In order for your business to thrive, you need your sales pipeline to be full at all times. A good website can help you attract and nurture leads, capture their contact information, and ultimately usher them from the “just browsing” phase to the point where they’re ready to make a purchase. However, all of this is contingent on your website having a good lead funnel in place.
Sales Funnels vs. Lead Funnels
Before we discuss lead funnels, it’s important to get some background information regarding sales funnels. When we talk about a sales funnel, we’re simply referring to the path customers take from initially hearing about your brand, product, or service to actually completing a transaction.
The sales funnel can be divided into three basic segments:
- The top of the funnel (ToFu) refers to anyone in your target audience.
- The middle of the funnel (MoFu) encompasses potential customers.
- The bottom of the funnel (BoFu) denotes both new and existing customers.
Every business has some kind of sales funnel in place, some process by which ToFu folks are sorted into the MoFu category, and the MoFu folks are drawn to the BoFu. However, with many businesses, the sales funnel is somewhat haphazard and ill-conceived.
That brings us to lead funnels. A lead funnel coincides with the ToFu stage of the sales funnel. It represents the place where you:
- Catch the attention of people who are in your target audience.
- Offer them something valuable that they can’t resist.
- Convince them to click through to a landing page and offer their contact information in exchange for that something valuable.
Once you get that contact information, you’ve effectively moved that person from the top of the sales funnel to the middle. You’ve turned them from a window shopper into an actual lead.
Building a Lead Funnel
So what are the steps involved with developing a lead funnel?
1) Define your target audience.
Before you do anything else, you need to have a clear understanding of the audience you’re trying to draw. Use buyer personas and data from previous customers to help you identify the demographic benchmarks of your target audience.
2) Understand pain points.
Next, ask yourself what problems your audience is trying to solve, or which obstacles they are trying to overcome. Maybe they need to save money, to impress their boss, or to achieve greater work-life balance. Defining the pain point is a crucial step toward positioning your brand as a solution.
3) Create a lead magnet.
Next, you need to offer something valuable, something that will persuade the target customers that you have the solution to their problem. This may be a downloadable e-book, white paper, or video. It may also be something like a free consultation over Zoom or over the phone.
4) Develop a landing page.
Once you have determined the lead magnet you plan to use, create a page where you can enumerate its benefits while also capturing contact information from your target audience. Remember, capturing their information is how you verify their interest and turn them into actual leads or prospects. Remember that a good landing page will always have a compelling headline and strong calls to action.
Does Your Website Capture Leads?
Building a funnel to capture leads may look a little different from business to business, but it’s crucial to have a strategy in place. That’s something we can help you with. Here at Woland Web, we have extensive experience developing websites that align with broader marketing strategies. Contact us to learn how you can turn your website into a lead magnet!
