Creating a Sales Funnel

You have put a lot of heart and soul into your website, finally it is live and… nothing happens. Customers were not waiting for you. Does this seem familiar? Then you’re just like a lot of marketers who deal with the question: “How do I turn (website-)visitors into customers? Our answer: with a well thought-through Sales Funnel.

Marketing Automation Tools like Aivie are an important utility for this. Based on the open source marketing automation solution Mautic, Aivie helps you manage your Sales Funnel efficiently. You can find out how to create Sales Funnels with Mautic here.

What is a Sales Funnel

A Sales Funnel reflects the total set of interaction points between your company and your customers. This is applicable for B2C as well as B2B. From, for example, the first website visit to the purchase of your products or services. The Sales Funnel represents the interaction points from the company’s point of view, while the customer journey looks at the contact points from the customer’s point of view. Customer journeys are therefore usually more extensive because they often start long before an initial contact (e.g. product recommendations directly from friends) and go beyond the conclusion of the purchase (e.g. aftersales, customer service, etc.).

How is a Sales Funnel structured

Before you can create your Sales Funnel, you should be clear on what a Sales Funnel is and how it is constructed.

1. Top of Funnel (ToFu)
2. Middle of Funnel (MoFu)
3. Bottom of Funnel (BoFu)

There are numerous representations, interpretations and degrees of detail on how a Sales Funnel is structured. They all have one thing in common: leads “fall” into the top of the funnel and are filtered out one by one until only customers “fall out” at the bottom. The number of leads is constantly reduced from stage to stage (phase to phase, step to step, etc.). This happens as a natural selection process (e.g. my product is not what website visitors are looking for, price does not meet the expectations, project is stopped, etc.) and ideally automated. Because the goal of the Sales Funnel is: to identify from the multitude of leads those (few) that I can and want to convert into customers. How granular these stages are in the Sales Funnel is up to your own discretion.

Top of Funnel (ToFu)

This is where you will find the largest number of leads. Here it is primarily a matter of making initial contact with as many potential customers as possible. Closing the sale is not the primary goal at this stage. Your marketing measures for this part of the funnel are aimed at high traffic and should generate a maximum of target group reach.

Middle of Funnel (MoFu)

As mentioned earlier, from stage to stage, the number of leads gets smaller and smaller. The greatest loss usually occurs in MoFu. This is where, for example, occasional website visitors separate themselves from leads that are actually interested. And lead generation should also be the goal of this stage and your marketing efforts. Lead Magnets and Lead Magnet Campaigns are often used here. These help ToFu traffic convert to MoFu leads or directly add new leads to the Sales Funnel in MoFu. For example, registering for a webinar or downloading product information. By filling out online forms, for example, anonymous website visitors can be turned into identified leads.

Bottom of Funnel (BoFu)

In the final stage we get to the point. Leads are being converted to customers. Leads can be lost here as well, which is why it is important to use your marketing measures to convince potential customers of your offer once again. For example, with test results, reviews or product trials, which should give your leads the certainty that they are making the right buying decision.

Filling a Sales Funnel

Depending on which part of the Sales Funnel you want to add leads to from the outside, there are a variety of marketing activities available to you. These depend, for example, on your specific offer, the market environment, your target group and their preferences, and much more. It’s up to you, as mentioned at the beginning: try, measure success, learn, and try again what you’ve learned.

Generally speaking, the further down the Sales Funnel you want to feed leads, the more complex (=expensive) your marketing activities will be, but the lower your divergence losses will be – if done correctly.

ToFu

With online communication, there are different ways to generate a lot of traffic and fill the top of funnel. These are amongst others:

• Social Marketing
• Organic Social Media
• Online Marketing (Banners, Display, etc.)
• Blogging
• SEO and SEA/SEM
• E-Mail marketing
• etc.

MoFu

The goal of this part of the Sales Funnel is to generate leads. But how do you get your website visitors to disclose personal contact information? The answer: Lead Magnets or Trip Wire offers.

Lead Magnets offer exclusive content that can be accessed by giving out personal contact information. These may include:

• Free webinars
• Product fylers
• Case studies
• Competitions
• White papers
• Exclusive presentations
• Detailled product videos
• Selected speeches
• etc.

In short, anything that has no financial value but is of sufficient interest to potential customers that they will willingly provide a minimum of contact information.

Trip Wire offers are a far greater benefit to your potential customers than Lead Magnets. For this reason, the willingness to make a financial contribution or to disclose more personal information is also higher than with Lead Magnets. Trip Wire offers usually result in low margin customers. They are also used in BoFu to convert low margin customers to high margin customers.

Trip Wire offers may be:

• Time-limited full-feature test versions
• Special offers at product launches
• Seasonal promotions
• Rebates and vouchers / coupons
• etc.

Mautic also offers the possibility to create targeted landing pages here. We have optimized the longing page templates in Aivie to achieve better conversion. You can get inspiration for your landing pages here.

BoFu

As mentioned earlier, at this stage your leads are close to finalizing their buying decision. They’ve already taken a long look at your offer along the Sales Funnel, or even accepted one of your Trip Wire offers.

Nevertheless, leads are again lost from this part of the funnel. However, these can be replaced by additional marketing activities. Here again, different measures can be taken:

• SEA/SEM with target group focus on potential customers willing to buy (e.g. via Google Shopping)
• Banner and/or display in relevant online shops (e.g. Amazon)
• Product samplings at supermarkets
• etc.

Creating a Sales Funnel with Mautic

Creating a Sales Funnel is easy with Mautic. For this you will find the menu item “Stages” along the left menu column. Depending on how you have defined your Sales Funnel and how granular it is structured, you create the individual phases of your sales funnel here. Click on “New”, give the stage a name and a label and your Sales Funnel is already mapped in Aivie.

An example:

Now it’s time to automate your funnel and use your content efficiently. To learn how, check out our blog post: “Using Content Efficiently in Automated Funnels.”