In this guide you’ll learn everything there is to know about the different sales funnel stages and what they do.
If you break down a sales funnel into separate pieces you’ll end up with six different stages on the table:
- Awareness
- Discovery
- Evaluation
- Engagement
- Commitment and purchase
- Loyalty and advocacy
Each of theses stages describes how the lead “thinks and acts” in relation to your offer. They also describe what actions you need take in order to get the lead to procced to the next stage of your funnel, ultimately becoming a customer.
So, if you have leads that are stuck at some stage or want to learn how to get the most out of each stage, then you’ll love this guide.
What is a Sales Funnel?
To be honest, in order for you to get anything out of this guide, you first need to understand what a sales funnel is.
Sounds fair?
The basic definition of a sales funnel is that it’s like having your best salesperson accompanying each lead from point A to point B.
The problem with this is that it’s really hard to fit a salesperson into the hard drive of a computer, so we need to apply this principal in some other way.
The way you apply this principal in the digital world, is with sales funnels.
Here you have multiple highly optimized pages arranged in a way that guides the visitor from point A to point B in a logical manner, with as few distractions as possible.
Everything from copywriting, images and color schemes has been carefully selected to achieve one specific goal…
To get the visitor to take the exact action you want them to take – giving you their contact information, book a call, etc.
With a well composed funnel in place, you have done everything you can to ensure that a visitor doesn’t leave because they got confused.
If you compare this to a website, which is like giving out a business card and hope for people to take “any” action at all.
A funnel is the unofficial tour guide that does everything in its power to get a visitor to take the action you want.
You’re working with AIDA
The sales funnel dates back over a century now, and it originates from the AIDA formula, which looks like this:
- Awareness: Attract the attention of the customer. Stand out from the crowd!
- Interest: Raise consumers interest by demoing features, advantages, and benefits.
- Decision: The potential customer starts comparing solutions to see which one will benefit them the most.
- Action: Guide the customer towards taking a specific action aka. make a purchase.
And this is the model that identifies the stages a potential customer goes through during the process of making a purchase.
However, these four stages isn’t quiet enough for giving you a detailed view of the customers journey.
That is why there are now to more stages added to the party, making them six.
The Sales Funnel Stages
Now, depending on who you ask, the sales funnel comes in a variety of stages. The simple lead funnel comes can be described using the AIDA method, because it’s simple enough to allow that.
But when a funnel gets more complex, especially when you start selling products, you need those extra two stages.
To put it simple, the more stages there is, the more detailed breakdown of the customers journey you’ll get.
That being said, on average, most will say that a sales funnel have six stages.
But, since I’m a marketer, I like to settle with only four stages (because that is enough for what I do at the moment).
But since you are here right now, I’ll make an exception ad break down all six of them.
Stage 1: Awareness
Attention or the awareness phase is the top layer of the funnel, and it’s also the broadest.
At this stage you need to make your target audience “aware” of your business and show that you exist.
Or as I like to think of it, you need to stand out and scream your name form a mountaintop!
To get potential clients aware of your business you can promote yourself in many different ways. A few options could be:
- Blog posts
- Social media marketing
- Paid advertising
- SEO
- Forums
- Videos
- etc.
Here at the top of the funnel consumers are completely unqualified and know nothing about you, your brand or what it does.
This means that you need to target these people with great content that is relevant to the product you are offering to get their attention.
For instance, do some research and figure out where your potential clients hangs out. If most are using Facebook, try targeting them with some high quality ads showing the benefits of your services.
Many times, the most effective method at this stage is to stay away from being to brand or product focused.
This is because you should assume that the people who are engaging with your content isn’t ready to buy from you yet.
A good sales funnel to use here would be the Squeeze Funnel, since it uses a lot of curiosity to bring new leads in.
Stage 2: Discovery
Awesome, people are now aware of your business and interested enough to want to know more.
Now it’s time for you to educate them.
Here you share valuable content that points out their specific problem and how you can help them improve their lives.
You can do this by:
- Branded website
- Blog posts
- Videos
- Infographics
- Social media
- How-To guides
- Branded newsletter
At this stage of the funnel your goal is to keep your new leads attention and make them more familiar with your brand.
You do this by providing them with valuable content to get then interested enough to move to the next stage.
Hence why it’s so important for your brand to have a homepage that is up to date.
Because I can promise you that these new leads will be heading over to your website as well as other social medias to find out more about you and your business.
So you need to make sure that whenever someone lands on your homepage, they’ll get all the information about: what you do, how you do it, what you’re offering, and more.
A good tactic here is to have a newsletter filled with great content the visitors can opt-in to. This way you also have a way to stay in touch with the lead in the future.
A great funnel for this would be the Homepage Funnel or the Hero Funnel (if you want to highlight yourself), which does exactly what I described above.
Stage 3: Evaluation
Once you have the prospects full attention, it’s time for them to figure out if they need your service or not.
This is the point where a potential customers will be doing their own research to figure out if you are the right solution to their problem.
A word of advice here is to give the prospect some space to figure things out, rather than pushing tons of information at them.
However, depending on what you are trying to sell, you can still be helpful (without being pushy) by providing some extra resources like:
- Further education (Reports, eBooks, etc.)
- Softwares and tools
- Case studies
- Audio and videos
- Free demo
If the information you offered resonates with the clients needs and desires, you’ll be in consideration when they make the final decision.
Stage 4: Engagement
A point where many marketers and sales people reach a standstill with their potential customers is in the engagement stage.
Here it’s up to the prospect to make the decision to buy or not.
And there isn’t much you can do at this to speed up this decision making process. Never try to force the sale, that will only hurt your reputation.
You’ll simply have to play the waiting game.
There are however things you can do to keep your brand at the top of their mind.
You could engage those leads with:
- Quizzers
- Surveys
- Webinars
- Events
Although the above are great ways for you to get your audience to engage with you and your brand…
They could also be used at any of the stages to increase engagement with your brand. Because engagement should always be something you want more of.
The whole idea with this stage is to keep your leads happy and engaged with your brand right up to the point where they are ready to make a purchase.
Some high engagement funnel types you can use are:
- Survey funnel
- Ask Campaign funnel
- Webinar funnel
- Summit funnel
Stage 5: Commitment and Purchase
Some like to separate the commitment and the purchase into two different sales funnel stages. However I feel like that is unnecessary since they both go hand in hand.
First the new leads gives you their consent to buy (commitment), then they follow through and makes the purchase.
At this point the prospect has taken every option into consideration and decided that they might want to buy from you.
Their wallets are out and they are hovering over the “BUY NOW” button…
They just need that last tiny pieces of reassurance to make sure that you are the best solution for them.
So what you need to do now is to convince the prospect that you really are the best solution for their problems.
Informing the client about specific details is the best way to remove any of the last remaining doubts, so consider using:
- Credentials
- Your background and unique position
- Cost of your services
- Comparison charts
- Features and benefits of what you’re offering
- Testimonials of happy customers.
And if you want to encourage leads to make the decision faster, try using limited time free trials and discounts.
When the prospect feels like everything is adding up, they’ll proceed to make you a favorable decision and buy from you.
Stage 6: Loyalty and Advocacy
The funny thing is that many people out there seem to think that the customers life cycle ends with the purchase.
That could not be further from the truth.
In fact, on average existing customers spends 67% more than those who are new to your business. And we also know that acquiring new customer costs 5-10x more than selling to a current customer.
With that in mind, you should be working just as hard, if not harder, to keep your current customers happy and satisfied.
When this is done right, a new customer will become a loyal fan and help you generate more leads.
And since they now are such a big fan of yours, chances are that he or she will become a recurring customer. Which in turn will lead to more sales made by already existing customers.
This gives you a unique advantage as a marketer and business owner.
Now you get to spend less money on acquiring new leads, and focus more energy on those who already are your customers…
Since they, statistically speaking, are much more likely to buy from you again.
At this stage, you need to maintain some level of brand awareness so the customer stays in the funnel.
This can be done by providing current customers with:
- Product tutorials
- Support via social media
- Communities (your own Facebook group maybe…)
- Customer exclusive newsletter
- Event invitations
- and much more…
Conclusion
I hope today’s post gave you better understanding of the six different sales funnel stages and what they do.
Now I want to turn it over to you:
Do you have leads that are stuck at some stage?
Or maybe you’ve figured out a way to optimize each stage of your funnel even more.
Either way, leave a comment below to let me know.
