Most businesses rely on referral leads or leads who are already in ‘buy-mode’. Those people are just a tiny 3% of your target market. So how do you tap into the other 97% of prospects? Using two tools: a lead generation website and a well-oiled, high converting sales funnel.
Most businesses’ websites are just sources of information. Even if they are interactive, responsive, and have all the latest motion pictures and features, they are not much more than pretty brochures that often divert visitors away from being a hot lead.
However, a sales funnel paired with a lead generating website turns ice-cold traffic into piping hot leads.
A website without a sales funnel converts 1-3% of its traffic; a website with a sales funnel converts more than 30% of its traffic.
A sales funnel is a focused path and sequence of events that takes browsers with low purchase intent to self-identify as prospects. They land on a low-commitment capture page and if they are in the 3% who are hyperactive buyers, they are hot leads and will take the further step in the sequence. The key is to make that next step a valuable one for the prospect by providing value in advance so that warm leads accept the next offer too.
The research phase
Start with a solid understanding of your market and customers. You need to figure out your customers’ desires, fears, hopes, wishes, and dreams. It won’t surprise you that many businesses don’t do the research required to understand their customer. Instead, they make assumptions and sell to themselves.
Move beyond the obvious and work out how your audience thinks, feels, and acts. Your research should include reading forums, comment sections, reviews and social media to understand the language your audience uses. Identify their concerns and questions, and seek out trends.
Organise your research into common themes and issues. You’ll start to notice the gaps and shortcomings of products and services already on the market, including your own. Addressing these gaps is the key to creating an offer that’s too good to resist and will leave your competitors in the dust.
Building a funnel
After weeks of research, you’ll be ready to build your sales funnel. The goal of a funnel is to fill the top of it with as many leads as you can, that you then nurture and pre-qualify those leads before you even speak with them on the phone.
To attract potential customers into the funnel, you need a lead magnet – a low-commitment, high-value content offer – such as a free report, video training, webinar, cheat sheet, etc in exchange for their contact information. People don’t willingly give away their confidential information – so this offer has to be irresistible. Answer all their questions before they need to ask them, and take away their fears.
Once customers are in the funnel, you need to keep them interested. Use what you know about your market to continue to educate them and address the desires, fears, hopes, wishes, and dreams you initially identified. People are more likely to make purchase decisions when they feel educated and are confident in your expertise. So if you’re content isn’t educating – it isn’t going to turn your prospects into customers.
The more your prospects are willing to give you, the more invested they are in your brand and the more likely they are to convert. A webinar, for example, is the highest converting educational offer you can provide because it requires prospects to give you their time and attention. In this day and age – this is a really hard thing to do. The prospects who sit through a 90-minute webinar essentially have been convinced of your authority and expertise in your space, and are not only much closer to being converted into a sale, they will start becoming advocates for your business.
A good webinar won’t be a hard sell if you are providing genuine value to your prospect.
The aim of the journey through the funnel is to change the dynamics and psychology of your relationship with your prospects. Instead of you chasing clients, they chase you. A good funnel is a mechanism that compels the most interested visitors to not only put up their hand to show you who they are, but also give you the means to contact them.
Once you’ve built the right system, it will do the hard yards to follow up and deliver content that educates and pre-qualifies your prospects. By the time your sales team speaks with prospects, they’ll be ready, willing and able to do business.
Understanding how to turn traffic into leads into itching-to-buy customers is the key to creating an effective sales funnel. While this sounds simple, the results are truly profound. A website without a sales funnel converts 1-3% of its traffic; a website with a sales funnel converts more than 30% of its traffic. Do you want to increase your conversion rate tenfold?
See also: What King Kong’s founder is doing to outpace other digital agencies in the race for growth and A ‘Spielbergian’ website is no sales guarantee.
About the author:
Sabri Suby is the founder and Head of Growth at King Kong, Australia’s fastest growing full-service digital marketing agency that uses true ROI and only charges for success. Based in Melbourne, King Kong has clients across Australia and overseas. Its services include SEO, CRO, PPC, Facebook Advertising, web design and landing pages.
