When you own a business, the most important thing is your revenue. You can’t keep your business running without revenue. Before you start your business, a lot of people assume that your customers will find you on their own, and be interested in buying your product without needing prompting from you. In most cases, that’s not how your customers will act. So, how do you increase revenue and create a successful business? You need a sales funnel.
What is a sales funnel?
What in the world is a sales funnel? It’s basically the process that your customers take when deciding whether or not to purchase your product or services. Your website or store should be optimized to lead your customers through the different stages of the sales funnel, reassuring their decision every step of the way, to ensure maximum sales. By being aware of the different steps of the sales funnel, you can evaluate why and when customers are deciding not to purchase your products or services, and make your business more successful.
The seven steps of a sales funnel
- Awareness
This is the step where your customers become aware of you, your company, or services. You want this to be a positive and inviting experience. This could be because they saw a billboard or ad, a friend introduced them to you, or they drove past your storefront.
- Interest
You want your business to be interesting enough that they immediately want to invest more energy into your business. Looking into your products and services further, basically.
- Evaluation
During this phase, your customers may do a bit of research, looking into your competitors and seeing if your product or service is what they’re ultimately looking for.
- Decision
This is when your customers make the decision to move forward with the transaction.
- Purchase
And finally, they purchase your goods or services! But it doesn’t end here.
- Reevaluation
After the customer has initially purchased your products, they will have a chance to look back at their purchase and decide whether or not it was worth their time or money. This process is reevaluation, which is immediately followed by a decision of whether or not to repurchase your products.
- Repurchase
Whether this is coming back to your store to get another product, renewing a contract, or reordering the same product again. You want your customers to love you from their first interaction with you, and come back to you over and over again!