Today, sales and marketing teams constantly seek tactics to deal with new challenges and have higher conversion rates. One of the options before them refers to funnel optimization strategies.
Once you know how to impact the stages that are crucial for the purchase decisions, you will be able to improve your sales funnel conversion. In this regard, you need to do social listening, focus on engagement, produce quality pieces, and manage leads effectively.
Read to learn more about how to optimize your conversion funnel and increase the sales funnel conversion rate in the end.
Funnel Optimization Basics: What is the meaning of the sales funnel?
Before all, the term “digital marketing conversion funnel” contemplates the description, identification, and analysis of the processes and steps that a customer has in their journey for purchasing goods or services.
Due to the idea that each company has its different peculiarities and a specific niche, the sales funnel conversion depends on how well you affect customers at certain stages. What are they?
The first one is the awareness stage when the potential clients get to know about you. The second refers to the interest stage when you make them excited about the goods. The next one is about desire or decision, contemplating that at one stage, people compare prices and pick out the option that suits them. Lastly, the ultimate step is the purchase, when a person goes to the website and proceeds with the payment.
Now, that you know the meaning of the sales funnel, you can affect funnel optimization. Notably, to optimize the conversion funnel, you should analyze your strategies and how effectively you engage with leads.
How to Optimize Sales Funnel
Before all, your conversion funnel optimization should be concerned with testing and analysis. In this regard, focus on how you can increase sales funnel rates.
For example, if you have high inflow leads but poor conversion, something may be off at the interest or decision stages. At the same time, if you have high conversion rates but poor traffic to your website, you may want to adopt strategies that will affect the awareness stage.
So what are the main funnel optimization steps that you can take irrespective of your operation peculiarity?
Analyze and understand your audience
Most funnel optimization strategies require the proper understanding of your audience. In this regard, you should define the profile of your ideal customer. It means that you need to do research, find data on your customers, and create a customer persona. After that, you will understand what your audience likes and prefers and what they tend to do.
The best way to analyze your audience is via a collection of information. For it, you can use polls and ask the customers you already have. At the same time, you may use insights from social media or Google Analytics. You should consider the demographics, behavior, and characteristics that affect buying decisions. Knowing them will allow you to create the right messages, nurture leads, and attract them.
Capture leads effectively
In terms of sales funnel conversion, there are different ways to capture leads. The capturing allows getting people from the awareness stage to the interest stage. In this regard, you can use universal options like lead magnets to establish the proper forms and CTAs and offer something unique.
At the same time, if you target a B2B audience, you may extract or guess people’s emails, use an online email verifier to validate them and send them limited offers.
Also, you can utilize the targeted ads, even though they are the most expensive options for capturing leads. What for? You may use them to share lead magnets, present promos, and show features. Yet, be sure to focus on the value and the solution that may interest the audience.
Moreover, you can resort to lead databases to get more data on your leads and create targeted outreach campaigns. Lastly, there is influencer marketing that you can use to capture leads and improve the brand image.
In the end, you can use different strategies to support your lead’s attraction. The ads and lead magnets can grant you a considerable inflow of leads. However, it will put more pressure on your sales team and require greater nurturing. Simultaneously, you can pick a long-term strategy to gradually grow the inflow and focus only on quality leads.
Level up your pages
Besides, a common reason for a poor sales conversion rate is the problem with a landing page. A proper page should communicate your values, the product’s features, and the benefits the customer gets.
Your pages should have the proper CTA and a compelling message. Yet, they should not be too pushy. Why? Usually, pop-ups with the CTA that appear 2 seconds after the customer opens a page are likely to irritate the lead and make them close the page. Also, to increase sales funnel rates, you should consult designers and add colors and structure to the page that will be comfortable for leads to engage with.
Contribute to the forms you use
Notably, another aspect you can improve for the sake of funnel optimization refers to the web forms you use. It sounds like a not big deal. However, they are the entry point for the customers, a door that customers open to enter your online shop.
Thus, make sure it has a clear structure and easy-to-read message. Ensure that you have a visible headline that underlines the value. Also, you should leave a space for a person to share their email or contact information. In this regard, you can test various variants of forms on multiple pages: add new forms, phrases, and photos and play with colors. Each of them can slightly affect the conversion.
Offer valuable pieces
One of the excellent funnel optimization strategies is the provision of quality content. The content allows you to show your expertise and value. That way, you can create a deeper relationship with your leads and develop a community around your brand.
How to produce quality content? Well, you need to do a lot of research and create a strong content team. For better content funnel optimization strategies, you can hire an expert or produce joint publications with them. For instance, you can use an add-on to extract their email from LinkedIn and write to them. As soon as you get a response, you can start agreeing on the production of the content that will be interesting to you and your audience.
Engage more often with your leads
Lastly, engagement is crucial for conversion funnel optimization. Firstly, it provides more insight into the leads and your future customers. Secondly, you get deeper relationships with your leads and develop better trust in your brand.
Successful brands engage a lot with their potential customers on social media. They post quality materials, ask users questions, do quizzes, and comment on their materials. Also, they create groups and turn them into their communities. That way, they add to the trust and offer unique solutions to their customers.
