Business Funnels | The Basics Of Funnel Marketing

Business FunnelsAlthough it has been known by various names over the years, the basic theory behind business funnels & funnel marketing is a way of demonstrating through a diagram how a successful business can move potential customers into paying customers. This is vital for many companies, and especially in the online commerce field, finding out where you are losing customers can provide excellent feedback on how you can improve. Depending on what you are selling and what your model is, the way your business funnel will work can be slightly different.

 

The Stages Of The Purchasing Funnel

As you will know, the funnel is effectively a cone shape that gets narrower as you move downwards, and that is effectively what happens in the purchasing funnel, as fewer people move from the initial stage into the next steps. The first stages in the funnel are awareness and opinion, where your marketing and advertising for your products or services are seen by potential customers, and they then have an initial opinion. Some people will not move beyond this stage, while more will move into the evaluation stage, and may view products on your website, or make enquiries. Then fewer customers again move into the final stages of commitment and purchase.

The Differences Between Online Funnels And Real-Life Commerce

Because there are differences in the way that people market their services online as opposed to normal retail stores, the funnel in online marketing can be slightly different. People can go away to think about purchases, or may research without contacting the company directly, so this can allow companies to build up their profile and provide additional material that can help people evaluate, helping to move more into the commitment stage of the funnel. However, with online funnels, there are a growing number of tools that allow companies to measure their purchasing funnel, and where they can improve.

Measuring Where A Site Loses Potential Customers

There are a range of different tools that will allow you to measure the steps on your website and your adverts that will give you information on where more customers are dropping out from your site. These tools allow you to analyze how many people visited the site, how many would then have gone into a page to examine a product, and then to see how many people added the product to their basket and how many completed a purchase. Although some funnels may have different stages that can be measured, ultimately these tools can allow you to focus your attention on where you are losing potential sales.

Driving Conversions For Your Business

The conversion from potential customer to paying customer is key for the success of any business, so the data available is vital to helping you to get the best success from your funnel. Many tools will also allow you to track where your customers are coming from, so if they are coming in from adverts or particular referrers this can be one area where you can consider where to focus your marketing budget. Also, if you are seeing people add products to their basket, but aren’t completing the purchase, it can also be worth considering this part of the process to see what improvements you can make here.

If you want to know how Business Funnels should play a key role within a landing page, RC Website Group offers a free consultation that will help you understand what your next step should be.

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Tags: Business Funnels, Funnel Marketing, Sales Funnels