What are Sales funnel in Digital Marketing?

Very often this question has been asked by every student or new entrepreneur. This is an important step in the sales and marketing of any organization.

Definition of Sales Funnel:

According to Wikipedia, the definition of a sales funnel or purchase funnel is:

The purchase funnel, or purchasing funnel, is a consumer-focused marketing model that illustrates the theoretical customer journey toward the purchase of a good or service.

In a layman term, we can describe this:

The process of getting the customer into our sales process (the funnel) and then purchase is happening after the decision has been made by the customer.

So it depends on the products and the services of your firm and how you are planning to market any product and the services to your customer.

This has been made by a typical formula called “AIDA”.

What is the AIDA formula?

In 1898, E.St.Elmo Lewis developed a model that mapped a theoretical customer journey from the moment a brand or product attracted consumer attention to the point of action or purchase. St. Elmo Lewis’ idea is often referred to as the AIDA model in marketing. (Source: Wikipedia)

Acronym for AIDA:

• Awareness – the customer is aware of the existence of a product or service
• Interest – actively expressing an interest in a product group
• Desire – aspiring to a particular brand or product
• Action – taking the next step towards purchasing the chosen product

Awareness:

So, if you have any product or service, first you have to make sure that you are exhibiting yourself in front of your customer.

There’s no use if you have a product or service and you are not going behind your customer. Ultimately any customer never minds about any products or services.

Because they have their own mindset and their own consumer mentality. We have to go and acquire them by showcasing your products or services. Then only you can move to the next level of attraction. That is, you can create interest in your products and services.

So, you have to make them aware of your products and services by any means. That is the first process in the sales funnel.

Interest:

Once you make them aware of your products and services, next is you have to create an interest in your products and services.

This has been done in multiple ways like educating through newsletters, testimonials, advantages of using your products or services, ebook, etc.

Basically, the content creation (content marketing) process is very much important in the sales funnel.

Each and every new terminology here (highlighted in italics).

The content creation team has to be aware that what kind of content you need to create for your products or services.

We will be discussing one by one in my blog (writersrinivasan.com), but in this article, just focus on what is “sales funnel”?

Desire:

In this, you can create your products or services a brand value, or you by yourself be a brand value for your products or services.

So, branding creates the customer to buy our products or services.

In a normal life cycle, if we go to any supermarket, we usually go for brands. This mentality has been sown since from our childhood days.

We have been coming along with our parents and buy products for our daily use. For example, if we buy toothpaste, we never try to change this from one brand to another.

So, our mind has been fixed with this one brand or one image. That has been fixed by content has been by the manufacturer of the product like TV ads, paper ads, word of mouth, etc., Wherever we see that brand, our mind will always say that it’s “good”. This is called the “content created mindset”(New word from me :)).

The content which we saw regularly, the content we read on a daily basis, the newspaper ad we see once after the brushing..at that moment we feel proud that we are using this brand.

So, the strong content has been created by those people still reflects in our mind. That’s the power of the content. This content makes a valuable brand forever.

Instead of the product is going to the customer, the customer is coming to buy the BRAND.

Once you have created a very strong mindset through the content process creation the customer is in your sales funnel.

The next step is …Yes, Sales happen.

Action:

At the end of the day, SALES has to happen for any organization. Without this, we can’t run a show. This is the last and critical step for any products or services. Once you have created all the above in perfect planning and execution, this will happen just like that.

But, still, we would need to very cautious until the sale will happen.

In a nutshell, you can understand this:

1. Have you seen the funnel? The mouth of the funnel is your customer base

2. With your creative content, you would need to slowly make awareness, make interest on your product, making the brand value so that your customer will have the desire to buy your products or services and finally (at the end of the funnel) the action has been taken by your customer.

3. However, after each sale, the customer may come back to your mouth of the funnel again (customer retention)and joins with the new customer. So, we have to be cautious even after the sale happened to retain the customer. They are the real customer to recommend products or services through word of mouth.

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