Understanding The Customers Mindset Going Through The Sales Funnel Stages
To successfully market your business, you must understand what the customer is thinking as they are going through your sales funnel stages.
You are at the stage of your business to market your products and services and attract your ideal customers. This is where strategy plays a huge part as to whether you attract leads to your business or not. Then the task is to nurture those leads and convert them into paying customers.
I spoke in a previous post about the process of marketing a product or service online. Why you must create a picture of your ideal customer and find out where they hang out. Then plant some seeds or hooks to create curiosity and then through your story the result they will achieve.
Now we are going to apply those principles into the sales funnel stages that your potential customers will go through. In case you are unaware what a sales funnel is I will give you an overview before we look at one more in detail.
A sales funnel is a marketing concept that creates a roadmap of the journey that a potential customer will go through. Before I look at conventional sales funnel stages I want to touch on one of the best illustrations of customer mindset awareness. The phrase roadmap applies to one brand I can think of straight away and their customer psychology is spot on.
The Ikea Roadmap To Help You Spend More
In all probability you will have visited one of Sweden’s most famous brands showrooms which is Ikea. They have mastered the understanding of the customers mindset to help them sell more and more products. Right from the word go they take stress away from you because you can leave your kids in their play zone.
This is because they know if you haven’t got the kids moaning, they are bored you will spend more time shopping. You may not have noticed but Ikea stores don’t have any windows in their vast showrooms so you, so you are oblivious to the outside world. All the display clocks are not working so coupled with the lack of daylight you lose track of time. That’s why you will find it easy to spend 2-3 hours looking around.
Then they have you covered if you have forgotten to take a shopping list with you. They give you pencils and notepads so you can jot things down that you want to get from the self serve department at the end.
The Journey Begins
So, you start your journey and the first department they hit you with is the everyday items. Cheap items that you put in your large trolley because even though you don’t desperately need them, they will come in handy. Also, this is to get you to commit to buying something, like breaking the ice on a first meeting.
Then the journey really starts to pick up some momentum when you enter the first perfectly dressed department. For example, let’s say it is the bedroom department. They will start out with small bedside lights, the chest of drawers to put it on. Then will come the vanity units and matching chair next to the soft bedside rugs. Wardrobes and different sized beds will closely follow before the piece de resistance which is the fully laid out bedroom. This is so you can imagine how everything will look when put together in your home.
This whole experience is the sandwich between the two visits you will make to their restaurant. The cheap breakfast so sees you through the journey you are about to star. Then when you’re done, the cup of coffee as a reward for your efforts and to rest your weary legs before you tackle loading the car.
Whether you like Ikea and their items is irrelevant because as I have said they’ve mastered the process. Although they haven’t got a traditional sales funnel of 4 or 5 products you will have, they have got the principle.
People are aware they can have a stress-free time even if they have got kids. Then they give you the tools to write down your interest’s and start with low priced items. Then they put items threat compliment the one before and the price of those items steadily increase.
The Conventional Sales Funnel Stages
The example of Ikea is not the conventional sales funnel that you will create for your business, but the principle is the same. Also, it is based upon giving the customer the best experience possible so that they come back time and time again.
You will likely have a range of 4 – 5 products and services that will form your business. This is all you need to become highly successful online and the attraction of this business model is it is streamlined. You will place them in a sequence that will create a visualization of a funnel which I will speak about in a further post.
The standard sales funnel stages are represented in the following image, but it applies to each individual product you have. So, you will have funnel concepts within a master funnel.
Awareness & Interest Are The First Two Stages
The first stage of the sale funnel process is awareness. The potential lead or customer first becomes aware of your solution from any advertising you have placed. They may have clicked on that ad from Google, Facebook, Instagram or any other platform that you use.
The ad is designed to create the curiosity, irritate an itch they may have or even create the itch to start with. I say this because they may not even be aware of a problem until they see your ad. You now have them hooked so your task is to scratch that itch and get them interested.
You get them interested when they arrive on your landing page which is what they are directed to after they click on your ad. So how do you do that?
Through the copy that you have on your page which is where you start to tell your story. This not only creates interest in your products and services but also in you as a person.
The online marketing process works like this. When they arrive on your landing page the offer is usually a free resource. eBooks, videos or webinars are the favoured resources and they register for them by leaving their contact details. This is their first commitment and a cast iron sign they are interested.
This then triggers a series of communications that you have about your first paid solution. Initially they will be directed to a sales page for this paid solution but also email communication will start to deliver even more of your message.
They may not bite at your first paid option on your upsell page, but this message will be arriving again, and again in their inbox. Here you are leading them into the decision-making stage though providing value.
The Decision & Action Stage
After you have provided enough value on the benefits of your solution the person will be at the decision-making stage. They will have been paying attention to the value that you can deliver through your sales pages, webinars and even phone calls.
Then they take the ultimate decision to commit and purchase your first paid product or service. They click on your order button, enter in their credit card details and then submit their order.
You now have a paying customer but this when a new process starts. Customer retention is critical because it is easier to sell to an existing customer than a new one. When you back up the promise you made by delivering value through your solution, they will come back for more.
This is where you introduce them to the next product or service in your business. The only difference is that you don’t need to generate the lead, but you still need to generate the first stage of awareness. This then evolves into interest, decision and finally action.
When you get this process working correctly the final part of the sales funnel stages image takes place. Dollar, Pounds, Euro or any other currency you deal in will hit your bank accounts!
These sales funnels stages are what every customer goes through. You will occasionally the impulse buyers, but the general rule of thumb is people buy through logic. So, turn that logic into reality through the value of your messaging to make sure they decide yes! I teach more about sales funnels and how to put them into place in my Build Your AU mastermind. Click here for more information on Build Your AU.
Helping you build your authenticity, authority and audience.
Trish Davies
Build Your AU
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