The Ultimate Guide: How To Choose The Best Marketing Funnel Tools
Any product or service that you make will not be sold automatically. There is more to business than just manufacturing products or providing services. There is a need to advertise, find customers and have your product or service as a solution to their problems. The entire process, from promoting your brand to convince the customer to buy your product, is called a sales funnel. It is called so because as you go deeper into the process of marketing strategy, the number of customers you need to deal with narrows down.
There are four stages of a marketing funnel.
Awareness stage
This stage deals with establishing a connection between the people who have a problem and your brand that has the solution. When people know that your business has a product that could be a possible solution to their problem, they might move on to the next stage.
Interest Stage
This stage deals with the process where people try to find out more about your brand. Your part here is to have your business readily available on social media with regular, updated content that is easily accessible to the general public. This helps people develop an inclination towards your brand when searching for solutions.
Consideration
The third stage of the marketing funnel is crucial. Your prospective customers know the problem. They're aware that you have the solution to their problem. But there are a lot of solutions available all over the Internet. To choose your product as their solution, you need to interact with them and convince them it is so.
Conversion
The final stage of the funnel is the conversion of a prospect into a lead. Here, you need to unleash a compelling offer that will remove their final hesitation and choose your brand as the solution to their problem.
Types of Funnels
Now that you understand the sales funnel, you need to figure out how to choose the right tools for the smooth flow of customers through your funnel and prevent any leads from reversing their way. There are three common types of sales funnel that require different tools.
Lead capture funnels
As the name suggests, opt-in funnels or lead capture funnels allow you to access the email addresses of people to increase your mailing list. You can then send emails, newsletters, offers, and news about your product or service. This will keep your brand in the minds of people.
Sales page funnels
Sales page funnels can help you utilize features like upsells and cross-sells. Upsell can convince your customer to buy a more expensive alternative or choose an add-on to the buy. Cross-sell will let your existing customer buy a new product from you. This is advantageous for your profit per conversion rate.
Webinar funnels
Webinar funnels are a relatively new trend, yet it lets you interact with your leads on a one to one basis. Webinar funnels make a customer sign up for a webinar. Then you can advertise your products and services during the webinar, or just after discussing their problems after the webinar.
Choosing The Right Tools for Your Business
The first step is to understand your own business. You need to ask yourself questions. You need to know if you're a B2B business or B2C business, you need to know the size of your business, if it requires a lot of attractive features or you are a small business that needs the minimal tools, you need to think of the tools that worked for you in the past and decide which factions of your sales team will use the tools. All these questions will help you set a base for the hunt that you are about to begin. You can easily get carried away by the lucrative tools promising you to bring profits. Having these questions in your mind will let you avoid whims and focus on the actual developmental process.
The next step is to decide the features that you need in the software. After completing your list, segregate the functions in categories based on features that you require, you will want to use but aren't essential and lastly features that you will use if they don't cost you a lot of money. You need to find software that has the best combination of all the features. Few things that you can keep in mind are-
Compatibility
You must find tools that can easily collaborate with other business tools that you use. For instance, if you have a tool that looks after your customer relationships management (CRM), you might want to find tools that are compatible with it, and easily sync with it.
Mobile functionality
You cannot have a desktop or laptop with you all the time. However, you need to be updated with the latest developments in your sales process all the time. Hence it will be easier to find tools that you can access from your smartphone. Apps that fit in the software are especially preferable for their easy user interface.
Analytics
Tools will be useless if they don't provide you with insights. Real-time statistics, interactive plugins, page performance, site tracking, and so on are a few handy analytics that are a must-have in any tools that you choose. These analytics will guide you to use your tools better.
The last step is pricing. The ultimate goal of a sales funnel is to generate profits. The optimum method to do so is finding the best tools at the lowest possible cost. The initial investment into tools is a bit risky as you don't know how well they will pay off. So the best-case scenario is to choose tools that don't cut into your existing profits. However, this should not lead you to pick the cheapest tools and compromise on the quality of the software that you will be using. You must take plenty of time and do plenty of research before choosing software. You should find the balance between cost and quality and finalize the tools you will be using.
Here are a few categories of tools to get you started for making an effective sales funnel:
Lead attracting tools
People have very low attention spans. To establish a connection with a lead just by a glance they give at your page has become a necessity. Look for tools that keep a lead on your page for longer. Think of an interactive experience that will engage them and make them look at your products.
If you are successful, they might share their email details and contact number. This will help you interact with them, send them emails with offers, news, and updates on your business. Lead magnet ideas are a great way to pump up your awareness stage of the funnel.
Tools for creating the best landing page
The landing page is the first thing a customer sees as they decide to explore your business. An attractive landing page can keep your customer hooked. A landing page must be clear of clutter and focus on the highlight of your business, something that sets you different from your competitors. You don't need a developer to make a landing page.
There is an ample number of tools that have drag and drop features to customize and create a landing page in no time. Landing pages will help you boost the second stage of the funnel, the interest stage.
Funnel layout tools
Sales funnels are a lot messier than they look. Customers do not follow a linear path and might oscillate back and forth among the various stages. Sometimes, funnels are more complex and have numerous branches. To keep track of how your funnel works, you might need a visual aid.
There are tools available that can help you map a funnel with simple drag and drop features. This will help you optimize the sales process. It also allows for easy sharing and thus better insights as it can be discussed among the team in a better way.
Lead generation tools
To increase the audience size of your brand, you need lead generation tools. You must not count your leads as customers, as they are at the top of the funnel and can leave any time they wish to. Thus having a lot of leads will help you have a significant number of entering into the second stage.
Lead generation tools aren't the most essential of all the tools, but they come handy when you are new to the market and need to attract a lot of customers. A lot of lead generation tools are free of cost and easy to use, so there is no problem to consider them.
As you have all the information about marketing funnels and have shaped a list that helps you decide and choose tools for your business, you can now move to the real task of selecting tools and see how they fit into your model.
