Showing posts with label sales funnel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sales funnel. Show all posts

Monday, 22 March 2010

Lead generation - the importance of a Sales Funnel

Online or offline, any business needs to be generating a continuous stream of leads. Just as high-street retailers need foot-fall - people coming through the front door of the shop - so an online shop needs visitors to its store. An even if your business doesn't take money online for sales the web is still a very effective method of lead generation. Developing a sales funnel makes your lead generation more effective.

All customers, or potential customers, are not the same. They may well have different problems that they want to solve, where your product or solution can help them. They may take a different approach to buying, different timescales, and need different levels of reassurance, to pick just some differences.

Creating a sales funnel with products or solutions at multiple price-points increases the probability that the prospect can find something that meets their needs and budget. The early stages may actually not be a purchase at all, but a registration for some information or communication.

The cost of acquisition of new customers can be reduced, by offering many choices and many ways for them to engage with your business, rather than a single decision, to buy or not to buy.

To provide some numerical examples:

If you generated 1000 visitors to your website for £100 and converted 1% to make 10 sales the cost of acquisition would be £10 per sale.

However, if you provided multiple offers the same 1000 visitors might produce the following spread of results:

  • 10 sales for product A as before
  • 5 sales for product B
  • 2 sales for product C
  • 25 downloads of a white paper or report - with email addresses you could follow-up
  • 10 registrations for an educational auto-responser sequence - with email addresses
  • 5 registrations for a webinar - with emails addresses you can follow-up

And so on. So, your £100 marketing spend has now generated a much greater return, with more short-term sales for different things and different price points, and also produced email addresses that you can market to subsequently, for people who may not be ready to purchase from you just yet, for whatever reason.

Structuring and developing your sales funnel like this is just one way to maximise your lead generation activity develop and grow your business.