No doubt you’ve heard of sales funnels. You’ve landed on this page, after all. If you haven’t, then you’re certainly in the right place too. Sales funnels are integral parts of a business’s overall strategy. They influence the sales process, direct marketing strategy, and bring in new business.
Sales funnels aim to be a guide themselves. Taking the potential customer by the hand and guiding them toward the endpoint. The sale. Sounds great, but the real work goes into creating this sales funnel in a way that works for your business. It has to be designed in a way that works for your business. It needs to have your product and service in mind. Plus, it has to work for your customer.
There’s a lot to take in and even more to develop. That’s why we’re here to offer a helping hand. This article seeks to deliver some sales funnel templates so that you have somewhere to start. Being in the dark isn’t enjoyable, and it certainly isn’t empowering. What follows should be a torch in the dark.
Before we start sharing the templates themselves, it’d be prudent to make sure we’re all clear about what a sales funnel is. We also want to know why we should use them and what their key components are. That’s where we start.
- Sales Funnel Anatomy
- Sales Funnel Templates You Can Use
Sales Funnel Anatomy
Sales funnels come in all shapes and sizes. A funnel that you might see functioning in one business will be very different from one that works well in another. That said, there is a typical strategy that forms the foundation of almost all sales funnels. This is called the AIDA framework.
AIDA stands for Awareness, Interest, Decision, and Action. Each is a separate part of the funnel and comprises different sales and marketing activities. The titles themselves represent different parts of a typical customer’s journey. The majority of the time, these titles are also in chronological order. Meaning Awareness is the first stage, and so on.
Reality isn’t quite so straightforward, and people won’t always move in a linear fashion. Some will enter at a different stage. Others might jump back and forth between stages. That said, the main body of customers will interact with some part of the sales funnel process. It’s highly unlikely that someone will instantly purchase from you, having had no sales or marketing influence whatsoever.
Few prospective customers are aware that sales funnels even exist. It’s a marketing term that, unless you’re au fait with the world of marketing, won’t enter your sphere of influence. Instead, customers simply meander their way from obscurity toward making a purchase. They’ve negotiated a sales funnel even if they’re not sure they were in it.
Awareness
Imagine a funnel shape in your head. A wider brim at the top, narrowing toward a spout at the bottom. Awareness is the highest and widest part of the funnel. It catches the most amount of people and begins them on the journey toward being one of your customers.
The sole aim of the awareness stage is to put your company’s name out there. You want to let customers know that your business even exists. Beyond that, you exist and have something that they might be interested in purchasing. You’re not actively trying to sell your product at this stage of the funnel. Instead, you’re looking to exist in their mind when they begin to consider their options.
The content that you create is one of the biggest features of the awareness stage. The key, however, is to avoid content that focuses exclusively on sales. In fact, the awareness stage shouldn’t focus on making sales at all. The content that you create should answer questions and become a valuable resource. People should be able to use it when searching for information.
The key to creating great awareness-level content is to get into the mindset of a customer. Consider what their pain points might be, what information they’ll need to begin to resolve them, and what solutions they should be made aware of. You’re looking to inform and educate here, not sell.
Interest
At this point, customers know that you exist. They’ve leaned on your knowledge and have gained some value from your resources. Now, you want to encourage them to show interest in your own products and services. You want to raise interest levels. The plan here is to make them aware that your products and services could be the best solution for them. Especially seeing as you’ve just caught hold of their attention. The last thing you want to do is lose it.
Often in a digital sense, the interest stage takes place through your website. Content remains one of your primary methods of delivering value and addressing pain points. These pieces of content could include educational blogs that show your product and services in action. It could be a video guide. You might even deliver some educational-focused webinars.
During the interest stage, you’ll also want to focus on the engagement channels that your typical customer likes to hang out with. It’s up to you to find these channels, but once you do, spend time on them and deliver content through them. Perhaps that involves an email newsletter, a social media campaign, or industry-specific forums.
The customer will also likely begin to look for two-way communication. This should absolutely be engaged with and encouraged. You want to be interacting with them, get them to ask questions, or even provide feedback. They begin to receive clarity on their options, and you begin to nurture a relationship.
It’s also at this point that you’ll be building more and more trust. Customers will take note of your existence and then begin to suss you out. Are you a company and brand they could see themselves building an affinity to? If you are, then they’re likely to consider you in their decision-making process.
Decision
The decision point of the sales funnel is where many business owners focus. The customer is ready to make their choice between company X, Y, or Z. These prospective customers stand on the precipice of choice. Will they make a choice? Will they select a company at all, and if they will, who?
This is the time for your business to begin to deliver tailored solutions. You need to show precisely how your product or service fits into their life and resolves their specific pain point. If you can spend quality time with the prospect through a demonstration, consultation, or even a custom proposal, that customer has the chance to connect with you.
You’ll begin to face some hesitations and questions at this point. Handling sales objections is a normal part of the process. This is your chance to squash any lingering doubts. You might achieve this through comprehensive product details and FAQs. Depending on the sector, you might even offer individual meetings. Some businesses even offer incentives to clients as a way of sealing the deal. This could be in the form of introductory savings or discounts, or an exclusive package.
Your customers will also begin to search for social proof. This could come in the form of reviews, industry recognition, and awards. The most common will be reviews found on business profiles on Google and Facebook, alongside places like TrustPilot.
Action
This is the culmination of your sales funnel and the conversion process. Here you’re looking for genuine results and sales. When the prospect reaches this stage of your sales funnel, all they need to do is make the purchase. So it is definitely in your interest to make that as pain-free and seamless as possible.
Keep reassuring people that they’re on the right path. Even immediately following a sale, keep the communication going. Let them know that you’ve got their order or that they’re now subscribed. Let them know that their trust is well placed.
Sales Funnel Templates You Can Use
The following templates will work best if you use them as a jumping-off point. They should be an inspiration rather than a replacement for work on your own funnel. They will certainly save you a great deal of time but remember that the best sales funnels are unique to your business.
Using these templates helps you to reduce the stress of building from scratch. Plus you should come away with a more tailored and focused approach. If you’re a complete marketing beginner or a seasoned pro, you’ll find these templates useful influences on your own.
B2B Sales Funnel Template
Create a lead magnet
- This lead magnet aims to draw in potential clients through a focus on valuable content that talks to them on their level. Aim to take their email at this point.
- Examples include free webinars and eBooks, pain-point addressing whitepapers, and blog content.
Deliver a nurturing email sequence
- At this point, someone has shared a valuable piece of data with you, their email address. Use that information to nurture the relationship. This could be through a series of email marketing outreach and a sequence of emails that educates and informs the recipient.
- Make sure you know how to format the email appropriately for your audience.
- Be sure to share product or service benefits, case studies, and lots of social proof in the form of testimonials.
- Stuck on where to start? There are plenty of business email templates out there to borrow.
Get personal through demonstrations
- The prospect is interested in your solution and is looking to make a decision. Aim to spend some quality time with them through a tailored and personalized demonstration of what you have to offer. Be sure to highlight the benefits and key features your product offers while answering any queries that they might have. Prepare to squash any objections.
Share a unique proposal
- No templates here. Deliver a proposal that is tailored to them and shows that you value them as an individual client.
- This is where you seal the deal and offer custom integrations and price points if required.
It’s worth noting that B2B sales funnels often have more moving parts than B2C. There are more people to influence and various decision-makers in the process. It might take a while for a prospect to move through the whole thing.
eCommerce Sales Funnel Template
Launch a social media ad or influencer campaign
- You need to get your name out there. Initiating an eye-catching social campaign that has beautiful visuals is great. Connecting that with paid advertising and the power of influencers takes it to another level. If you’re selling a product, invest in proper photography and unboxing videos.
Build special promotion landing pages
- Those ads and campaigns should funnel prospects to a landing page that offers them an exclusive discount or promotion. You want to create urgency here, so offer a limited time to them, or limit it to first-time purchases. Make sure this is optimized for mobile users.
Follow-up with abandoned cart emails
- An abandoned cart email campaign is a fantastic way of addressing objections in the eCommerce world. The prospect might be hesitating or has begun to disengage. Follow up and let them know what they’re missing. Include photos of the products they missed out on and offer a small incentive such as free shipping.
Make purchasing easy and then upsell
- The actual transaction should be seamless. They should have no issue making a payment or creating an account. At checkout, consider upselling or cross-selling for products they might also want to purchase that are related.
- Keep them engaged post-purchase with a loyalty or referral program that has incentives for participation.
Don’t hold back on the stunning visuals. Your eCommerce store will be successful off the back of them. The same can be said for your marketing sequence during and after the initial advertising campaign.
Local Business Sales Funnel Template
Optimize your Google My Business listing
- Google is the place to be for local businesses. You need to ensure that you’re discoverable and that your profile is benefitting users.
- If you can make it optimized for Google, then all the better.
- Ensure your contact details are accurate, opening hours are correct, and you’re displaying recent high-quality images.
- Whenever you get reviews, respond to them politely. Even if they’re fake one-star ones.
Display customer reviews and testimonials
- Customer reviews and testimonials develop your levels of trust within the community. Showcasing authentic feedback on your website is a great way to build social proof.
- The more positive reviews, the better. Consider running a campaign to encourage your customers to leave a review.
Run local ads
- The majority of search ads and social media ad platforms offer the ability to geo-target your ads. That means you can show your ads only to people that live within your specific location.
Create special offers and loyalty programs
- As people begin to use your services, incentivize them to become loyal, regular customers.
- Loyalty cards, a loyalty app, referral schemes, or even a localized promotion can work wonders.
When working in a specific local area, the core focus should be on relationship building. You need the locals to buy into your business. Otherwise, you’ll struggle to find success.
Key Takeaways
Using a sales funnel template is a great way to get your wheels in motion. Without one, you might find yourself starting from scratch. We certainly don’t all have the time to spend on that. So, use these templates as a start. Adhere to the basic principles of AIDA, and you’ll be onto a flying start.
- Always put the customer at the center of your sales funnel preparation.
- Consider your own unique position and how the AIDA framework applies to it.
- A funnel that works for a B2B online company will look very different from a local brick-and-mortar business.
If you’re looking for an email marketing tool that can deliver precisely what you need to conduct powerful email outreach throughout your funnel, look no further than Instantly. Instantly offers everything you need to get your campaign underway. You can even get started for free today.
