It is no secret that the popularity of the internet has made many businesses change their marketing strategies. Have you been keeping up with the curve, or are you feeling like you have been left in the dust? There is nothing to be ashamed of if you are leaning more towards the latter – coming here today is a great first step in changing that!
Lead and sales funnels have been around for a long time, but they have evolved to fit into the digital age. If you are entirely unfamiliar with digital marketing, I do recommend that you do some research onto it. I will get into the basics here today, but there is so much content out there I cannot possibly hope to cover it all.
That being said, my goal today is to give you some of the base knowledge that you need and set you on the right path to establishing your own lead funnel. It is easy to underestimate how much they matter, but once you give it a try you will not want to go back, trust me on that!
What is Digital Marketing?
Now, it is probably pretty obvious from the term what it means, but while at its core it means to advertise in a virtual space, there is more that goes into it. I start here because it is critical you know what this is and how to do it to allow you to formulate your funnel. The top of that funnel is usually figuring out your target audience, which plays into this.
When you think about your “average” internet user, who do you picture? For many of us, the image of a teenager comes to mind. You know the ones, always on their phones texting or playing games. Did you know that they are far from the only demographic that we can cater too, though? In fact, many other avenues are far more profitable.
For example, parents are a huge audience that a lot of companies want to market to. After all, they are usually in the market for products geared towards children and adults. Once you learn certain techniques, you can cultivate advertisement campaigns that are designed to specifically target your target audience.
Getting into the Funnel: Why Does Audience Matter?
To put it simply, it matters because advertising to people who have no potential of becoming customers is a waste of money. This is especially true if you go with pay-per-click marketing. So, your goal should be to find leads that you think are quality.
That just means that you think they will become customers, even if they do not on their first visit to your page. That is where the rest of the funnel comes into play. If you are just starting out, I recommend you run a few surveys or something of the like to see what age groups and genders are interested in your products. This can help you narrow down this category.
The Next Step: Identify a Problem that You are Solving for Consumers
When you are going to purchase something, usually one of your first thoughts is “why do I need this thing?” This goes for both products and services. That is why you have to consider the problem that you are solving for your customers.
I learn best via examples, so I will provide you with some. Say your product is a website designing software. The problem for most people is that they do not know how to code. However, you should not hinge your entire campaign on just that. Rather, you could add that it makes it easy to create a webpage even for advanced programmers.
That is just one glimpse into how it can work, though. Obviously, you should use this technique with your own business and what you are looking to sell. Additionally, you can try to market to more than one issue – often, a product can offer solutions to a variety of co-existing issues. Just think about that as you construct your funnel. You can find some more examples here, https://www.clickfunnels.com/blog/lead-generation-funnel/, if you are still feeling uncertain.
Create a “Lead Magnet”
This is where we get to the good stuff. Your goal with a “lead magnet” is to create some sort of interactive pop up or cookie that has potential customers sign up for a service with their email or phone number. This is the crux of lead generation, so make sure you pay attention!
You could do this in a variety of ways. One of the most popular right now is newsletters. It is hard to find an e-commerce website or even a brick-and-mortar store that does not offer some sort of email newsletter these days, and there is good reason for that. If you include enticing sales or coupons, or some form of incentive to sign up, you will get a lot more people to do so and thus create leads.
Video courses, e-books, and cheat sheets are some other common methods of executing this concept. It will probably depend on your own business and what your goal is, of course. So, consider that as you decide what to make, and touch base with your salespeople as well to keep them in the loop.
A final note I would like to make for these, and for this article today, is that your magnet should have a landing page where it is featured in. Often this takes form in some sort of pop up or menu sliding down when someone first clicks on your webpage.
However, I have seen it implemented in other ways too. Sometimes it is when a consumer is going to check out, or if they are going to click off the page. Just decide what you think would work best for your company and products, and always consider who your target audience is and how they will react. After all, different age groups tend to view ads differently.
