A complete guide for beginners: Everything you need to know about sales funnel stages

Have you ever wondered about a customer's journey before they finally decide to make a purchase? A customer's journey is mapped through a sales funnel through many checkpoints, from engaging with the brand to conversation and commitment.

Throughout the sales process, your business sales funnel should be top-notch without compromise. Marketers must ensure that each customer moves from one stage of the sales funnel to another without a hitch. The better experience, the higher chance of converting a lead into a customer.

If you desire your sales funnel to work perfectly, execute the strategies smartly. With intellectual marketing, LinkedIn lead generation is possible. To capture the leads, nurture and strengthen them, and converting into paying customers, the sales funnel must be managed logically.

Understanding Sales Funnel
Sales funnel is a concept that narrates the journey of a customer. The point when they were just a prospect lead to the point where they converted into a loyal paying customer. It is a step-by-step process that tells a business the position of the target lead. How close they are to becoming a regular customer of your business. Every step of the potential lead is reflected prominently to help marketers identify and utilize the opportunity.

The sales funnel is called a "funnel" as it depicts the analogy of a real funnel. Many customers are always at the top, whereas only a few proceed and, finally, become a customer. The wide area is where there is a cluster of leads. The narrow area is where the conversion happens; a target lead becomes a client.

For instance, a customer seems interested in purchasing some pants. They are at the first stage. They will shuffle through the rack and check the ones that most attract them. This is the second stage of the funnel. The customer may pick 2 to 4 pants and try them out. Here is the third and second last stage of the sales funnel. If everything goes right, that customer will purchase one or two pairs of pants as per need. Finally, a potential client turned into a paying customer.

Is Sales Funnel Important?

This is one of the most common questions marketers ask! Especially for the LinkedIn platform, where they seek LinkedIn automation tools.

Every business owner and marketer knows the pain of losing a potential lead and missing sales opportunities. Even after adding interactive content, webinars, lead magnets, and much more, many targets lead to drop out without purchasing.

In such a situation, the sales funnel can help. The sales funnel is a path that illustrates your prospective leads' journey. It helps in identifying where a lead becomes a customer. And what conditions cause loss of lead and restrain them from becoming a customer.

The sales will help the business understand what a potential lead is thinking, looking at, and imagining. This will help later in providing customized or personalized solutions that can convert such leads into customers.

With an understanding of the sales funnel, it is possible to optimize it. Without an optimized funnel, the chances of converting most of the target lead into paying customers are minimal.

How Does the Sales Funnel Work?

Let us understand how a customer goes from being a visitor into a prospect leading to a customer. It will help me better understand and gain more knowledge on the sales funnel.

For example, a random visitor with some requirements lands on your website or LinkedIn profile. As soon as they start browsing, they will convert into a prospect with a possibility. They may check some blogs or web pages on the website. Or will read your LinkedIn profile which is already optimized with complete details.

They may fill out a contact form or use a CTA on the website. On the other hand, on LinkedIn, they send you a message. It is where a random customer becomes a lead. When you revert to them with an email or offer message, the lead will start getting educated and become a prospect lead.

At this point, if you offer a coupon or other incentive, they will become more curious to know. A better chance to mature and nurture the lead.

From the point of inception, the sales funnel is narrowing down. When the potential lead reverts to you via email or message and shows interest in your offering, it becomes a celebration. Voila, a random visit nurtured into a paying customer. The sales funnel for this customer ends, and you managed to sell.

Different Sales Funnel Stages
There are four different sales funnel stages every customer goes through. However, the business needs to approach the prospect at each stage with a different strategy. If you send a wrong message to your prospect at any point in time, there are higher chances of losing them forever.

Thus, the sales funnel stages help understand and evaluate the customer's needs and requirements at each stage. Since there is always a difference in the buyer's persona, niche type, and products, the prospect's journey to the prospect may be different. Manage it accordingly!

Since there are four stages, the easiest way to remember them is AIDA. It is:

• Awareness
• Interest
• Decision
• Action
  These four sales funnel stages represent the mindset of your prospective customer. Let us evaluate each stage in more detail.

Awareness
It is the first stage of the sales funnel, where people become aware of your brand's solutions, products, and services for the first time. They will also become aware of the existing ways to fulfill their needs and possible ways to deal with them. In the awareness stage, your business will make the first impression on its prospect. So, make sure it is prominent and intriguing.

Being the first sales funnel stage, the number of people involved is also large. Random people learn about you from LinkedIn, Google search, a post on Facebook, word of mouth, or paid traffic. They will educate themselves by researching you and your offerings.

If everything is perfect, 1% of the visitors become directly paid customers. This happens only when the potential lead has already researched you and comes on board with a plan to make purchases instantly.

Interest
This is the point where a prospect starts researching your business. They start comparisons and weigh their options. Since they come from the first stage, i.e., awareness, it is never smart to push your product with a salesy tone.

Start building a relationship with them with information that can help them. As soon as a prospect enters the interest stage, they start looking for solutions to their existing problems. They will show interest in your brand's offerings.

At this point, to ignite their interest to the next level, marketers must write great content. Each page part must deliver the information your prospect is looking for. The better the content, the higher chances of moving them to the next stage.

The motive of this stage is to help the prospects make an informed decision. Never deceive your potential customer with fake promises.

Decision
It is time to convince your prospect and convert them into potential leads!

When a prospect enters this stage, they are already aware of your brand with interest. They look for areas that can persuade them to become a customer. Even though it looks like an easy stage, this is the hardest sales funnel stage. At this point, many prospects leave due to a need for more information.

At the decision stage, your prospect will start looking for more information, such as your pricing, shipment charges, terms of plans, etc. They will compare it with competitors and weigh which offers better value for money.

The prospect here is urged to purchase with a decision of less than 100%. A slight mistake and the prospect lead will be lost. Businesses can include incentives and rewards to attract and lure them to the final stage. Offerings such as:

• Free Consultation
• eBook offers
• Free trial
• Webinars
• Promotional offers like free shipping, discounts, bonuses
• Testimonials and reviews by authentic customers

Action
Always remember that the customer acts at the bottom of the sales funnel stage. They gained awareness, showed interest, made a decision, and now it's time to implement it. As soon as they make a purchase from you, they enter your business's ecosystem.

Many marketers and businesses believe that after the purchase is made, the work is done. The customer did reach the bottom of the sales funnel stage. But shouldn't they return for repurchases? This is where retention work leads to additional purchases, future suggestions, and repurchases.

However, if the customer doesn't buy from you, don't think you lost them. You can create a nurturing campaign later to ensure your brand stays on top of their minds.

Crucial Part of Sales Funnel Stage — Customer Retention
The overall experience your customer has, from being a prospect to the buyer, determines their next move. Either they will become a loyal customer, or it was just a one-time thing. There is no denying that product quality is the determinant for gaining loyalty. But the service and experience also narrate their trust, which translates into remaining loyal.

When customers come on board, the business must do everything to retain them. Please provide them with such quality services that they become your brand's advocate. There is nothing more powerful than word of mouth with positivity.

Brands can provide tailored services to keep them engaged. It will help in retaining them and staying in their mind. Send your customers promotional offers, product usage guides, eBooks, customer feedback forms, etc.

Being an important part of the sales funnel stage, retention leads to becoming the market leader with dominance. For this, businesses must stay focused on providing customers with a seamless journey. They must invest in optimizing their content, website, and the soft skills of service providers.

Utilizing the Power of Content in Each Sales Funnel Stage
Knowing what type of content is necessary at which sales funnel stage is essential. With the proper information, it is easier to take your prospect to the final stage of the funnel.

Only the right content will provide you with the action your brand desires. The right type of content at the right time is necessary for the success of the sales funnel. Tailored and customized content helps your target audience to associate with your brand.

Choose an effective and efficient type of content only to reach out to your prospects at the awareness, interest, desire, and action stages. Optimize your brand persona accordingly to retain and convert prospects into customers.

Create optimized meta decryptions with terms like: how do I, what, where, hacks, tutorials, the best way to, should I, etc.

Curate interesting content through eBooks, guides, checklists, templates, PowerPoint presentations, tip sheets, etc.

Build Your Sales Funnel Swiftly with Prominence
Once they understand the sales funnel stages, businesses are urged to work on it fast. They want to implement the process at the earliest to get superior results. But they are always worried about taking the first step. Let's resolve the apprehensions once and for all. There are five steps businesses must follow religiously to build their sales funnel perfectly.

Step # 1: Analyze the Behavior of Your Audience
It is vital to know your audience. The more you know them, the better you can optimize the sales funnel. Understanding them makes it easier to provide them with the necessary solutions.

Use different applications to track user behavior and monitor their activity on your website. Google Analytics can help track where your prospect clicks, how they scroll through the site, and on what page they spend more time. With such data, businesses can easily refine their brand's presence in contrast to buyers' persona.

Step # 2: Capture the Attention of the Audience
Once you have analyzed your audience's behavior, it's time to capture their attention. The normal attention span of a person is just 10 to 20 seconds. In such a short time, your content needs to be on point. It must be compelling enough to capture the attention of your target audience.

Choose the organic pathway and post tons of unique content across every platform possible. Diversify your brand's content portfolio with infographics, informative videos, and other interesting work.

With time, run paid advertisements to gain inorganic traffic. Choose platforms smartly to run these paid ads. B2B lead generation tools work great at LinkedIn.

Step # 3: Build a Captivating Landing Page
Run ads that have content with the ability to excite your prospects. Ideally, different landing pages have golden offers that keep your prospect's attention for much time. However, pushing sales at this point is not a sane idea. At this sales funnel stage, capture more leads you can nurture later. The more sales funnel leads, the better the chances of paying customers.

Your landing page should keep the visitor excited, invoking a feeling of becoming a customer. Use highlighted call-to-action button with interesting offers like free eBooks or some unique, downloadable material.

Step # 4: Email Drip Campaign
You can also market your leads via email. Please provide them with entertaining content to keep them reading your email. Go for it regularly but only occasionally. The ideal capacity is twice a week.

Educate your target audience first to increase your brand's reach. Tell them about yourself, how you are different from others, and how your brand can solve their pain points conveniently. End your drip campaign by providing an irresistible offer. For instance, reduced prices or coupons.

Step # 5: Stay in Touch
As mentioned above, customer retention is essential to build your sales funnel brilliantly. Therefore, always remember your existing customers. Continue reaching out to them with new offers. Thank them for being loyal, and appreciate their presence. Show them their value for your brand and what they mean to you.

The more your existing customer feels appreciated, the better your chances of them retaining and availing of new offers.

Final Verdict

It takes patience and hard work to build a fascinating sales funnel. However, it is essential to survive in the competitive market. With generating and nurturing strong leads, any business's sales are possible.

With these sales funnel stages, your brand can get the recognition it deserves. Just remember that random and prospective customers should always be on top of the funnel, while established customers with some potential must be at the bottom.