You may feel as though you have increased your conversion rate, but there are other elements that you may be missing.
The purpose of content at the top of the funnel is to educate potential customers, get them to come back, and create a strong connection with them so they’ll sign up for an online course or subscribe to a newsletter.
Before potential customers contact a sales representative, they will typically read 3-4 pieces of content. You need to make sure that this content is interesting and engaging, as well as being useful in solving a problem.
What is Top of the Funnel Content?
Content that is designed to educate, help, and answer common questions, without selling a product or service to a customer, is known as top of the funnel content.
The main audience for ToFu content is people who are in the awareness phase of the online buyer’s journey. This is the phase where people identify a need and start looking for solutions.
The top of the funnel marketing strategy can be broken down into several stages of discovery.
Attracting Customers
Once people are aware of your brand and identify it with solving their problems, they will want to know more. At this stage, it is more important to focus on quality rather than quantity of content. Offer solutions that align with your customers’ needs and expectations in order to succeed.
Connecting with your Clients
Top of the funnel marketing strategies that only rely on emotional appeals will not be successful in winning over potential customers. To be successful, you have to show potential customers that you can provide them with something of value.
The best way to connect with potential clients is to specify how your website will benefit them. Make sure to mention your free offer as well, as they will likely be interested.
Driving high-quality traffic to a high-converting sales funnel and the result is a simple math problem:
Traffic + Sales Funnel = Revenue
The amount of revenue that has yet to be determined depends on the quality of traffic and sales.
We are going to share 9 strategies that have been proven to work over the past decade.
9 Sales Funnel Strategies to Increase Revenue and Conversions
1. Lead Magnets
Lead magnets are an effective way to generate leads, especially in a scalable way.
What’s a lead magnet?
It can be thought of as a gift given in return for someone’s email address or other contact information, such as a phone number or address. It is usually just about getting a person’s name and/or email address to start.
People are not going to give up their email address without getting something in return. The offer you give them needs to be something they really want and that appeals to your target market.
2. The Soap Opera Sequence
If you imagine generating a lead using a lead magnet, as was discussed in the previous tip, it will be easier to do.
Now what?
Do you reach out to that person and tell them about your products or services and ask if they’re interested in purchasing?
Ideally… no.
The experience of buying from, and learning to trust, a new company is something that takes time.
This is not something that can be achieved quickly; it will take time and thought.
The Soap Opera Sequence is a set of emails that tell a story, with each email adding another layer to the plot.
What’s that?
Soap operas are a little ridiculous, but seem to be really good at getting people to come back for more.
The reason why sitcoms are so successful is because they have a set structure that they follow for each episode.
- Resolve last episode’s suspense.
- Create suspense.
- End before suspense is resolved.
Repeat.
That’s the idea with a Soap Opera Sequence.
You can create a sense of excitement and suspense with your first email, which will make recipients want to read your second email. You can then do the same thing with your second email, which will make recipients want to read your third email. You can continue this pattern until you have built up the trust and authority to offer one of your products or services.
5. Upselling
What are some of your favorite strategies for increasing the average order value of a sales funnel?
Three tactics come to mind…
- Upselling
- Downselling
- Order Bumps
We will discuss upselling here, then downselling and order bumps in the next sections.
First, a definition.
The process of upselling involves offering a customer an additional product or service during the sales process, typically in the form of a limited time offer.
An upsell typically costs three to five times more than an initial offer. So, if an initial offer costs $7, an upsell would cost around $21 to $35.
An upsell is effective because people are in the buying mindset and they’ve already overcome the friction of entering their shipping and payment information. They’re likely to accept your offer if it’s appealing and not too expensive.
An upsell is a good way to increase your average order value when selling something.
Make sure that your upsell is something that works well with your original offer.
6. Downselling
Downselling takes upselling one step further.
If someone rejected your upsell, a downsell that is less expensive would be offered. This downsell could be the same offer as the upsell but with an additional discount. Another option for the downsell could be a less expensive variation of the upsell.
An upsell is when you try to sell a customer a more expensive item than they were planning to buy. A downsell is when you offer a customer a cheaper item than they were originally going to buy after they have rejected your upsell.
7. Order Bumps
An order bump is a product or service that can be added to an order at the last minute with a single click.
They usually are on the “Confirm Your Order” page.
The checkout process could include one or more order bumps.
As much as possible, use order bumps that are related to what the customer is buying now – for example, if they’re buying shoes, offer them matching socks.
An order bump is an upsell offer that is presented to a customer at checkout.
8. Hook, Story, Offer
Sales funnels are a process that companies use to convert potential customers into paying customers. From a high level, they make a lot of sense and are actually pretty easy to understand. The hard part is designing and executing a sales funnel that actually works.
The sales funnel has a specific path that customers are supposed to take, from awareness to interest to decision to purchase. Seeing the sales funnel and understanding how it works can be a revelation for online entrepreneurs.
When you start to design your first page and sit down to write some copy, you may find yourself at a loss for words.
Umm… What are you supposed to say?
There is a process for writing copy that converts, and it is fortunately simple.
The goal of this process is to get the visitor interested, share a story with them, and then make them an offer.
Here are the details.
A sales page isn’t effective if it doesn’t grab people’s attention. People are busy, so to get them to take time out of their day to learn about your offer, you need to offer something really great.
Next, tell your visitors a story. Share with them a time when you (or a client) were in their exact position. Describe the process of discovery that you (or a client) went through and how you (or a client) came out the other end better than before. This story will show people why and how your products or services are the solution they’re looking for.
Pull out all the stops in your offer, including urgency, scarcity, discounts, FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), bonuses, and free gifts, to make it one they can’t refuse.
9. Problem Aware Vs. Solution Aware
The hook-story-offer sales page format is a technique for writing sales pages that is easy to use and effective.
BUT…
Before you start writing, it’s important to understand the difference between people in your target market who are aware of the problem and people who are aware of the solution.
You will usually want to have different sales funnels for each category.
The difference with sales pages that serve each segment is that they are critical.
People who recognize they have a problem but are unsure of the solution are prime candidates for a sales pitch that presents a novel solution. To be effective, the sales page should address the problem directly and show empathy for the reader’s situation.
People who are solution aware know that there are ways to fix their problem, but they haven’t taken any steps to do so yet. The reasons for this could be fear, lack of trust in themselves, or the fact that the problem isn’t bad enough to warrant taking action. A sales page for this audience should highlight why other solutions are ineffective and how the product being sold is different.
How to create the right Top of funnel Content
Content marketing at the top of the funnel is designed to attract leads and increase brand awareness. It also involves creating connections by meeting customer needs.
Here are some ways you can create a great top of the funnel content:
Building your Buyer Persona
A buyer persona is a research-based representation of your ideal customer. They help you focus on qualified leads, develop products that meet customer needs, and delegate tasks in your organization.
When creating a buyer persona, you should also think about what kind of content would be most useful to them (ToFu content), as well as what kind of follow-up would be most effective in acquiring and retaining customers.
Personas are an important marketing strategy as they can attract high-value leads who you can keep for a long time.
Understand your Keyword and Search Intent Target
To find out what people are searching for on the web, you can use a keyword research tool. To make sure your products and services are a click away from a potential buyer, you can use Google AdWords.
Creating content that aligns with your target keyword and search intent will result in more visitors to your site.
Google Keyword Planner can help you create a list of keywords to use in your content that will perform well in regard to your products and services.
Create Content that Educates, Entertains, or Inspires
To create content that cuts through the noise and gets noticed, focus on creating content for the top of the funnel. This type of content is designed to attract attention and generate interest in your product or service.
Most top of the funnel content is only designed to get attention, not to sell products.
To make great ToFu content, follow a tested and tried approach that makes your content both entertaining and inspiring, while also creating awareness.
Digital sites tend to prioritize content quality over quantity.
If you want to interest potential customers in your product, you need to show them how it can solve their problems.
You are the best person to give advice about your products and services and to suggest what offers will be more valuable to customers. However, you need to listen more and talk less.
Your customers usually tell you when they’re unhappy, which gives you a chance to make things right and address the issues causing their frustration. This benefits both you and your customers.
If customers are disconnecting due to pricing, it means that you have not done a good enough job of showing them the value of your products or services.
Don’t Bare All; Provide more value in your Lead Magnets to Incentivize Prospects.
After winning your customers over and getting them to like you, you shouldn’t become too relaxed and stop trying as hard. You might not have to put in as much effort, but you shouldn’t stop entirely.
If you want to create a lot of referral traffic, you need to develop an offer that is so attractive that you, the provider, can’t resist it.
Dropbox has excellent referral programs that have helped contribute to their impressive growth.
Measure your Content Engagement
The key objective for every marketer is to improve the engagement of their top-of-the-funnel content. Although you may receive positive feedback from readers in the form of comments and messages, it’s important to measure the engagement of your ToFu content to ensure its effectiveness.
There are several things you can measure to gauge the success of your digital marketing campaign, such as the number of qualified leads, your organic rankings, brand market share, and the number of new backlinks or social shares.
Setting up the funnel content is not a quick or easy task, it is something that will take continued effort as long as your business is running. Although it may be challenging, effectively closing deals can result in significant improvements.
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