Marketing a product or a service requires in-depth knowledge of various processes that engage prospective consumers.
As a marketer, once you have identified the target audience, you need to learn ways to attract, interact and convert them into customers.
This stage where interaction starts is precisely the point where you need the tools like Lead Generation Funnels.
In this post, let’s try to figure out the following:
What are the Lead Generation Funnels
Stepwise process for building the Lead Generation Funnels for beginners
How to assess the performance of Lead Generation Funnels
So, let’s begin!
What are Lead Generation Funnels?
You develop a product or tailor a service plan as a business owner. This process is preceded by identifying the need, market size, and demographics.
Once you have completely understood who and where to sell to, you arrive at the process of informing prospective customers that you are there to help!
This announcement is nothing but the introduction of business and the lead generation stage.
Regarding offline marketing processes, lead generation was a field activity where the executives introduced the product or service door-to-door and tried to gauge buyer sentiment. In online marketing, this activity is translated into a systematic process called creating lead generation funnels.
Thus, the lead generation funnel is a tailor-made promotional tool that helps clients differentiate prospective customers from casual enquirers.
Working on Lead Generation Funnels
Suppose you have collected data that comprises people with varied demographic details. This data pool is at the top of the lead generation funnel. It comprises people with little to immense interest in the product or service you intend to market.
A funnel-like structure is created based on the various actions the people take in response to marketing ad copy or promotional events.
Stage 1: Create Awareness
The audience becomes aware of the new launch and may show trust by signing the dotted lines right then or may buy time to decide about their next step.
Stage 2: Show Interest
Let’s take an example of a marketing event organized by a realtor. Not all visitors jump onto the negotiation table and sign the deal. They show interest by filling out the form or giving their contact details for following up.
These are the two main stages that form the top of the funnel.
Stage 3: Show Desire or Appraise Options
At this stage, the middle funnel begins. Here, the customer will make more inquiries. They may approach the marketing cell to learn about the ongoing offer.
Or, they may try to put forth some conditions that may take the interaction closer to the conversion stage.
Here, the marketer will try to solve all queries and settle the doubts.
The marketers may employ explainer videos, video-based testimonials, site visits or product demos, etc., to clear doubts and to arrive at agreeable terms.
Stage 4: Take Action Or Confirm The Interest
It is the last but one stage of closing the deal. The customer and business representatives exchange the documents expressing interest or showing intent to purchase.
In the case of real estate marketing, the prospective buyer may give the token amount or get the payment terms finalized as agreed upon mutually.
The deal is still not fully processed and requires a little persuasion and follow-up.
Stage 5: Monetizing The Efforts Made Conversion
It is the final act of a marketer’s show. The buyers complete the payment plan, sign the contract, or have final possession of the product or inventory.
In the case of the service industry, the businesses get the consent for dispensing of service and start the process of fulfilling the order.
Why Understanding The working of the lead generation funnel is important.
The biggest advantage of a lead generation funnel is that it equips the marketer with information that proves helpful in conversion.
Marketers can segment their target audience by segregating the customers as per their interest level.
Thus, their ways of persuasion differ from stage to stage. The knowledge of the LG funnel helps them direct their energies to those who are more interested in the offer than others.
Stepwise Process For Building Lead Generation Funnels For Beginners
Lead funnel is another name for lead generation funnel. If you are a beginner in digital marketing, you may feel overwhelmed by such terms.
In actuality, the processes are quite simple. Anyone with little experience can design the lead funnel and have a result-oriented marketing workflow in hand.
You may take the help of the following pointers to design your lead funnel helpful to your business:
Step 1: Generate And Populate The Contact Points
The contact points can be phone, email, an online contact form, or even a promotional canopy at the site where you expect the massive footfall of the target audience.
Through various promotional events, both offline and online, you encourage people to enrich you with crucial information pieces like their interests and expectations.
Pre-order surveys, booking the service, etc., are the crucial tools that enable businesses to have immediate results.
Step 2: Engage Interested People
You will find the audience ready to engage through their responses and gestures. The best ways to engage such people are:
Provide them with case studies, e-books, e-brochures, etc.
Propose to interested people the idea of free trials, etc.
Start email campaigns where you send flyers, new offers, and welcome notes to record and assess the importance.
All these activities allow you to tell the interested people apart from those who are not so enthusiastic.
At this stage, businesses put forth themselves as a solution provider and try to help people understand the void in life that the product or service is designed to fill.
Step 3: Conversions
This coincides with the bottom of the lead generation funnel. As a business development representative, the job is to give a gentle push to buy the idea.
It can be done through extended trials, repeating discount offers, introducing new offers, etc.
The success at this stage is determined by the numbers achieved. Depending upon the customer journey, the efficacy of Lead funnels is determined. Let’s understand the assessment of the Lead generation funnel in the next segment.
How To Assess The Performance of Lead Generation Funnels
The objectives of the lead generation funnel at different points are typically unique and, at some times, overlapping too. Here is how one can assess the performance of the lead generation funnel created.
Map The Customer Journey
Was it at the very first meeting that you could close the deal? If yes, then that customer is loyal. You can feed him with a lot of information and request to bring more people to understand your business.
Collecting customer responses and understanding their expectations helps study the journey through various stages. So, collecting and assessing responses through AI and ML-enabled tools is beneficial. This approach helps minimize human-led error and makes the funnel close to accurate.
Provide Engaging Content
Putting customers at the focus of the scene is very important. Thus, as a marketer, you design messages, ads, and other consumables in a customer-centric manner. A more personalized approach to creating engaging content can be tried by rolling out email marketing and SMS marketing campaigns.
A better level of engagement can be achieved by:
Studying customer expectation
Competitor study
Following the learnings from successful marketing campaigns
Creating personalized offers and related content
Be where the customers are – this philosophy always works when at the content-designing stage. Thus, effective content marketing is another key to success at this stage.
Spread Your Reach
More than 55% of marketers swear by the effectiveness or responsiveness of email marketing.
Other ways to improve the expanse of the marketing campaign are:
Start social media campaigns
Blur the line between offline and online marketing
Have a uniform voice throughout the branding campaign, hashtags are quite in at social media, for example!
Use all possible platforms, such as blogs, websites, social media, etc., to register your presence.
Try paid advertising – it provides a cushion to efforts initially.
Once you have designed an efficient content marketing campaign, numbers may pour in sooner than expected.
You can try analytics support to understand how the content is received and perceived. It can help understand what else could be done to plug loopholes if any.
Summing Up
Making a lead generation funnel is a conscious effort. The organic behaviour
of the customer forms the fodder for its formation.
Building awareness is the key expectation of this systematic process.
Also, speeding up conversions becomes possible as the eye is on the customer journey.
People tend to follow peers or go solo on their respective paths – in both cases; the LG funnel allows the marketers to design the engagement model with a sale-oriented approach.
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