Sales and Marketing Conversion Funnels - Ultimate Get Started Guide

SocialZoomFactor · Sales and Marketing Conversion Funnels – How to Get Started

One of the best ways to attract more of your dream customers and turn them into paying customers is to learn how to create and optimize sales and marketing conversion funnels.

Have you heard about marketing and sales conversion funnels but not sure what they are or how exactly to use them to grow your business? If yes, you definitely landed on the right blog post today.

The Ultimate Guide to Sales and Marketing Conversion Funnels

This comprehensive marketing conversion funnel guide includes the following:

Sales and marketing conversion funnels in a nutshell – how to convert more lookers into buyers!
Ultimate Guide to Get Started with Sales and Marketing Conversion Funnels – Grab the beautiful visual guide Here
Simple explanation of how to get started using sales and marketing conversion funnels
Podcast with more in depth explanation of key learning topics to get started with sales and marketing conversion funnels
Additional supporting resources such as our Buyer Persona Worksheet, 5-Day Buyer Persona Bootcamp Virtual Training, Content Calendar Template and more. See the “Supporting Resources” section at the bottom of this article.

What is a Sales and Marketing Conversion Funnel?

A sales and marketing conversion funnel describes the stages a buyer of any product or service goes through leading to a purchase. Marketers call this the buyer's journey. It is the journey of the buyer researching, discovering, choosing and finally purchasing a product or service.

A conversion funnel is divided into the top of funnel, middle funnel and bottom of funnel. This guide will cover an introduction to each of these primary stages in detail. The supporting podcast episode also digs into the key metrics and content to help you optimize each stage of the funnel.

Did you know that the average buyer researches and consumes 10-12 pieces of content before making a buying decision?

A sales and marketing conversion funnel can help ensure that your target buyer finds your content, consumes your content and hopefully chooses to buy from YOU and your business!

Why Businesses Need a Sales and Marketing Conversion Funnels

Although many marketers and business owners who are new to digital and social marketing may think that by simply adding social media to their bag of ninja marketing tricks, all of their problems will be solved. It does not work this way!

Social media and digital marketing requires your greatest asset which is time. Then add content creation, content production, audience research, paid media (advertising) and the list goes on…. and you could potentially waste a LOT of time and money if you don't understand the buyer's journey to make sure you target, engage and convert the right prospects to paying customers.

One of the absolute best ways to increase both conversions and return on investment (ROI) on ALL of your marketing is to learn how to build, use and optimize sales and marketing conversion funnels.

The sales and marketing conversion funnel can be easily visualized by marketers. This helps even a new marketer break down and better understand the step-by-step process of how to turn leads into customers. It also helps veteran marketers get their stakeholders and executive management on board with their marketing programs by more easily explaining to them the importance of designing the best possible experience for their target buyers.

Sales are often negatively impacted by one specific area in a conversion funnel. This is why focusing on the end-to-end marketing conversion funnel helps marketers not only identify those problem areas, but also optimize every stage of the buyers journey! Boom! This is how ROI is achieved!

Top 3 Things You MUST Have Before Starting the Development of Your Sales and Marketing Conversion Funnel

1. Know your audience!

If you are not targeting the right customer, anything you do with marketing is all for not and a waste of time and money.

Action: Grab our Buyer Persona Worksheet Template Pack (editable templates for B2B and B2C)

2. Consistently create CONTENT to attract, inspire and convert lookers to buyers!

This blog, my podcasts and videos are loaded with resources to help you maximize your cotnent marketing results.

Action: Grab my Content Calendar Template for some sanity and to help you create a drumbeat of content flowing to continuously attract your dream customers!

3. Have the right MINDSET!

Perfection is the enemy of really good. The best performing sales and marketing conversion funnels had many failed test runs before they started working like a high performing lead generation machine! Test test test!! Be patient.

3 Major Stages of the Sales and Marketing Conversion Funnel

Top of Funnel

The top of funnel is less about YOU, your product and services. Instead it is EVERYTHING to do with your BUYER, their interest and needs.

This is the stage of the buyers journey where your dream customer is just starting to do research about the product or service they need. They many not at this phase even know what they need.

Content created for this phase of the buyers journey must be buyer centric, easy to consume and of course VISUAL when possible. Snackable bite size content your target buyer can easily consume and learn from work best in this stage.

Your top two goals for the top of funnel are:

1. Drive brand awareness

2. Generate leads!

Middle of Funnel

The middle of the funnel is where your dream customer becomes more educated on their options.

They will learn the most popular brands and options available to them.

If you are lucky, they will put you on top of the list as they research and dig deeper.

All of the data insights the buyer has gathered to this point help them narrow down options and begin to prioritize their top choices as well as filter out brands that don't interest them. Hopefully you make the cut! :)

Content that works like magic in the middle of the funnel include resources such as worksheets, templates, white papers, tutorial videos, and basically anything that engages and educates them.

It's worth testing longer form content in this phase to see how it converts. As your buyer narrows down buying options, they are likely willing to spend more time learning about their favorites.

Bottom of Funnel

The bottom of the funnel is where your dream customer has definitely narrowed down their top favorite brands.

It is at this point they start digging into reviews, testimonials. They are seeking an understanding of what they will receive and what their actual experience will be.

Remarketing / retargeting advertising methods work well at this phase to make sure you are staying top of mind with customers at this stage!

Top Metrics to Optimize Your Sales and Marketing Conversion Funnel in Each Stage

Take a listen to episode #280 of the Social Zoom Factor podcast to learn the top metrics plus more details to plan, build and optimize your sales and marketing conversion funnel on iTunes, Spotify, Soundcloud or Stitcher

What you will learn in this 35 minute podcast episode:

What is a sales and marketing conversion funnel
Why you need a sales and marketing conversion funnel
The 3 major phases of the funnel that you need to plan for
Top metrics to track in each phase of the funnel to optimize for maximum sales and ROI
Best content types and mediums to use in each phase of the sales and marketing conversion funnel
Loads of tips and tricks to streamline your efforts in planning, building, launching and optimizing sales and marketing conversion funnels

How do I know how to help you optimize your sales and marketing conversion funnel?

Our agency, Marketing Nutz has been serving clients for 10 years – small business up to Fortune 10 brands. We help our clients optimize brand awareness, leads and sales with integrated digital, social and brand conversation platforms that connect even the most unsexy brands with customers in meaningful ways.

You don't have to have a sexy brand or know everything about marketing and sales to maximize your efforts online. If you are investing in these technologies, you might as well make the most of it and achieve the highest ROI possible!

Before starting Marketing Nutz, I spent 15+ years in corporate America for Fortune 10 brands to small medium businesses driving multi-million dollar enterprise software, hardware, services and consumer brand marketing plus everything in between! I was building social communities online before we had the pure luxury of social networks such as Facebook. During my almost 8 year tenure at Sun Microsystems (now Oracle), I was the marketing director for an enterprise services line that went from a “test project” to $180,000,000 in annual revenue in 18 months using the EXACT same strategies I'm sharing with you today!

I speak and train across the globe and work with businesses of all sizes, from startups to franchise organizations to Fortune 10 brands. The number one question I always hear is… “Pam, how can I get more sales using social media and digital marketing?” Learning how to target the right audience and then guide them through a buyer-centric sales and marketing conversion funnel will ignite your results.