Everything You Need to Know to Set Up A Marketing and Sales Funnel For Your Business

We’ve discussed the basics and importance of marketing and sales funnel for your business, but now we’ll cover what you need to know to set one up.

What Do You Need to Start?

There are two mains things you need to start your marketing and sales funnel:

Online presence
Traffic

Without these two items, you will only be creating an empty structure.

Once you have an online presence and traffic, use the AIDA marketing model to determine who your customers are, what you have to offer them, and why they should choose you or your product/service.

Next, determine your business goals and metrics. If you use these while creating your online presence strategy, they will transport your business goals onto your website, landing pages, social media channels, ads, and lead nurturing campaigns.

1. Online presence

If you have a website with a blog and social media channels, you have an online presence. Social media channels can include Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Youtube, Instagram, Periscope and many others, but at the beginning, you’ll want to focus on only one to master.

Leave other channels for later, after you’ve mastered your first social media channel.

TIP: Ask Yourself

Who are my customers? Create buyer personas. Use the AIDA model to explain how you will advertise and present yourself to each buyer persona at every stage of the AIDA marketing funnel.
How can I fulfill my customers’ needs? Do keyword research to see how many people are searching for solutions that your product/service provides. Determine how large your competition is. Then use this information while creating and designing your website, landing pages, campaigns, ad groups and ads.
Why should they choose your company and product/service? How are you better than your competitors? Brainstorm ideas and create value propositions to use later for your website, landing pages and ad copy.

TIP: Online Presence Essentials

Local business profiles (Yelp, Foursquare, Google) – if you are a local business with a brick and mortar, rather than just e-commerce, these profiles are extremely helpful in your online presence.
A responsive, well-designed website with copy that converts. You want your website to be appealing with its copy and responsive to your user’s device to push your visitor toward conversion.
Unique and useful content on your blog. Focus on your target audience and things they find interesting or needed. Having this focus will improve your SEO results, provide quality content for your social media, and add value for your visitors to increase conversions.
At least one active social media channel. Engage with your followers and convert them to customers by reaching them where they are on social media.

2. Traffic

To get traffic to your website, you need to create a plan of how and where you’ll raise awareness for your company, product or service. To raise awareness, you can go through this basic channels:

PPC: Pay Per Click ads

Pay Per Click ads are usually found on social networks and search engine results pages (SERPs) like on Google or Bing. You’ll see them strategically placed for view-ability.

With these ads, you pay for each click on the ad. On Facebook, you can pay for a reach or number of people to whom your ad will be shown.

PPC targeting

With Pay Per Click ads, targeting is very important. It is crucial that you know your target audience to reach them more efficiently.

With Google, you “create” your audience using keywords and ad groups. You’ll want to target them using their location and language, based on their searches.

With Facebook, you can target an audience using their location, age, gender, languages, connections, and their behavior.

Knowing what your target audience and what they need or search for is essential to reaching them effectively with Pay Per Click ads.

SEO and Content Strategy Combined with Social Media Presence

Combining your SEO and content strategy with your social media presence can increase awareness, traffic, and conversion. Good SEO will increase your organic traffic.

To utilize good SEO, though, you’ll need quality content. That same quality content can then be used on social media to gain more followers, likes, shares, and leads.

Moreover, by focusing on keywords relevant to your business and niche, you can build a community of followers AND customers on social media.

By combining these strategies, you’ll increase traffic and visitors that you’ll then want to convert and move further down the marketing and sales funnel.

PR/Media Outreach

While PR/Media Outreach is not a stable way of getting traffic, it can be a great way to earn valuable backlinks and improve your off-site SEO results.

With reputable mentions from other sources outside of your website, you’ll gain authority in your online presence and possible referral traffic as well.

How to Use AIDA Marketing Model to Get More Website Traffic

The three methods above are not only used for raising awareness, however. These methods are also used for the other elements of the AIDA model: interest, desire, and action. You can create campaigns in each of the three methods to guide your customers through each stage.

For instance, pay per click ads can be used to rouse interest just as much as attention, focusing on a certain aspect of the product/service that satisfies customer needs can filter them into the desire stage, and promoting a sale could easily draw them into action.

Using keyword research to target your audience in each stage and designing a campaign geared toward the specific stage will guide your customer through the AIDA funnel.

TIP: Use PPC to Test the Water

PPC is a great, cheap way to test which keywords and value propositions are working and bringing you relevant traffic. Use this information while creating landing pages, content strategy, or (re)designing your website.

Conclusion: Online Presence & Website Traffic

Once you’ve set up your online presence and traffic channels, you’ve completed the first steps towards creating a successful marketing and sales funnel for your business.

Keep in mind that most people who come to your website for the first time will not make a purchase immediately. You’ll need to guide them through their journey.

To convert those first-time visitors into leads, gather their contact information and then use that information for your lead nurturing campaigns.

Use analytics data and best practices to optimize your marketing and sales funnel.

Read more about nurturing your leads and funnel optimization in our next article.