Marketing funnel or how to increase sales? Which campaign to invest in. Real life marketing funnel

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From this article you will learn:

• What is a sales funnel
• Why and who needs it
• What are the stages of a sales funnel?
• What indicators need to be calculated for the analysis of the sales funnel
• How to analyze your sales funnel
• How to create and implement a sales funnel in the company's work
• What is the convenience of an automated sales funnel and how to make it

Without owning such a tool for building a business as a sales funnel, it is difficult to imagine an entrepreneur who has achieved real success. Many have heard about it, but few people know how to make it an integral part of their practical activities, how to calculate its indicators and analyze them. In this article, you will learn what a sales funnel is, how to build it in such a way that the performance of your enterprise will increase.

What is a sales funnel

Sales funnel(sales funnel, purchase funnel, sales pipeline) is a marketing model that describes the movement of the buyer at all stages of the sales process: from the first contact to the conclusion of the transaction.

The concept of a sales funnel, proposed by the American lawyer Elias Lewis in 1898, included a description of the psychology of the client. Thirty years later, this concept was successfully combined with the equally well-known trading concept - AIDA:

Since the 30s of the XX century, the sales funnel has been one of the main concepts of marketing.

The AIDA model provides for four stages of the psychological state of the client in the sales funnel:

1. drew attention to the offer through advertising;
2. became interested in them, having familiarized themselves with the content of promotional materials;
3. there was a desire to respond to this proposal;
4. the client has matured the decision to make a purchase (called the company, came to the store, made an order on the Internet).

Establishing contact. How to achieve complete understanding with the client? Find out in the training program.

Visually, the sales funnel of a store can be depicted as an inverted pyramid:

Why you need a sales funnel

The funnel allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of the sales process from start to finish with maximum accuracy. It makes it easy to install:

• at what stages is it eliminated more potential clients;
• what are the reasons for these losses;
• whether management is at a sufficiently high level, and at what stage of sales it is necessary to concentrate attention.

Understanding how the funnel of sales of services or goods is arranged will help not only to determine the reason for the failure, but also to avoid future losses as a result of competent forecasting of actions.

Sales funnel stages

In the marketing literature, the sales funnel has been described many times, there are various options, which are united by one common feature - the number of initial contacts significantly exceeds the number of real purchases.

How to find out the hidden needs of the client? Find out in the training program

To better understand this situation, consider a simple example:

1. At the beginning of the funnel are potential customers who have a need for our product (let's say 1000 people).
2. Most of them have heard about our store (e.g. 700).
3. Not everyone who is aware of the existence of a retail outlet will come to it to buy the right product. The reasons can be different - inconvenient location, negative feedback from friends, lack of funds. As a result, only a small part of potential customers will cross the threshold of the store. (let's say 300 people).
4. The fact that a visitor came to us does not yet make him a buyer: he must be satisfied with the quality of the product, its cost, level of service and many other factors in order for him to make a purchase decision (about 90 people).

Thus, the loss of dissatisfied customers is inevitable at every stage, and in the end, only 9% (in this case) of those who have a need for our product decided to purchase it. It is this inevitable decrease in the number of customers in the process of turning potential customers into actual customers that is called the sales funnel.

Different types of entrepreneurship imply the presence of their own characteristics. For example, a b2b business sales funnel might include the following steps:

1. Making cold calls (obtaining information about the offer).
2. Presentation of products (selection of a specific name).
3. Sending a commercial offer (desire to purchase goods).
4. Conclusion of the contract and invoicing (conclusion of the transaction).
5. Payment (intention to transfer funds).
6. Shipment of goods (receipt of goods).
7. Repeat purchase.
8. Making purchases as a regular customer.

AT retail own stages of the sales funnel:

The sales funnel cannot be universal for all types of businesses. It is modified depending on its size, the specifics of the sales process, the prevailing channels for disseminating information. In the case of an online store, the consumer goes through a rather long way from the first to the last stage. (contextual advertising - going to the store's website - getting to know the catalog - adding the selected product to the basket - registration - placing an order - payment). If we are talking about the only beauty salon in the village, the chain is reduced to a minimum (information about the existence of the salon - visit - payment).

What Sales Funnel Metrics Should You Measure?

Now that the essence of the concept of "sales funnel" is defined, the question arises of how each of its stages is calculated and in what units it is measured.

There are two types of sales funnel indicators - quantitative and qualitative.

Quantitative indicators. They need to pay attention in the first place, namely, to calculate the conversion during the passage of all stages of the sales process.

Conversion = Number of consumers who moved to the next stage of the funnel / Number of consumers of the previous stage of the funnel × 100%

So you can determine how many percent of potential buyers are eliminated when moving from one stage of the sales funnel to another, identify problem points and correct the situation for the better.

Qualitative indicators. However, in addition to quantitative indicators, there are also qualitative indicators, and in order to find out the reasons for the loss of customers, they even have greater value. Obviously, the increase in the number of sales is in direct proportion to how many more people will be informed about the opportunity to purchase the product they need in your store. However, in reality, one often has to deal with a situation where huge amounts of money are spent on advertising, customers come to the store, but leave it without making a purchase, because they do not receive the proper level of service from sales assistants.

In this regard, it is necessary to develop a system that allows you to analyze the quality of all components of the sales process, and regularly monitor the compliance of each stage of the sales funnel with the requirements put forward.

For example (see figure), based on the fact that only 0.48% of those informed about it make purchases in a store, you can choose one of two ways:

1. Constantly increase the advertising budget so that in the end the same 0.48% of those who know about your store make purchases in it.
2. Keeping the budget the same, improve the quality indicators of each stage in order to increase the number of buyers.

In this regard, it is worth remembering that in terms of quantitative indicators of the sales funnel, you are in the same position as competitors, and the growth opportunities here are limited, while by working on quality, you can significantly outperform your rivals. As a result, you will receive customer loyalty, employees with a high level of professionalism and leadership in your market segment.

Ways to calculate sales funnel indicators

When carrying out activities offline Calculating conversion is not an easy task, but visitor surveys or flyers with discount coupons will come to your aid. Both of these methods allow you to understand where the visitor got information about your product.

When it comes to the Internet, An example of a typical funnel for determining calculation methods is as follows:

This is what a typical online business sales funnel looks like. How each of the indicators is calculated, we will consider further.

1. Yandex.Direct, Google Adwords and other tools are used to predict reach and determine the number of impressions. After that, you need to correctly set up end-to-end analytics using Yandex.Metrica, Google analytics, Carrotquest. With their help, you can find out the number of visitors to the site with a division by age, gender and geographic characteristics, how many of those who came in immediately left the resource, what requests were used to go to the site, at what stage the maximum loss of customers occurs. Qualitative indicators of this stage of the sales funnel are calculated using Webvisor, Click Maps. Their analysis will help to understand the reason for the failure at this stage.

Site Clicks/Effective Impressions × 100% = Effective Impressions to Clicks Conversion Rate

1. To determine the number of target transitions, other goals are set up in the same tools: viewing five pages of the site, clicking on the "learn more" button, visiting a specific page.

Target clicks/Clicks to site × 100% = Conversion rate "from clicks to targeted clicks"

1. Using the above tools is enough to calculate applications. When you need to get accurate data on calls, it will be more convenient to use "Call-tracking", since it allows you to get information about the number of visitors who called you, about the source of their awareness, about the percentage of targeted / non-targeted calls. By analyzing this data, you can optimize your advertising spend by giving preference to more effective channels.

Calls, Leads/Targets × 100% = Conversion rate “From Targeted Leads to Calls/Targets”

1. "Call-tracking" will also help in analyzing the effectiveness of the sales department, namely, it will allow you to track how calls are processed. His tools are indispensable for obtaining data on the response time, on the quality of service, on the reasons why customers refuse to make a purchase.

Deal/Calls, Leads × 100% = Conversion rate "from calls to purchase"

Each indicator can have its own time interval for its determination - day, month, quarter. So, the number of applications is calculated daily, and the number of repeat purchases is calculated monthly.

How to analyze a sales funnel

When analyzing the sales funnel, it is necessary to remember that in real life people behave in a much more complex way than it can be demonstrated on paper. Least of all, they resemble a weak-willed crowd that goes through all the stages without deviating a single step from the behavioral strategy described by the authors of sales textbooks. Any funnel has many holes through which potential buyers are screened out at each stage.

That is why, in order to obtain a reliable picture, it is not enough to evaluate the overall results of sales, it is necessary to analyze the results of each stage in order to identify the reasons why customers are lost.

Potential buyers can leave for various reasons: not satisfied with the product or service, not enough funds to purchase, lost contact details of the store, changed circumstances, too long a delivery time, and much more. The exact establishment of the cause will allow you to take effective measures to correct the situation. The sales funnel should also be analyzed for specific managers in order to identify in time those stages at which the leakage of customers is minimal, and to disseminate the experience of the best employees.

It is equally important to build a CRM sales funnel in order to quickly receive intermediate indicators and full reports that help to analyze the situation in depth. It also makes it possible to determine several important points:

Research conducted by Salesforce found that 57% of salespeople use a sales funnel in the course of their work with the main goal of assessing the solvency of buyers. Such a narrow use cannot be considered rational, since with the help of this tool it is possible to identify the moments that are most critical for many companies - where there is a loss of leads and potential buyers. Analysis of the information obtained in the process of studying the sales funnel can become the basis for steps to optimize costs and develop new directions for finding customers.

An example of sales analysis using a funnel

With the use of a funnel, it is possible to carry out statistical analysis sales. Consider its example, built for a single manager. This sales funnel can be seen in the figure below.

It clearly shows that in the transition from the first to the second stage, the number of orders decreased from 42 to 24. This means that a little more than half of the orders were brought to the meeting stage. What does it say? Perhaps the manager deliberately reduces the number of clients, preferring to work only with those who, in his opinion, are more promising. Or buyers who were ready to make a purchase in advance reach the stage of the meeting, which means that the manager has no merit in attracting them. It is possible that this type of sales funnel is common for your business. The leader must analyze the current situation and draw a conclusion that implies the adoption of adequate measures.

The manager brought almost all orders to the contract stage (20). At this stage of the sales funnel, his work can be considered good.

However, then there is another failure at the stage of signing the contract. The number of orders that have reached this stage is almost half of the previous number. What's the matter? Among possible causes there may be terms of cooperation that do not suit the client, the presence of additional costs, the inability of the manager to convey to the buyer their need. Measures to equalize the situation should be taken in accordance with specific conditions.

The comparison between the sales funnels of different managers is also very revealing. An employee may be strong at a certain stage. An analysis of the sales funnel of each of them will help to decide whether additional training is needed for individual employees in order to avoid customer churn, or to reduce the workload for those who are prevented by a large number of customers from serving them at a high level.

Creating and setting up a sales funnel

Now it's time to figure out the most important thing - how to create a sales funnel.

1. Define your milestones

For your type of business, the sales funnel may have a specific structure that is different from the classic one. The number of stages can be more or less, depending on the number of contacts with customers and their loyalty to your product.

Determining the stages of the sales funnel is usually not difficult. You just need to highlight the most important points of contact that affect the customer's decision to make a purchase.

2. Measure performance

This part of the work, despite its apparent simplicity, usually causes the greatest difficulties. Although all that is required is the methodical and regular filling of indicators for all stages of the sales funnel. It is the consistency that is most often not observed, since marketers and managers consider entering data as extra work, and the business owner does not delve into such nuances.

The solution to this situation may be to simplify the sales funnel as much as possible, leaving no more than four really important stages. It will take a minimum of effort and time to complete it. Limit yourself to a sales funnel, an example of entering data for which is given below:

3. Improve and increase

Establishing data collection is half the battle, but the numbers themselves are not an end in themselves, but a reason to analyze the sales funnel and identify weaknesses. The next step is to improve performance and increase conversions.

Consider examples.

Example 1. Increase sales.

Let's say your contextual advertising was shown 360,750 times in a month. Having gone through all stages of the sales funnel, customers brought you 280,303 rubles. If we assume that the advertising budget has increased by 60%, which, accordingly, means more impressions, the total amount will be 354,545 rubles, which is 26% higher than the previous result.

If each stage of the funnel is increased by a certain percentage, this will trigger an explosive increase in sales. Moreover, the increase should not necessarily be as large as 60%. Even turning 1% into 1.2%, you can see how sales exceed the previous figures by one and a half to two times.

Example 2. Improve the work of sales managers.

For example, a sales manager makes 30 cold calls per day using a script. Of these, only in ten cases does he manage to reach the person on whom the decision to purchase depends. The remaining 20 ends at the level of a conversation with a secretary, that is, the conversion of calls is 33%. An increase in the number of calls with the same indicator can hardly be considered effective, it is better to focus on improving the result. For example, so that 66% of calls bypass the secretary stage. This will allow you to count on increasing the number of sales twice.

Let's consider another example. Every month, managers issue 100 invoices for a total of 1 million rubles (the average check is 10,000 rubles), and payment is received only for half of them. Our task is to bring the number of paid bills to 60%. It's not as difficult as it seems. As a result of increasing one stage of the sales funnel by only 10%, we will receive 100,000 rubles more.

Automated sales funnel

An automated sales funnel has recently entered the everyday life of entrepreneurs, but has already become a fairly popular tool to help reduce customer losses. But not every businessman can independently build chains of interaction with customers. And this is not surprising, because such a difficult task as creating an automated sales funnel implies a whole range of activities based on fundamental knowledge and the use of modern technologies.

You can create a sales funnel in Excel using the standard version of tables. There is a sales funnel 5.0 - a smart Excel file that allows you to control business performance, including:

• calculate the effectiveness of each advertising channel;
• measure the steps that will lead to the desired profit;
• timely notice at what stage the loss of customers occurs.

Building a sales funnel can also be done using special software: bpm’online, RegionSoft CRM, CRM Client-Communicator, FreshOffice, etc.

When choosing a program, you should pay attention to some points:

1. The interface should be as convenient as possible so that you can quickly enter the necessary indicators of the sales funnel.
2. Well, if the program allows you to conduct analytics on various data.
3. The advantage is the ability to work simultaneously with the knowledge base and data warehouse with an easy transition between them.
4. It should be possible to add additional features.
5. An interface is welcome to support different groups users.
6. The launch of the program should be fast and not require significant investments in changing the IT infrastructure.

Benefits of Implementing an Automated Sales Funnel:

AT modern reality Automated sales funnels offer new opportunities, which are well illustrated in the movie Minority Report (2002). During the protagonist's walk shopping center scanners built into advertising banners determine his place of residence, his favorite brand of clothing, even read minds. Based on the results of the analysis of the received data, a personal advertising offer (offer) is formed.

If fifteen years ago this scene was considered fantastic, today "smart sales funnels" (smart sales funnels) are increasingly bringing it closer to everyday reality. They are revolutionizing internet marketing.

A smart funnel is a very effective tool that allows you to recognize site visitors and contact them with an up-to-date offer, depending on the stage of the sales process at which they are. The following basic smart funnel settings can serve as an example:

1. Visitor for the first time on the site? If so, show him a relevant top-of-the-funnel landing page with a CTA button.
2. Did the visitor fill out the form and enter an e-mail address (is it a lead)? Then present your main offer to him.
3. Is the visitor your regular customer? If yes, then based on what he has purchased before, offer him the next upsell deal.

Why smart sales funnels are in demand today

Smart sales funnels were invented as a result of several factors at once:

1. Increasing competition on the web.The Internet is becoming an ever larger trading platform, attracting many entrepreneurs. A group of scientists from Babson College has been tracking this indicator since 1999. The number of start-up businessmen implementing startups on the Web was 13% last year - the highest figure since the existence of the Internet.
2. Development of marketing tools such as retargeting, exit-detection technology, integrated CRM, and email marketing personalization have reached their peak. The next step, allowing you to improve in this direction, can only be a personal offer to a person, made at the right time.
3. Education. It also contributes to increased competition on the web. Education today can be called one of the forms of marketing. Businessmen with experience share it with the new generation of entrepreneurs. In addition, one cannot ignore the growth of the intellectual level of an ordinary Internet user.

All of these factors combined have fueled the rapid development and proliferation of the smart sales funnel concept in recent years.

The best way to launch a smart site sales funnel is a well-thought-out step-by-step strategy for interacting with new customers. Stop trying to sell a product at a high price on the first contact with the buyer - no one gets married on the first date.

The best option would be to follow our scheme:

Step 1. It is logical to assume that the new client knows absolutely nothing about your company or brand. Therefore, you should start with an acquaintance. To do this, ask him to provide an email address. This is necessary to have at least a minimal guarantee that the visitor will come back to your site.

An e-mail address allows you to maintain interest in your product, remind you of yourself by sending information about promotions and discounts, and thereby push the visitor to re-visit the site to make a purchase. SaaS businesses use trial versions product or free accounts.

Step 2. Do your best to complete the purchase. Even with a $1 change, a user counts in your sales funnel as having shown interest in the brand. A small purchase gives you reason to hope that soon the client will come again and leave you with a much larger amount. For example, if you sell him marketing research for $5–9, you can get a client in the future who will purchase a business solution from you, the cost of which is an order of magnitude higher.

Step 3 By giving the customer the opportunity to explore and experience your core offering, you set the stage for the transition to more expensive products. In the SaaS business, you were constantly reminded of the imminent end of the trial period and the opportunity to purchase goods on preferential terms.

The main idea of ​​this article is not that you have to know about the stages of the sales funnel and have an option adapted to your type of business. The main thing is to understand the need to own this tool and not to neglect it in your work.

Don't forget that the sales funnel is a great way to predict the immediate future of a business. By collecting and analyzing data, you get the opportunity to constantly increase conversions at each stage, as well as differentiate from competitors. Having studied and correctly used the possibilities of the sales funnel, you can achieve significant growth in all indicators of your business in a short time.

So our article on the sales funnel has come to an end. We sincerely hope that you could find useful ideas for your business in it. It is possible that some thoughts became a discovery for you, but something turned out to be simple. interesting fact, which expanded the understanding of the process of complex sales. Which of the points presented would you like to put into practice? How satisfied are you with the way your business is going? Analyze your answers to these questions, then our article will be able to leave a significant mark on your mind.

Remember that if you have any questions, doubts or even objections, you have the opportunity to write to us by mail [email protected] or use the feedback form on the official website. Experienced business coach Evgeny Kotov, the founder of the training company Practicum Group, will be happy to answer them, and perhaps even discuss with you, because truth is born in a dispute.

See you soon!

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Modern advertising is a constant optimization of conversion probability at all stages of the customer journey. Wherever we touch our audience, we try to optimize to increase the effectiveness of the advertising campaign. Often we lack the knowledge of what we want from the audience. Therefore, today I would like to talk about the user's path.

The main question is what action we want to get from a user who is at different stages of his journey. Why is it important? Because when you transfer this action to Yandex, it begins to better understand which ads to show to a particular audience. As a result, you get improved conversions, increased sales and business growth.

In the picture you see the classic user path, which has probably not changed since the first advertising communication. People are first interested in the product, then they choose, then they make a purchase, recommend the product to friends and come back to buy again. Very often, we build communication only on the last mile of this path - during the very act of buying. Today this is not enough. It is necessary to build communication at each of these stages. To do this, you need to answer one question for yourself - do I have messages for clients at each of these stages.

Interest

How does interest arise and, in relation to our field of activity, how is it reflected in? Interest arises when a person begins to look for some ideas. You can find these ideas in informational search queries:

• Ideas for ... (kitchen, costume, gift, renovation, party, business, wedding, etc.)
• How to start… (running, eating right, taking pictures, new life etc.)
• Where ... (to go, send the child to study, etc.)
• Start of sales… (iPhone, Samsung, Hero 5, Leeco, Hyundai Creta, etc.)
• New… (collections, trends, trendy colors etc.)

For example, a person is interested in how to start running. Please note that there are no advertisements in the screenshot, although it is obvious that the person is at the first stage of the user journey.

Let's look at another search query - "trends autumn winter 2016 2017 clothes." In the screenshot, we see the announcement of the Wildberries online store.

This is one of the largest online clothing stores, and, objectively, it employs good professionals in contextual advertising. But look where they lead a person on this request.

There will be enough conversion here, and the economy will surely converge, but this is not the answer to the question of a person who is interested in trends. You can do much better.

Here is a fairly popular Inmyroom service that offers ideas for interior design. Of course, they have an online store on their website. But they start building an audience in the first step of the user journey. The logic is absolutely clear - before the client buys furniture, he will be interested in ideas for decorating an apartment. Try this approach for your business. Think about what ideas your client comes up with in the first step.

goal setting

Let's get back to goal setting - how to train an advertising system to buy the audience you need. How does an automatic strategy set up by goals in Yandex.Metrica work in Yandex.Direct? You are showing purpose. The system looks at the ad and sees that some traffic sources (queries, ads, audience types) have better conversion rates, and starts raising rates for them. Brings more of the audience that performs the target action on your site.

What goal should be set if the user is in the interest stage? He is not yet ready to make a purchase, but he may be ready to subscribe to your materials, read a little more about your products or ideas. This is the goal you need to set when setting up an advertising campaign. Good Goals:

• Registration
• Subscription
• Transitions to the store

At this stage, you do not need to buy an audience with a wide reach. If you only maximize the amount of traffic on your site, it won't do you any good. Ideally, you should get in touch with the person so that you can move them further down the user journey. Using Yandex.Metrica, you can set up the transfer of this data to your CRM and back in order to continue communication with the client.

• Pay only for the activation of the stage.
• Convert traffic into customer contacts.
• Ideal: content funnel (view, action, contact).
• Do not forget about retargeting, offer the person the next stage.
• Use YAN for CPA strategy.

How much to pay for such an action?

The question immediately arises - how to set rates? Depending on your audience, bids will vary, so experiment. General rules:

• Efficiency rating is not for 100% of traffic, but for enough to draw a conclusion.
• Experiment with the cost of an action.
• Ideal option: we forward the Client ID parameter to Metrica or User ID to our own

Choice

So, a person is interested in something, now he needs to make a choice. For example, a person is interested in a new smartphone and now wants to understand how to choose it. Now you start looking for materials dedicated to just that. Here is an example of content that helps the user make a choice from Yandex.

Highly good example you can see in the following picture. In different online shoe stores show different size. And customers are afraid not to get the size. The site gives an answer to this user request - it helps him choose the right size of sneakers.

Another example is that Nestle helps the user to choose the right capsule for the coffee maker.

If you can make life easier for a person at the selection stage, this will be a great way to get additional audience. As a goal at this stage, a good one would be:

• Registration.
• Action on the site (for example, activation of the calculator).

Purchase

This stage of the purchase is studied by marketers and directors the most well. Recall the main points:

• Use transactional queries (buy, sell, rent, checkout, etc.).
• Use specific product names.
• Use value queries (discounts, cheap, liquidation, promotions, promotions, without intermediaries, inexpensive, etc.).
• Use YAN retargeting with ROI or CPA optimization.

One of the examples. The user enters the query "green sofa click-clack nasdak" (such a sofa really exists). Probably, comments to the first line are not required.

Which campaign to invest in

The most important question for a business is where to invest money. Consider for example 2 advertising campaigns.

The first advertising campaign has a negative ROI (100% return on investment). The second is profitable. But we wouldn't understand this if the table was missing a few columns. Today, if you do not have such a table in your hands, you do not understand how to make a decision on optimizing an advertising campaign. The main thing you need to know is that modern advertising systems allow you to calculate the return on investment for advertising channels. You know the costs, conversion, understand how many customers advertising brings and with what receipt.

The next step is to optimize the purchase of advertising not by achieving the goal, but by ROI. Yandex.Direct has such an automatic strategy. The period when we could buy ads, looking only at the number of clicks and their cost, is over. Today, the winner is the one who fully sees the return on investment from advertising and optimizes advertising for this indicator. Optimization is real-time automatic bidding for those customers who bring you more profit.

• Use automatic strategies that take into account ROI.
• Use phone call tracking.
• Use offline conversions in Yandex.Metrica.

Marketers often forget about this stage. The goods are sold - you can exhale. If you do not manage recommendation channels, then you are losing significant profits in the long run.

• Use email newsletters.
• Collect cases from clients.
• Use recommendations on Yandex.Market and other external sources.
• Offer referral bonuses.

An example of client cases from Yandex.

An example of a bonus from One Two Trip.

Repeat purchase

Repeat purchase at recent times becomes one of the key topics in advertising technologies. It is important to remember that advertising is needed not only to find new customers, but also for upsells in the existing customer base.

An excellent tool for increasing upsells is Yandex.Audience. Briefly, it works like this. You maintain a client base in CRM, Excel or in any other way. This database contains phone numbers, e-mail addresses or other identifiers. You upload this data to Yandex.Audience, and the service finds it in search or in YAN. Next, you develop specifically for these users. separate offer and show it to them.

Now in Yandex.Audience, about 50% of the data comes from offline, due to the data being uploaded by users of the service.

Here is the case of Nimax, Apple resellers. For this company, e-mail newsletters worked well for upsells. existing clients, but it is clear that the open-rate of such mailings cannot be 100%. All e-mail addresses that were not opened, letters from their mailing list, were uploaded to Yandex.Audience. A retargeting ad campaign was set up for these users with a 20% higher bid adjustment. The conversion from this segment was 2 times higher than from regular retargeting.

Another case is Ozon. Almost any business can repeat such a case.

So, you have a CRM that has a list of clients, as well as information about how much money they brought you when last time visited and how often they make a purchase. The last 3 metrics are what is called RFM analysis. Depending on these indicators, you can set up bid adjustments in Yandex.Direct. If a client has a large average check, but the last time you had it for a long time, it is logical to invest money to return it. If the client, on the contrary, rarely visits and buys little, you can lower his rates. By managing bids for different segments, you save your budget but increase ROI.

What is a sales funnel and what is it for? What are the stages of a sales funnel? How to do a funnel analysis and increase conversions with the right questions?

Hello dear readers! With you are the authors of the HiterBober.ru business magazine Alexander Berezhnov and Vitaly Tsyganok.

A sales funnel is one of the main business tools for any entrepreneur. If you are in business or just planning, then this article is the first step to your success.

From the article you will learn:

• What is a sales funnel and what is it for?
• What are the stages of a sales funnel?
• How to analyze the funnel and increase the conversion in it?
• What is CRM and CPM and how to work with them?

Thanks to a well-built sales funnel, our business also works well.

We hope that after reading the article you will increase sales in your commercial project.

Any novice businessman engaged in the sale of goods or services should be well versed in the terminology and theory of marketing. One of key concepts that all entrepreneurs need to learn for a successful business is the “sales funnel”.

1. What is a sales funnel - the concept, terms, where it is applied

In English, this term sounds like "purchase funnel", "sales funnel" or "sales pipeline": the concept can be called conceptual in marketing.

Sales funnel is the path that the average consumer of a product or service takes from attracting his attention to the offer to the moment of purchase.

In the English-language Wikipedia, a sales funnel is defined as a marketing model that, in theory, illustrates the journey through all stages of a purchase: from getting to know the offer (first touch) to closing the deal.

For entrepreneurs and businessmen, knowing what a sales funnel is will help you multiply your profits many times over. It does not matter whether it is built in Internet commerce or in the process of "offline" sale of goods in a store - the model works in both cases.

In the modern situation, when the supply of goods often exceeds demand, it is becoming more and more difficult to attract customers directly, which is called “on the forehead”, the use and competent analysis of the sales funnel will allow you to act on potential consumers in a more subtle and unobtrusive way, imperceptibly adjusting to their needs.

The concept of the "acquisition funnel", which describes the psychology of the client, was proposed by the American lawyer Elias Lewis in 1898.

Three decades later, this concept was successfully combined with another well-known concept of trading - AIDA:

• attention (attention);
• interest (interest);
• desire (desire);
• action.

Since then, the concept of a sales funnel in marketing has become one of the basic ones.

This means that the sale itself is preceded by 4 stages of customer readiness:

• first, his attention is captured (for example, by advertising tools);
• then, interest is aroused (by the content of the advertising message);
• then the potential buyer has a desire to take advantage of the offer;
• finally, our client acts (calls the company, enters the store or website).

This is already a “warmed up” potential buyer, it remains to take him “warm” and close the deal.

How to build a working sales funnel - that is, one into which the client "falls" and is guaranteed to reach the bottom - in other words, makes an acquisition?

This is the art of marketing. The number of possible consumers of services and products is influenced by many factors:

• ways to promote goods (advertising, reliability of information, visual demonstration);
• the ability to find the right audience;
• pricing and marketing policy (availability of discounts, promotions, additional benefits).

In a word, the consumer must understand why it is more profitable and better to purchase goods from you.

The AIDA model is described in one of his books by a world-famous business consultant, a leading sales expert.

This model reveals the main stages of sales and shows how they consistently complement each other.

Despite this, certain part managers perceives the sales funnel too narrowly - only as a reporting term, forgetting or not knowing that, first of all, the purchase funnel is a functional tool with great opportunities.

2. Conversion and CPM of sales funnels - how to calculate and increase them

A sales funnel is an ideal technique for analyzing the productivity of both individual employees and the entire sales department or website.

One of the newest methods to increase conversions is called A/B testing.

This is a comparison of 2 (or more) resource options in order to find out which method leads to maximum income.

As you can see, any little things can affect the transformation of an offer into a specific purchase - up to the location of the “order goods” button on the page.

You can not talk about the importance of text and graphic content: the importance of these components is clear to everyone.

4. Analysis of the sales funnel on a real example

When consultants and sales promotion experts start their work with a certain company, the first thing that is affected in one way or another is the funnel.

Example:

You, and now you need to make sure that in a certain period, for example, a month, this outlet brings maximum profit.

What will you do? - The answer is simple! You need to know the current performance of your business and understand what exactly affects them.

Here are the metrics:

• the number of people who learned about the store (cold contacts);
• the number of people who entered the store from among those who recognized (interested people);
• the number of people who made a purchase from among those who entered the store (real buyers);
• the average amount that a customer leaves in your store at a time (average check amount).

Separately, it is necessary to analyze the product range and find out which categories of goods your customers prefer in most cases.

As a result, ALL YOUR ACTIVITIES IN BUSINESS come down to 2 points:

1. Increase in the number of purchases;
2. Increase in revenue per purchase.

It doesn’t matter what exactly you sell, it is important that as many people as possible buy from you and at the highest possible price from period to period.

Example:

If 1,000 people bought something from you in the first month of the store’s operation, and each customer left an average of 1,000 rubles in the store, then you need to increase these figures from month to month.

This means that if 1,100 people buy something from you next month and the average purchase price per person rises to 1,200 rubles, then your business is progressing.

Average check- this is the amount of revenue per purchase (per customer).

The formula for calculating the average check:

Average check= revenue for the period (for example, per day) / number of purchases for the same period.

So, if 3 people entered your store in five minutes and bought one for 50 rubles, another on 370 rubles, third on 1000 rubles, the average check for this period is (50+370+1000)/3 = 473 rubles 33 kopecks.

The sales funnel of a website or store allows you not only to study the results of trading, but also to actually manage them.

In business practice, this concept is widely used in foreign companies, but in the Russian Federation the tool is only becoming widespread.

This means that by being able to build an effective sales funnel, you will gain a huge advantage over your competitors, and your business will get a cosmic acceleration!

5. Lead and lead generation - we build a system for obtaining customers

The process of establishing a flow of interested buyers is lead generation.

Leads are people who visited a specific site (store), became interested in purchasing a product, left their application or at least contact information.

A lead is not quite a buyer yet, just a potentially interested person.

In Internet marketing, lead generation is one of the methods for generating profit for sites that are not engaged in direct sales.

Such resources collect user contacts (phones, mail data, social network pages) and deliver them to the customer.

Payment for each lead is negotiated in advance. It can be 10 rubles, and several thousand, depending on the industry and the average check.

For example, leads in a soft toy business can cost 30 rubles ($0.5), and in the business of selling drilling rigs or tower cranes - 5000 rubles ($80).

Any business needs leads, since specific buyers bring specific profits. There is even a special position - lead manager: a person responsible for contact with leads.

6. Sales scripts - a powerful tool to increase your sales + real example

The use of sales scripts allows you to significantly increase the conversion of the funnel at all stages of interaction with the client.

Sales scripts is a pre-designed scenario of interaction with the client, starting from the moment of greeting and ending with the execution of the transaction.

Successful sellers develop their own effective schemes, but there are basic rules that can significantly increase the success of any contact with a potential buyer.

If we are talking about sales scripts, for example for a call center manager, then there are two main types of conversational scripts:

• incoming call script;
• outgoing call script.

Also, in the case of selling through text, for example, on one-page sites or in presentations, sales scripts are used only in text form.

If you are building a sales team, make sure you have good scripts for your negotiators in advance.

7. Conclusion

Now you know how marketing tools and a sales funnel work in practice. By improving the conversion at each stage, you can increase the net profit in your business several times over.

Not without reason, any experienced entrepreneur regularly reviews and adjusts his funnel.

We hope that this article will help beginners and professionals increase their sales and provide a comprehensive understanding of all the stages of the transaction that your potential buyer goes through.

Make your business “candy”, and we will continue to help you with this with our practical instructions.

The HiterBober.ru business magazine team wishes you successful transactions and high profits!

In an ideal world, everyone who would ever hear about you would become your client. In fact, only a few out of hundreds and thousands become customers. Why this happens - describes the classic marketing metaphor - the sales funnel.

The idea is simple: the closer to the deal, the less potential customers remain. At the top of the funnel is a broad audience, people who could theoretically be interested in your brand. The middle of the funnel becomes narrower: there are much fewer people who are not just interested in you, but ready to give you money. The bottom of the funnel is very narrow: these are people who have become customers. Moving down the funnel, part of the audience is eliminated.

And your task is to make the funnel as wide as possible. And ideally, create not a funnel, but a cylinder, and accompany and guide potential customers at every stage.

Content Marketing Sales Funnel

Content marketing is considered to be at the top of the funnel. But this is complete nonsense: content marketing works on everyone stage. The whole question is in the approach.

Since content is the words, pictures, and videos that a person encounters on the site (and beyond), you can create different content for different stages of the funnel. But first, you need to figure out what a content marketing sales funnel looks like.

And it looks ... like a Chemex coffee maker.

Acquaintance: the top of the funnel

Goals: indirectly attracting customers, increasing brand awareness
Tactics: educational and viral content

At the first stage of the funnel, you tell potential customers (and the market in general) about yourself. If you are offering a niche product that is new to the market, then you first need to tell people what problems your product will solve. Perhaps before they did not realize that such problems even exist.

At this stage, content marketing is needed to create an informational background and generate interest in your company. Wake up curiosity, intrigue, interest - you must be remembered. And over time - and start to trust. Trust in content is the first step that leads to trust in a company.

The top of the funnel is inbound marketing: useful and interesting content. Your task at this stage is to become necessary and useful. Do not put pressure on people, do not overdo it with direct advertising, talk not only about yourself. You need to understand what the audience wants to know, and then be able to convey it to them. If you can do it, you will get grateful, loyal readers. This is how you not only gain confidence, but also develop expert potential: become an authority for people. And at the same time, you are pulling the audience up to the level at which your products and services become in demand for them.

This is what ClientoMannia did when they launched the blog. Nobody needed a service for working with customer opinions - people did not understand how important customer focus is. ClientoMannia decided to fix this and convey her values ​​to the audience, show people the problem - and launched a blog on this topic. Outcome? Tripling sales.

What content works at the dating stage:

• blog posts;
• webinars;
• guides and reference books;
• video;
• mailings;
• "big content": games, long reads, tools, parallax scrolling.

Pretty much everything that appears on the Moz blog is top-of-the-funnel content marketing. You will not find posts that convince people to use the company's services. Moz writers write because they want marketers to level up. And they expect that those who read article after article, at the right time, will remember Moz as experts who inspire confidence, and turn from readers into customers.

In the same field, the Texterra agency, which has created one of the highest quality Internet marketing blogs in Runet, is working - and working successfully. Since April 2015, they have switched to big content - mostly longreads. Look what it led to: an interesting case.

Real life example: Theo Chocolate

There is a chocolate maker Theo in Seattle. They sell chocolates of all shapes and forms, but they are known not for this, but for the tours they take in their own factory. They talk about the origin of chocolate, how cocoa beans are grown, and how bitter black grains turn into fragrant chocolate bars ...

Visitors leave the factory with the feeling that they are well versed in the production of chocolate. And from that moment on, they know that Theo not only understands their product, but also generously shares all the secrets. The company not only sells chocolate - but also brings up respect for it. And it does not skimp on probes.

This strategy greatly increases brand loyalty. And many Seattle residents think of Theo when they choose chocolate.

Rating: middle of the funnel

Target: direct customer acquisition
Tactics: solving existing problems

At the first stage, you will be recognized and trusted. At the second stage, they get acquainted with your product and find out how useful you are and what customer problems you can solve. And that means it's time for content that will allow a person to evaluate you and the product.

Moz at this stage communicate directly with potential customers and tell them exactly how they can help. Be careful: it's not time for direct advertising yet - people don't trust you enough. They want content that will allow them to evaluate your benefits.

The main thing is that a person does not drown in an ocean of information that should set you apart from your competitors. An important measure.

What people are looking for at this stage:

• cases;
• reviews and how-to guides for your product;
• demo video;
• product descriptions with detailed specifications.

Show how you are (your product or service - underline as appropriate) already solve customer problems. Examples? Full.

Moz has a special section on the site with short videos that show customers why a paid subscription is needed: it helps to solve specific tasks (for example, analyze competitors or improve positions in SERP).

Another example is the cases that Artyom Gorbunov's design bureau willingly shares: here are the tasks (the problem that the client came with), and the final solutions, and a little internal kitchen. It captivates, inspires confidence and shows how the bureau solves the problems of clients.

Artemy Lebedev's studio does the same.

Real life example: Toll House cookies from Nestlé

When Nestlé decided to discover the secret behind the famous Toll House cookie, they went the original route and printed the recipe on the packaging. And it justified itself: sales grew, housewives bought cookies for the sake of the recipe, and packaging became an effective advertising tool.

The main thing is not to forget that content in the middle of the sales funnel, as a rule, not directly focused on what you are selling. Your product is just way to achieve something more- whether it's an improvement in rankings or a crispy fresh cookie sheet with chocolate chips.

Conversion: bottom of the funnel

Target: making a purchase
Tactics: product description and unique value proposition

Here it is. End of courtship. The visitors have matured and are finally ready to become buyers. Time for the final throw.

This is the narrowest part of the funnel. Few make it here, but those who make it are already interested in your offer. There is little left: now they need to be convinced that you are worth it.

Impress them. Resolve the last doubts. Show that your product is what they need.

Prepare:

• reviews;
• reviews;
• description of a simple, understandable, trustworthy transaction process.

This is straight content. There is no need to play here. Give clear and honest descriptions of the product that will show how it is useful for the buyer. Bring the important properties of the product to the top and build the structure. Be direct and honest. Prepare graphs and tables comparing your products with those of your competitors.

And remember: content at the narrowest part of the funnel is content marketing for sales.

Real life example: Amazon

When fifteen years ago we first added books and CDs to the "basket", it seemed like a revolution. Now everything is different: the fewer steps separate a person from the moment of payment, the higher the conversion. If you give the opportunity to make a purchase in one click, you simplify and optimize the process. And it doesn't need a lot of content.

Retention: after the funnel

Target: repeat sales, customer retention, nurturing brand advocates
Tactics: help, support and support

The customer's journey through the funnel does not end with the purchase. It is not enough just to sell to the client - it is important to keep it.

At this stage, your task is to return a person, turn a one-time buyer into a permanent one.

To help you:

• customer support and reference documentation;
• Special offers;
• secrets and life hacks;
• engagement via e-mail;
• positive experience of using the product or service.

Real life examples: Tumblr and Boden

See how the Tumblr blogging platform is retaining customers. Ease of registration, extremely clear interfaces that lead the user by the hand and teach him how to use the service on the go.

Another good example of how to keep in touch with a client is letters from the British clothing manufacturer Boden. Even automatic shipment notifications are filled with care and help to strengthen customer loyalty. Take a look.

You don't have traffic problems. In principle, no one has them! The only reason for poor results is an inefficient marketing funnel.

Russell Brunson

It has always been terribly interesting for me to analyze the marketing of Western entrepreneurs from the field of infomarketing. Not the ones that promise to get rich quick or create successful business from scratch. And those who are involved in the implementation of tools and various strategies of Internet marketing in various fields and teach this.

There aren't many of these guys! These include Ryan Diess of Digital Marketer, Brian Dean of Backlinko, Brian Harris of Videofruit, Noah Kagan of AppSumo, and Russell Brunson of Dotcomsecrets. By the way, it is the latter who is the author of the concept of variable marketing funnels. Based on them, he created his own software - Click Funnels, a very convenient program for building the process of client generation.

In addition, Russell is one of the most successful internet marketers in the US. Therefore, when I got to his book Dotcomsecrets, I, of course, could not resist)

What is this book about

Russell's book itself is about the process of creating marketing funnels. I want to reassure you right away: these funnels work in most areas, and not just in the information business, as many people probably thought. Otherwise I wouldn't have written about this book.

The purpose of the book itself is to help you create a product and service assortment matrix and integrate it into your customer generation system. If you don't already have one, the book will also help you create it.

But first things first.

It all starts with a client profile

I know that many entrepreneurs will now begin to resent: again a portrait of a client?! I will say from experience: no matter how many master classes or courses I give, 99.9% of my listeners have an incorrectly drawn up portrait of a client. Why?

Because the client profile is not only:

• name and surname,
• age,
• geography,
• marital status,
• place of work and position.

When drawing up a client profile, your task is to find answers to 4 questions:

1. What problem does my product or service solve?
2. Who is the buyer for this product or service (group of people)?
3. Where is potential client?
4. What problems/questions does he regularly face?

Knowing the answers to these questions will make it much easier for you to plan your marketing activities and build customer acquisition system.

Ladder of value

The next step is very important. I especially recommend paying attention to representatives of the service sector. At this stage, you will understand the principles of creating a range of products and services using the example of Russell. Rather, on the example of his trip to the dentist.

The Value Ladder is a stage-by-stage transition of a client from a free and inexpensive product (the “Give a try” stage in the client generation system) to your main offer and expensive products and services.

This figure shows a ladder of value that a dentist could potentially use. In Russell's example, it looked like this:

• A dentist invites a potential client for a free teeth cleaning. (Step “Give it a try”.)
• During procedures, the dentist asks if the patient smokes or drinks coffee often? The patient is surprised by this question, since he does not smoke or drink. The reason for the question is that the patient's teeth have begun to turn yellow, and the dentist offers a set and program for teeth whitening. (The first sale of an inexpensive product in order to turn a potential customer into a real one.)
• After the patient agrees, the dentist asks if the patient wore orthodontic braces as a child? The reason for the question is that the lower teeth begin to shift, which usually happens with people who wore braces in childhood. (At this stage, the sale of the main product occurs.)
• After the session, the dentist prescribes a program of treatment and re-examinations. (Customer retention program.)

Thus, by guiding the client through all phases of client generation and using the value ladder, a skilled dentist increases the client's lifetime value, average check and personal profit.

I hope after this chapter you will not refuse to go to your dentists.

Attracting targeted traffic

It was not for nothing that we mentioned at the beginning that one of the most important questions in drafting is the question: where is your client located?

Knowing the answer to this question, you can easily run advertising campaigns and attract potential customers. Russell calls this type of traffic “ controlled traffic ". We buy ads and send a potential customer to our funnel. Everything rests only on the cost of the client and return on investment. The controlled type of traffic is one of the three types of traffic.

The second type of traffic is traffic that belongs to you . This is your subscription base, or the base of your customers. You just need to send them a letter, and a certain percentage of people will instantly respond to your offer. This type of traffic is the most valuable and most effective, as it contains "warm customers" - people who already know you and voluntarily left you their contacts.

The last type of traffic is uncontrolled traffic . This includes publications in social networks, organic traffic, guest posts. The key task that you should pursue in dealing with this type of traffic is getting contacts.

Starting warm-up and communication

Let's face it. Most customers will never buy anything from you or your company on their first visit to your site. Therefore, your key task in working with cold traffic is to get contacts and warm up. Or let's call it a more traditional term - relationship building.

To do this, you need to clearly know your target audience and their needs. Based on this, you will be able to build a starting warming up chain of letters. Otherwise, you risk running into angry unsubscribers.

Russell suggests defining a personal role for this:

• leader,
• traveler,
• evangelist,
• reluctant hero.

Depending on the chosen role, you will be able to create a storyline for the starting chain of letters, the purpose of which will be to create the highest possible trust from the client.

I can imagine how marketers from the b2b sphere are now grinning 🙂 Of course, slightly different principles work there, but the essence of the client generation process does not change from this.

Your task at this stage is to prepare the client for the first paid offer from your side.

Analysis of successful business models

I think that by the end of the previous paragraph, you were already mentally ready for the sweetest thing - sales. But, unfortunately, before moving on to them, we have one more task - the analysis of successful business models. At this stage, Russell suggests doing the most detailed analysis of competitors' activities:

• explore and buy their products/services;
• study their commercial offer;
• study their traffic channels;
• Completely track your marketing funnel.

What for? Then, in order not to reinvent the wheel, use working channels to attract customers and know how to stand out from competitors.

And now - to the funnels ...

7 phases of a marketing funnel

The next step is to create a marketing funnel. In fact, this process is dedicated to most of books. I will elaborate on the 7 phases of the marketing funnel. About the types of funnels, key elements and scripts you will already read on your own.

So, Russell identifies 7 key funnel stages:

#1 – Determining the temperature of a potential client

As we already know, in marketing all customers are divided into 3 types: cold, warm and hot. The principles of working with each type of traffic are also different.

Because cold traffic is people who don't know you or your company at all. They don't know about your products and don't know if you can be trusted.

Your task in working with this type of traffic is to please, build trust and get their contacts.

Warm traffic is people who come to you on a recommendation. They have already heard about you, they know about your products, but they have not studied them yet.

Your task when working with this type of traffic is to warm up interest in your product to the maximum, to convince and provide evidence that your product and your company are the best choice.

Hot traffic is people who know and trust you. They are familiar with your products, subscribe to your newsletter, interact with your content regularly.

Your job is to make them an offer they can't refuse.

As you understand, each of these three types of traffic requires its own marketing campaigns and individual approach. This is exactly what we are talking about in the second phase.

#2 – Customer Acquisition Cycle

The customer acquisition cycle is also different for each type of traffic. If for sale to hot leads (lead is a potential client) you just need to send an email with an offer, then for sale
cold leads need some patience

In general, selling to cold potential customers is like wooing a girl. You need to first build trust, arrange a bouquet and candy period, go to cafes and cinemas, and only after a while start thinking about a marriage proposal

This is, of course, a very exaggerated scheme, but it gives a clear understanding: you will never sell directly to a cold lead, unless you are selling an impulsive product.

Your task is to slowly move a cold lead through the stages of the marketing funnel and gradually warm up its temperature. Content, newsletters, cases, reviews, events, etc. will help you with this. You need to know the full cycle of the transaction: from the moment a cold lead first appears on your site to the moment of the first transaction. During this period, you should become the perfect boyfriend

#3 – Conversion of cold and warm traffic

In the process of client generation, there is one very important point– conversion of cold traffic into warm traffic, and conversion of warm traffic into hot traffic. In Internet marketing, the signal for such a conversion is the receipt of the lead's contacts: signing up for a newsletter, downloading free materials, contacting the company via the feedback form, requesting a free consultation, etc.

The higher your conversion rate, the higher your future sales will be.

#4 – Conversion to buyers

The next phase of the marketing funnel is converting traffic into customers. As Dan Kennedy says, "A customer is a customer and another customer."

There are people who are instantly ready to take out a credit card and pay you money. But here we need not to make a mistake and remember the story about the dentist and the ladder of value: we must sell an inexpensive product first ( stages “Give a try” and “Sales”) so that a potential client loses the status of “potential” and becomes a real client.

This is a very important point. Since the client has paid you money (even the minimum), his attitude towards you has changed dramatically.

In the West, this scheme works flawlessly, but there are very few domestic cases. As a rule, such a system is used by online stores, and only a few in the real sector.

On the other hand, no one bothers you to try it and evaluate its effectiveness.

#5 – Identify Hyperactive Clients

Again, remember our ladder of value and the story about the dentist. These are people who have a pressing problem and want to solve it here and now.

Your job is to give them that opportunity. Catch up and give again 🙂 The sooner you find such customers, the higher your profit will be.

#6 – Repeat sales and customer retention

The next phases of the marketing funnel are related to customer retention and repeat sales. At this stage, your task will be to maintain relationships, receive feedback from customers, initiate word of mouth. In this phase, the marketing funnel can change and a new offer can be sent to existing customers.

The key goal is to make repeat sales.

#7 – Selling Expensive Products and Services

And finally - the most delicious. You probably have expensive products and services in your assortment. Those that require preliminary consultations and communication with the client. Those for which one commercial offer is not enough.

Russell calls this stage "Changing the Environment". This means that in order to sell expensive products and services, you need to forget about traditional sales tools and get the client to meet you. Skype, a live meeting, a phone call - and the client is much more willing to listen to your offer.