Do you want to implement this approach to support the action of your sales representatives and generate a measurable ROI via your marketing actions? If so, you're probably wondering where to start... So, here are 5 steps on how to create your sales funnel, using the tools and resources already in place in your company.
1. Take stock of your current marketing tools
Start by taking stock of your current marketing tools and communication actions already in place.
Objective: Start from the existing situation to deploy your new lead generation actions as quickly as possible – and at the lowest cost.
To carry out this inventory, ask yourself these questions:
- What communication materials and marketing tools do you already use? Website, blog, emailing solution, pages on social networks, YouTube channel...
- What actions do you implement through these channels to interact with your prospects? Publishing 2 articles per month on your blog, sending a monthly newsletter, distributing 2 posts per week on social networks... Do not limit this inventory to your web tools alone, and take into account all communication actions that allow you to get in touch with new prospects. This also includes your events (trade shows or conferences), for example.
- With what results? How are these results evaluated / tracked? How do you measure the impact of your marketing actions today? Based on what criteria? For example: do you track the evolution of traffic on your website? Of certain pages in particular? Do you know how many prospects have contacted you via the website in the last 6 months? How many people have subscribed to your newsletter?
You can then use this data to amplify certain actions in place or coordinate them more effectively, with the aim of generating leads.
2. Define Your Priority Objectives
Next, define a more precise objective than the very general one of "generating leads": which offer do you want to focus your efforts on primarily?
Again, avoid an objective that is too broad or vague: a good prospect is not someone to whom you will necessarily be able to sell all of your products or services, but rather someone to whom you have the best chance of selling at least one of them to start with. And to design your sales funnel, you must define which one.
If your offers are diversified, you will gradually implement multiple sales funnels to cover the entire "spectrum."
Because in web marketing logic, you attract your prospects based on an identified interest in a topic (which generally corresponds to a problem to solve or a goal to achieve).
You can define the priority offer to which your sales funnel and marketing campaigns will be dedicated based on various criteria, for example:
- by identifying the one that is the most profitable for you (in order to maximize your margins),
- or the one you consider best positioned in your market (to generate the most volume),
- or even a new offer that you have just launched (to combine: acquisition of new customers and cross-selling to your current customers)
This choice will then guide the definition of your targets and the content to use (or produce) to attract them to you, and then maintain the relationship with them.
3. Refocus on the expectations of your 'buyer persona'.
A lead is an identified contact (with a name and contact information), but it's more than that: always ask yourself what profile a contact must meet to be a valid prospect.
To define it, answer these questions:
- What are the target audiences for your offer? What company size, what type of position within the company (if you are in BtoB). What age category, gender, or socio-professional category (if you are in BtoC).
- What is the typical profile of your ideal client (Buyer Persona)? What are their objectives, desires, or problems related to the offer you are providing? What obstacles are likely to complicate their purchase, and how can you help them overcome these obstacles? What are their purchasing habits and preferred communication channels?
- What are their "interest drivers"? What are their aspirations, key issues, difficulties to resolve? What queries are they likely to type into search engines to find answers?
All these elements of in-depth knowledge of your prospects will then allow you to design the most appropriate marketing actions to attract and convince them.
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4. Define the marketing actions to implement
You now have all the elements in hand to design your 'sales funnel' properly!
In line with the defined priority offer and the "drivers of interest" of your Buyer Persona, you can: define the theme of your lead magnet – content designed to attract your prospects (EBook, self-assessment, etc.) – and imagine your workflow, the sequence of emails that will maintain the relationship with your prospects and nurture their interest in your offer.
Based on the marketing tools and campaigns already in place, you will now be able to coordinate your actions to make them converge towards the same objective, for example:
- Define the topics of your blog articles or conferences related to the theme of the lead magnet and the interests of your buyer personas.
- insert at the bottom of these articles and at the end of your conference materials a call-to-action designed to send your prospects to this lead magnet
- Share these articles via your newsletter with your customer contact base and subscribers.
- Promote these articles and your lead magnet via posts on social networks...
Thus, all your actions will actively contribute to creating a flow of qualified visitors to your lead magnet, to identify your prospects' contacts and achieve your objective.
This is the key point of your lead generation scenario. Next, you will need to maintain and nurture the relationship with your prospects to support the work of the sales representatives.
5. Deploy an initial scenario using an agile approach.
The implementation of this approach is an iterative process.
Implement an initial scenario using a 'test and learn' approach, closely monitoring your indicators to quickly assess its effectiveness and the achievement of your set objectives.
Based on the observed results, constantly improve this scenario, or stop it if it proves ineffective, after identifying the points that need to be reworked: should a new lead magnet be produced? Contact identified prospects more quickly? Offer them content that better meets their expectations? Generate more inbound traffic to the lead magnet?
Once you master an effective initial sales funnel, you can adapt it for other offers and thus multiply the leads generated!
Adopt a tool tailored to your business and expectations: choose the right CRM. To better understand its usefulness and choose a suitable CRM, watch this webinar:
[I]: Rediscover our articles on this subject:
- How to move from "traditional" communication to web marketing that generates leads published on the website of the magazine Chef d'Entreprise
- What if your website finally generated leads? published on the website of the magazine Chef d'Entreprise
- 3 web sales funnels that generate leads published on this blog
