Marketing has many levels and involves a variety of different tasks, and in order to create a successful process, you need an organized marketing funnel. As we all know, a funnel is wide at the top and gets narrower as it goes down, and so should your marketing plan. A marketing funnel is about taking incremental steps one by one until you turn people into customers and eventually build a loyal following. So in order to create a funnel, you must understand its make-up. Below is an outline to give you an example of what a funnel should consist of.
1. Generate Leads (SEO)
In order to get more visitors to your site or attract new customers to your store, you need ways to lure them in. This can be done in multiple ways including but not limited to, writing blogs, creating advertisements, staying active on social media, or offering sales and promotions. Gather information from those who visit your site or those who come to your store so you can keep in touch with them and establish a relationship. If you have a list of e-mail addresses you can send promotions and company news and encourage people to come back again. You may also want to consider rewarding your best customers with a coupon or free gift in order to create loyalty and a possible good referral. Other forms of lead generation can include direct mail, events, guest blog posting, and video marketing.
2. Convert Visitors to Customers
Once you gain the attention of your audience, you need to convert them into customers. Make sure to add a call to action on your website in order to encourage customers to take the next step. This can be anything from placing an add to cart button on your website to creating a link for people to click for more information. People need to be given the opportunity to make a purchase or take further action or they may not do it on their own. Creating landing pages are vital to increasing your conversion rate. Whenever you create a call to action there should be a button or link to allow your visitors to take that action. This link should lead them to a specific landing page related to their goal instead of directing them to your homepage. If you successfully design and implement specific landing pages, your leads will quickly turn into buying customers. It may sound simple, but you should always include your phone number somewhere on your homepage. This allows people to easily contact you without visiting a separate page. Making your website user friendly and well organized can also help your conversion rates. If the first thing people see when they visit your website is a huge mess of words with no real direction of what to do, people are just going to leave. If people can easily find what they are looking for they will not only be more willing to purchase right then and there, but may even come back in the future.
3. Evaluate Analytics
Once you have gone through all the motions of gaining loyal customers, you need to take a look at your analytics to see what you can improve upon. This includes not only the amount of people visiting your site, but how long they stay there and which pages they visit the most. If you notice that most people that visit your site end up leaving in 2 seconds, you definitely have a problem. Check to see how people access your site (did they click an ad, find you through a Google search, etc.). If the only people who leave right away have found you from an ad, maybe you need to redesign your ad to make it more relevant. If you are attracting a massive amount of visitors, but no one is purchasing anything, maybe you need to check the navigation of your site or if your shopping cart is working properly. The main way to improve the success of your website is by evaluating your analytics and making the necessary adjustments. If you want to measure how effective your social media efforts are, sign up for Klout and it will give you a score with details of your influence. There are multiple resources that can be used to gather this information, but no matter what type of analytic software or service you use, it is important to analyze the results on a regular basis.
Marketing can be tricky to master and requires a lot of trial and error, but formulating a marketing funnel helps to break down the process. The steps your business takes will most likely be much different from that of another, but they all serve the same purpose. We all aim to be successful and create a business that will last, and a carefully crafted marketing funnel can aid in this success. If you ever need assistance in creating a more effective website, designing landing pages, or other marketing needs, Cimetta Design is always here to help.
