Without a Marketing Funnel – your Ads and SEO are Useless

If you’re running ads on Facebook and spending your hard-earned cash optimising your website, then I suggest you might want to STOP doing it until… 

Facebook Ads and SEO are powerful marketing tactics to drive traffic, no doubt about that. But, especially if you’re selling fast-moving consumer products like cookies, shampoos, SSD hard drives or even phone accessories, customers who click on your ads are diverted to your eCommerce store, and immediately they can make a purchase.

But what if you’re selling real estate, a financial advisor or representing professional services. Would your customer purchase a property, an investment plan or hire a lawyer just by clicking on your ads?

Certainly not. Because the sales cycle of these industries is much longer, and without building a relationship with the customer, it’s tough to sell.

Therefore, a proper funnelling system must divert customers from one stage to another.

Marketing Funnel

A complete Marketing Funnel comprises five stages:

1. Awareness  — Regularly creating quality content on social media, running ads and participating in events are good ways to build brand awareness. Grabbing customers’ attention and interest are the primary objectives at this stage.

When a prospect is interested in what you do, they will click on your website, which brings them to stage two.

2. Website — When a prospect clicks on your website, they are interested in finding out and learning more about you. Therefore, make sure that your website is clean and easy to navigate. 

Share information like how you can help make their life better, why should they trust you and lastly, have a prominent call to action.

3. Lead Magnet — In most situations, a prospect may not click on the ‘Contact Us’ button during their first visit to your website. And since you have no idea who has visited your website, you have no way to follow up. So instead of waiting patiently for someone to contact you, why not turn the situation around and be in control?

This is why it is super critical to offer a lead magnet on your website. A lead magnet is a piece of free information valuable to your prospects. It can be a PDF ebook, a checklist, a learning video, or anything your prospect is interested in exchanging with their email.

4. Nurture — You’re now in control once you capture your prospects’ email. You can begin a conversation, asking them what their problems are and sending them more information on how you can help them—or simply sharing more values, nurturing and keeping in touch with them.

5. Conversion — And finally, you know it is time to ask for a sale when they show a buying signal. 

Does a Marketing Funnel require much of your time?

The answer is No. Because many of the processes once it is set up, the subsequent operations can be automated. For example, you can pre-write a few response emails in advance. And when someone downloads the lead magnet, a sequence of emails will be sent automatically.

And you don’t have to do much until a prospect shows you a buying signal, then only you chip in for the close.

• Awareness — partly automated
• Website — once set up is fully automated 
• Lead Magnet — once set up is fully automated 
• Nurture — once set up is fully automated 
• Conversion — partly automated

Summary

If you’re running ads and SEO without integrating a complete Marketing Funnel, then you might be wasting money and time. 

Go ahead and build yourself a Marketing Funnel; it’s inexpensive and is easy to do. A company with a complete marketing funnel will better nurture their customers, build customer loyalty and win more business.

Have you built an automated funnel for your business?