These Are The Reasons You Need A Sales Funnel Today

If you’re selling anything online, you need a sales funnel.

Whether you’re giving away a free product, or selling a really expensive service having a well-optimized sales funnel is crucial to the growth of your business.

This is prevalent if you’re just starting, or you’ve already been an established company for years and are just now looking to move portions of your company online.

These Are The Reasons You Need A Sales Funnel Today:

Customers Are Skeptical
Most Don’t Purchase Instantly
Sales Funnels Will Give You The Ability To Build Trust
The Money Is In The List (Email List) And They Convert Like Crazy
Increased Lifetime Value Per Customer

In case you are unaware what a sales funnel is, it is basically an automated process of taking your potential customers from complete stranger to buyer.

They usually consist of a linear traffic source, coming in from one end, and having to follow an action before moving onto the next stage or process in your sales funnel.

You Can Check Out This Amazing Article On Sales Funnels By Entrepreneur Magazine

I’ve also added a visual representation below:

Want To See Some Example? Check Out: What Does A Sales Funnel Look Like?

So what are the reasons that you need a sales funnel?

I’ve broken it down into 5 reasons that I will explain below.

1. Customers Are Skeptical

Even though most companies offer some type of online sales, and e-commerce is a massive industry.

It doesn’t change the fact that people are increasingly cautious about what they purchase online or where they enter their credit card information.

Making online sales isn’t as easy as sending people to a landing page and expecting people to purchase.

People are doing their homework, looking at reviews, and naturally gravitating towards huge brands they have learned to trust.

Implementing sales funnels in your business gives you the means to do that.

You can nurture the audience that lands on your pages into a paying customer instead of just expecting people who don’t have any idea who you are to purchase from you.

2. Most Don’t Purchase Instantly

A study was done by SalesForce, and surprisingly on average it actually takes 6 – 8 points of contact with a potential customer before you can really even expect to make a sale.

You need a streamlined process where you’ll be able to prime customers for actually making purchases without you actually having to physically do the footwork for each customer.

Having a sales funnel will allow you to automate the process of priming your customers and putting your best salesman forward 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

Which will help you build rapport and build trust with each person who starts to go through the stages of your sales process.

3. The Ability To Build Trust

Sales funnels will give you the ability to build trust, develop a customer base, and create brand awareness.

61% of businesses stated that 50% of their revenue comes from repeat business.

People buy from brands they’ve come to know and trust in the quality of their products and or services.

Even at times if those brands have higher prices or even if they could acquire a higher quality product at the same price, people would choose to purchase from a brand they’re comfortable with.

A well-optimized sales funnel gives you the means to build trust in various ways such as:

Video
Email Follow-up
Messenger
A place to display testimonials/reviews
Providing value and or perceived value

The main job of your sales funnel is to diminish any aversions that your customers actually have about making a purchase from you.

Whether that is right away, or in a few weeks from now.

Following up through various channels that became possible because of your sales funnel will help ensure that eventually, you’ll be able to make a sale whilst providing actual value to your customer.

Read – 27 Statistics About Repeat Business!

4. The Money Is In The Email List

There is a reason that virtually every business that you come across utilizes email marketing, and that’s because it works.

And the customer base through email lists actually converts like crazy.

On average you can expect to make $1.00 for every person that you have on your email list.

Could you imagine being a huge brand, that has the ability to send out a singular email to targeted demographics and generate hundreds, thousands, or even millions in revenue from a single email?

The benefits of email marketing or not only for repeat business but amazing for warming up and building relationships with customers prior to purchase.

Not utilizing a sales funnels or a landing page to build your email list is not only leaving potential revenue on the table when it comes to repeat business, but it is also costing you the opportunity to follow up with cold audiences and build relationships with them.

5. Increased Lifetime Value Per Customer

A sales funnel will give you the ability to not only increase the chances of being able to monetize on a customer once.

But it will open the opportunity to continue to monetize on them for months or even years to come.

Say you have a specific sales funnel created around a type of promotion, and while doing that sale you build a list/following of customers who’ve purchased from you.

You can then follow-up with them through email marketing or other social channels when you promote something similar or have a discount on a product that you think that demographics of people would also be interested in.

This ties in with the money being in the email list, but sales funnels in the platform as to which you’ll build an email list whilst making sales.

Related Post: Why Landing Pages Can Help Your Business?

Up-Sell & Down-Sell

A sales funnel will allow you to plug-in similar products that pair well with whatever It is you’re promoting.

Not every person will purchase an up-sell or even a down-sell, but some will, and instead of purchasing the single thing that you planned on in the beginning they’ve made multiple purchases.

Anything from a compilation of multiple products that go together or even more units of the same exact product at a discount can work wonders at generating more revenue per customer that goes through your sales funnel.

A good representation of this would be the section that Amazon has where it displays ‘Customers Also Bought’.

Related Post: A Guide To Indexing Landing Pages

Summary

Stopping marketing to save money is like trying to stop your watch to save time.

Sales funnels are crucial to online marketing, and the relevancy of them is only going to continue to grow as more and more businesses move online.

They are by no means a new strategy being implemented in businesses across the globe, however, the term sales funnel is becoming more normalized even if the principles behind them have been utilized for decades.

The Top 5 Reasons You Need Sales Funnels Today!

Customers Are Skeptical – People rarely purchase from people that they don’t know, and do their homework before making a purchase. A sales funnel will help alleviate any aversion they might have.
Most Don’t Purchase Instantly – You need a means to follow-up and build a relationship with your potential customers because on average it takes 6 to 8 points of contact before someone even makes a purchase.
Ability To Build Trust – People buy from brands and businesses that they’ve learned to trust. To the point that some will become die-hard fans and only buy that brand. A sales funnel will increase the chances of being a brand such as that.
The Money Is In The List – Email Marketing has been prevalent since the ’90s and is the most widely used digital marketing throughout every industry throughout the entire world. If you’re not building an email list you’re leaving serious money online the table, not only for repeat business but for warming up customers to the possibility of making a purchase in the first place.
Increased Life Time Value – A sales funnel will give you the ability to package a plethora of similar products into one linear sales process, or even multiple units of the same product at a discounted price to increase the potential revenue for each person who goes through your sales funnel. As well as give you the means to monetize on them for months or years to come through other social channels after they’ve already made a purchase.

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Sources:

Five Stars – 27 Statistics About Repeat Business
SalesForce – 6 – 8 Touches Of Turning Leads Into Customers
Entrepreneur – What Is A Sales Funnel?