnel Stage
This might seem a bit counterintuitive, but you can’t accept defeat in your weakest areas. The most effective sales funnels are strong from top to bottom, so you want to use your data to eradicate any weak spots.
Check out the analytics for all of your funnel content. How is everyone interacting with your business? Identify and repair (or improve) your content with the lowest participation in order to keep potential clients flowing through the funnel.
But be sure not to pressure your leads with excessive email blasts or forceful advertisements. Repairing your weak stages is all about nurturing and guiding your visitors into a comfortable position to make a purchase.
Designing the perfect funnel strategy might seem far out of your reach, but leveraging your business data will help you get pretty close to perfection! Stay calm and be sure to sign up for Measure & Maximize in order to make the most of your data when developing your funnel strategies.
Use data and start building ideal sales funnels to grow your business—check out these posts:
- Why Using Data to Make Decisions Is The Key To Growing Your Business Next Year
- 4 Incredibly Effective Types of Sales Funnels You Need to Know About
- How Sales Funnels Work and Why You Need Them To Grow Your Business
- 5 Essential Sales Funnel Metrics You Need To Consistently Track