This article, yes this article right here will answer 1 basic question which can change the graph of your business.
And when I say change, I mean it in positive sense.
Waiting for the question?
Here we go…
Does your coaching business need a Sales Funnel?
Long answer short: Yes
But that doesn’t work.
Right!
So here is the long answer. Remember how a couple of years back, you used to travel and see big banners, and the billboards.
Those were the days when nothing sort of funnels and stuffs like these existed.
Now personally, I constantly debate with myself if that was good or bad, but let’s not get into it.
The purpose of the billboard was to make you aware of the product and try to use some nuanced copywriting skills and then sit back into your shop and wait for the customers to just barge into your shop for your product.
But those days are gone. We live now in age where sales funnel are the most integral part of the sales process.
Now coming to the basics, “What is sales funnel?”
Sales Funnel is a process in which the buyer is taken from the awareness stage for your product to the buying stage.
All these stages are done in a complete systematic and mostly automated way.
Understanding sales funnel is not easy because there are 100s of “gurus” making their livelihood by making sales funnel hard to understand.
At GetDigitalOffice, we have broken down all the stages of the sales funnel and come up with 3 simple stages.
Let’s dive in.
Awareness Stage Of Sales Funnel
This is the first stage in a buyer’s journey.
You are a new player in the market and people are not aware about your product.
You have to take down routes which you know your target audience travels.
In the awareness stage your sole intention should be to provide value for your target audience.
If you try to sell anything in this stage, it can work but in 99% cases it usually backfires.
So unless you are sure that you belong to the 1%, try not to sell during this stage.
Here are some ways to bring awareness to your target audience:
Content marketing is mechanism in which you produce content and make that content appear infront of your target audience.
The content can be in form of blog or infographics or image.
The choice is yours. But the content should have a clear message and that message should be understood by the audience.
Need an example?
This blog is form of Content Marketing for our marketing agency GetDigitalOffice.
You are here to know about Sales funnel. By reading this article you can either implement this on your own or if you find it overwhelming you will need an agency to take over the task, here you might contact us.
Seeing how sales funnel works!
Video
Videos are a great way to offer your services if you are into coaching service.
Although reading has their own set of audience, videos have evolved and will keep evolving in context of content marketing.
People are more willing to watch a video than to read an article.
Use this as your advantage.
Paid Ads
Paid ads have their own perks.
I can go on talking about it for the whole evening, but I am sure you are not interested in this.
So I will just tell you that the advantage of paid ads is that you get to target the audience with a particular interest of particular search query to come in front of.
This gives super specific target audience, who already needed a product that you offer and now you have come infront of them.
Does it sound like higher chance of conversion?
It does because it is.
Referrals and word of mouth – There are two scenarios in which referrals will work in your favor.
Scenario 1- You have an excellent service to provide.
Scenario 2- You provide your customer with an incentive for referral. For example most of the payment ads provide certain amount of cashback if they refer the app to a friend.
Relationship Stage
Now we have crossed the first stage.
The advantage of that stage was that now the customer is aware of you and your product.
They now know that you are providing xyz service and this can be beneficial for them. Now we have come into the next stage of funnel i.e. creating a relationship with them.
Creating a relationship doesn’t mean hosting a dinner party and inviting them over.
It means providing them value but this time in a more personalized way.
This stage is very important and what happens to the future of the funnel largely depends on what you do in this stage.
Here are some ways on which you can focus on to build relationship with your target audience.
Email marketing
This is the most beneficial channel once you have got your basics right.
Creating an email list is not easy. And to build a list of potential clients you have to work hard and work smart.
But if we are considering sales, email marketing has the most attractive ROI.
Webinars
Ever taught or gave speech on a topic in middle of an audience?
Well…
Webinars are just a digital version of those.
Conduct free webinars exclusively for your target audience.
Give them enough value.
Giving them free value will build the sales game for you, because once you come up with a sale, they are going to buy it.
Transaction Stage
Now even though you have followed all the trips and tricks and strategy doesn’t mean you can get lazy on this step.
Because this is what we built everything for.
You want your target customer to buy the product or service that you are offering.
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Usually after some time, this stage is inbuilt within other stages.
I will tell you how.
But first imagine, if your teacher comes and asks you to buy a product, will you do it?
Answer is no.
You can’t make someone buy a particular product.
All you can do is to help them make an educated purchase.
Human mind does not work in a simple black and white process. There are lots and lots of decisions and biases involved.
So we at GetDigitalOffice suggest is that you should keep providing value to the customer and within that value exchange process you should insert your product or service sale in a very subtle way.
You need to know that your target audience is having a particular problem and them you have to solve that problem in bits and pieces.
That is the purpose of the first 2 stages in the funnel.
Post Funnel Stage
Have you availed after sales services from the brands that you purchase your Television from?
That is what this stage is concerned with.
You have made a sale, but your work doesn’t end here.
You have to make the customer feel delighted with the purchase he has made.
If you provide value as per the consumer’s expectation you are bound to get more sales with his word of mouth.
And you will eventually end up doing more sales.
So just to sum up what we have covered, here is a summary of the whole article:
- Make your target audience Aware with content marketing strategy.
- Build relationship using the channels of your choice.
- Help consumer make educated purchase.
- Delight your consumer in the post funnel stage.
What do you think of this, let us know in the comments.
Also read: Grow Your Business With Digital Marketing Using These 7 Easy Tips
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