The world wide web has easily become the biggest revenue stream and marketing tool businesses have at their disposal today. So it’s no longer good enough for companies to have a site that is just pretty or a site that just informs, now sites have to sell!
What’s the game?
Nearly every website whether for a location, service or product has an end goal, or as we call them a “call to action”; “Visit us”, “get in touch”, “buy now”... you get the idea. The name of the game is to get visitors from landing on your site, square one, to the end goal. This journey we call the sales funnel. Here’s our top five stages of creating your perfect sales funnel...
Pick a goal
The first thing you need is to be very clear on what your end goal is. Trying to point many people to many actions is a hard sell and without a lot of consideration will most likely fail. That’s not to say it’s impossible just make sure you get professional advice.
Building a successful funnel
Believe it or not how you structure your sites landing pages (this may be your home page or multiple pages people are arriving on), is vital to winning over your visitors and getting them to where you want them to be.
A successful funnel needs to accommodate everyone coming to you site; from the most aware visitors like returning customers, to visitors that don’t even know what your product/service is yet.
Studies show that consumers of websites will scroll and read content down a long form page over clicking to new pages. To persuade people to click to a new page of your site they need to be well informed as to what they’re getting and where they’re going. Using this we find that longer pages make great funnels, more on this later.
Keeping it watertight
A successful sales funnel needs to be watertight, this means you aren’t losing visitors as they journey through your site. The first and easiest hole to plug is dead ends, your visitors should never find themselves with nothing of value to read or nowhere to go. Always make sure there is something directing your visitors to where you want them to be, or they’ll leak out.
The second hole is direction, you should always try keep people on path to your end goal and be careful when directing them to other parts of the site. Read more buttons are great for educating visitors who need it, but be very careful they never feel lost or they won’t stick around. If in doubt give people options, “read more” or “Get in touch” the later being your end goal. Try to make sure the option is less prominent that your call to action. Don’t forget the dead ends, if they are going off to “read more” make sure they still have a way to your end goal.
Understanding your visitors
For your landing page content there is a simple equation, the length of your content is opposite to your visitors awareness. So the less aware your visitor is, the longer your content needs to be. It’s all based on 5 levels of awareness, copywriter Brian Clark explains these nicely, and I quote:
Most Aware: Your prospect knows your product, and only needs to know “the deal.”
Product-Aware: Your prospect knows what you sell, but isn’t sure it’s right for him.
Solution-Aware: Your prospect knows the result he wants, but not that your product provides it.
Problem-Aware: Your prospect senses he has a problem, but doesn’t know there’s a solution.
Completely Unaware: No knowledge of anything except, perhaps, his own identity or opinion.
To get your visitors to the end of the funnel, no matter how aware they are on arrival. They all need to end up as “Most Aware” and therefore ready for “the deal”.
Structuring your content
We always start with the most aware, this is because we know people will scroll and read your content and only click to your end goal when they are ready. By starting with the most aware they are ready to click and get to that end goal almost straight away. Then by slowly increasing the information in your copy each level of awareness can jump to that end goal when they are ready. Only leaving the least aware to read to the bottom of the page by which point they should also be ready to click to your end goal too. So what does this look like? Let’s imagine you’re selling financial advice:
1. Top quality independent financial advice… Most aware get advice here>
2. Our independent financial advice can help you with everything from buying your first house to saving for retirement… Product aware get advice here>
3. Are you looking to gain better control of your finances? Or need help planning for a financial goal? Our financial advice can help with everything from buying your first house to saving for retirement… Solution aware get advice here>
4. Do you find yourself worrying about money or just always short of spare cash? You need to gain better control of your finances and plan for the future. Our financial advice can help with everything from buying your first house to saving for retirement… Problem aware get advice here>
5. Our independent financial advice can help you with everything from buying your first house to saving for retirement. Whether you find yourself worrying about money or just always short of spare cash, Our financial advice can help you gain better control of your finances, plan for the future and achieve your goals… Unaware get advice here>
As you can see the length of your copy increases as you go. This helps keep the attention of your most aware visitors by giving them just what they need, whilst still tending to the less aware visitors further down the page. Also find same ‘hooks’ that grab the most aware visitors high up, draw in other visitors and entice them to read on.
End goal
Following these methods you should be able to maximise the number of visitors that reach your end goal and reduce those that get lost along the way. If you're looking for any support, or further advice, our lovely web team will be more than happy to sit down for a chat and a brew to discuss your requirements.