In today’s competitive market, businesses need to convince customers to make a purchase. Using an effective sales funnel is a good way to do this, as it allows you to guide potential customers through a multi-stage buying process.
However, the difficulty is in preventing customers from dropping off part way through the process, and before they make that purchase. Nurturing visitors through each stage of their buying decision can help ensure a higher-converting sales funnel that doesn’t only attract leads, but also leads to an increase in revenue.
In this article, we’re going to give insider strategies and tools on how to create an effective sales funnel, from lead generation to purchase, that maximizes conversions for your product or service.
Mapping Out Your High-Converting Sales Funnel
A high-converting sales funnel can be described as one that takes customers through the purchase process, from initial awareness to interest, and finally to purchase.
However, potential customers who enter the sales funnel at different stages are likely to fall under typical buyer personas, so mapping these out is essential to any sales funnel strategy. With such data, you could, for example, set up a series of landing pages that target different keywords or ad placements, tailored to the purchase appetite associated with that keyword or ad.
Let’s look at how this could work. Let’s say that you offer project management software for small teams. You could create three different landing pages, targeting each of the different positions in the sales funnel:
- Top funnel: “What is Project Management Software?” is a good intro – at this stage, the searcher wants to learn about the potential benefits and use cases of project management software, but doesn’t want to make a purchase yet.
- Mid funnel: “Project Management Software Features” works well here. The searcher is interested in the specific features that make a good project management software, which indicates they might be ready to make a purchase soon.
- Low funnel: “Best Project Management Software for Small Teams” works at this point, as the searcher wants information to help them make a decision on which project management software is best for their team, which indicates they are ready to make that purchase.
For each page, you can then set specific goals and KPIs, and put different CTAs (like the one below from WPBeginner) or optimizations on it. You might track website visits to your top funnel page, and add a sign-up form for your email newsletter. By tracking the ratio of visits to sign-ups, you can determine how effective that page is in converting searchers into your marketing funnel.
Or, at the decision stage, you could measure the amount of sign-ups or purchases that came from direct searches, or from other points in your funnel (such as your email newsletter). If a large proportion of purchases come from people signed up to your newsletter, you know to allocate more resources and testing to the higher parts of your funnel. Conversely, if more purchases come from direct searches, you might want to do work on the bottom of your funnel to capture a larger proportion of the search volume for the relevant keywords.
The most important thing to remember is to create content that addresses customer needs at each stage; top-of-funnel content should educate and inform, while bottom-of-the-funnel content should address concerns and encourage purchases.
Let’s take a closer look at these different stages, and the different strategies you can use at each point, to help boost your conversions.
Lead Generation Strategies for Your Funnel’s Top
The focus at this stage should be on attracting visitors, creating awareness about your product, and building interest in it. There are various strategies that you can use to do this.
Content marketing: Creating valuable, SEO-optimized content that addresses your audience’s pain points is a highly effective way to attract initial visitors to your site. From there you can bring them further down your marketing funnel with an email sign-up form. Here’s one we used for an article on image editing.
One such effective way to attract email sign-ups is with a pop-up. A conversion optimization plugin like FooConvert is great for WordPress and WooCommerce sites that want to bring site visitors into their marketing funnel, because it will include a dedicated pop-up block alongside other conversion-focused features.
Social media marketing: Engaging with your audience on platforms where they’re most active is another effective way to boost engagement. With platforms like Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook you can share content, engage with your audience, and increase visibility. More importantly, you can drive initial visitors to your website, from where you can try to bring them into your marketing funnel.
Lead magnets: A classic content marketing strategy is to offer value-driven resources that address topics in which your target audience is interested, in exchange for contact information. These are known as ‘lead magnets’. Ebooks or webinars are great lead magnets, and you can drive visibility for them via social media or paid ads. Below is an example of this.
A fast-loading website with a seamless mobile experience is crucial at all stages of your funnel. However, this is particularly important at the top of the funnel, where potential customers have no affinity or awareness of your brand. With over 50% of web traffic coming from mobile devices, capturing and engaging these users with a fast-loading, snappy website is crucial.
Nurturing Leads Through the Middle of Your Funnel
Once you’ve captured leads, nurturing them is crucial for moving them towards a purchase decision. Many marketers tend to focus less on the middle of the funnel, devoting their resources instead to either the awareness or conversion stages. However, this can be a mistake.
“The middle of the funnel is marketing’s blind spot. Too many teams pour resources into flashy awareness campaigns or obsess over bottom-funnel conversions, leaving the crucial middle phase neglected. It’s like building a bridge and forgetting the middle span. This oversight creates a chasm where interested leads fall through, never to be seen again. Smart marketers know the mid-funnel is where the real magic happens – it’s where interest crystallizes into intent. Ignore it, and you’re essentially ushering prospects to your competitors who understand the art of nurturing consideration.” Steve Usher, Developer at FooPlugins.
The cornerstone of middle-of-funnel marketing is email marketing. When content, lead magnets or social media drive sign-ups to your email form, you can use this opportunity to send personalized, effective emails to these potential customers. In turn, these will gradually educate potential customers about your product and drive them further towards a purchase.
You can create a series of emails that both provide value to potential customers and introduce your product or service to them. Ideally, these should be personalized based on the lead’s interests and behaviors, which can be interpolated from where they signed up or from analytics behavior gathered with a software like Hotjar. Doing this can increase open rates by 26% (according to a study by Campaign Monitor).
Email marketing isn’t the only effective middle of the funnel strategy, though. Many marketers and agencies also make use of content marketing – using content like articles and videos to build interest in your product. Another good option is to use retargeting ads, where personalized paid ads are used to target people who have already visited your website.
On your website, you can also create middle-funnel optimized pages for specific offers, campaigns or keywords (such as ‘features of x software’), and populate them with CTAs to purchase using a conversion optimization plugin like FooConvert.
Closing the Deal: Bottom of the Funnel Tactics
Once your leads reach the bottom of the funnel, they are close to making a decision. For this reason, it’s considered best practice to implement personalization strategies that address the pain points of your potential customers at this stage of the funnel.
Arguably the most important aspect to nail down at the bottom of the funnel is personalized, conversion-optimized landing pages. If you are able to get a potential customer (who might be ready to buy) to a landing page that addresses their concerns through enticing copy, imagery and social proof, you have a good chance of securing a conversion.
With a tool like A/B testing you can test different versions of your landing page against split traffic, so you can see which version converts best and either keep or implement changes based on the data.
With a plugin like FooConvert, you can carry out A/B testing on combinations of the different blocks that are available, such as CTAs, countdown timers and exit pop-ups. In this way, you can establish what resonates best with your audience, allowing you to roll out the highest-converting version of your page.
There will also be other strategies that that can be facilitated by FooConvert for closing deals at the bottom of your sales funnel, such as
- Personalized offers and discounts
- Social proof and testimonials
- Free trials or money-back guarantees
- Creating a sense of urgency or scarcity with limited-time offers
While all stages of the funnel are important, nailing down the bottom of your funnel with a high-converting website or landing page is key to closing the deal, which is the ultimate goal of any sales funnel.
Build Your Sales Funnel With the Help of FooConvert
Convincing potential customers to make a purchase can be difficult in today’s competitive marketplace. But a high-converting sales funnel can help you increase your traffic and boost your sales. A well-structured funnel will generate leads, nurture and educate visitors and finally, convert them into customers.
While building a high-performing sales funnel can take time, tools such as FooConvert can help you to streamline the funnel-building process. With its WordPress integration and multiple blocks (like CTAs, countdowns, popups and more), this plugin provides multiple ways in which to bolster your sales funnel.
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