The three stages of a lead funnel are: acquiring leads, nurturing leads, and converting leads. Most people forget about acquiring leads, which is the first stage.
This is the most important part of your lead funnel.
Without this one stage, nothing else can happen
And when we talk about nothing else happening, we mean:
- Marketing that works.
- Sales that close.
- Content that converts.
- Emails that are delivered, opened, and read.
- Campaigns that create a positive ROI.
The bottom line is that lead generation is essential to the success of any business. If you’re not generating enough leads, it doesn’t matter how good your product or service is—you won’t be in business for long.
If you don’t have a lead funnel that works, it makes everything else you do much more difficult.
An effective lead funnel can create money, awareness, brand loyalty, and free up your time.
You may see other businesses succeeding and wonder what they’re doing that you’re not. They may have a larger budget to spend on Facebook ads. They may have a lot of successful case studies and create great content. And more importantly, their audience may engage with this content.
- Likes…
- Shares…
- Comments…
They have their Lead Generation dialed in!
They target a lot of people with their content, which leads to more people entering the top of their funnel. Their lead funnel is effective, which in turn fuels growth, creates more money, and frees up more time to continue growing and expanding their business.
The recipe to their success is no secret. The only thing they do differently is focus on all three stages of the lead funnel.
They appreciate that all three stages must work in order for the business to be successful.
Especially the first stage of the lead funnel.
Without this first part, nothing else matters!
Creating the Top of Funnel
What does the top of funnel refer to? The top of funnel refers to activities and campaigns that focus on the initial stage of lead generation: targeting your audience, reaching them, and ensuring they take action.
All three three stages of the lead generation process need to work together in order for it to be effective.
So, what are those 3 stages?
- Top of Funnel (TOFU)
- Middle of Funnel (MOFU)
- Bottom of Funnel (BOFU)
As a marketer, your goal is to attract as many leads into your sales funnel as possible. This includes the Awareness and Discovery stages (Top of Funnel), where you engage potential customers with educational content to build trust. Finally, you turn leads into customers by offering a valuable product or service (Bottom of Funnel; Purchase and Loyalty stages).
There is an acceptance that not everyone can be converted and that there will be a decrease in leads and engagement.
A well-functioning lead funnel will result in more conversions, freeing up time and money to invest in growth.
It ALL begins with your top of funnel marketing.
You establish a relationship with a new lead in the upper funnel. This is more difficult to do now than in the past because there is more competition online and in the real world.
The competition brings many opportunities.
That’s what we focus on in this article.
The opportunity to create:
- a top of funnel marketing strategy that stands out!
- top of funnel content that creates massive brand awareness.
- a top of funnel marketing machine that generates new leads.
An effective top of funnel marketing strategy is important, but it won’t solve all your problems. Without a well-designed lead funnel, you will have to put in a lot of effort to generate leads, rather than having the process happen automatically.
If you want to stand out for the right reasons, you need to focus on creating top of funnel content.
Creating the Middle of the Funnel
After you have gathered data from your target audience and your competitors, you can start creating content for the middle of the funnel. As mentioned earlier, there are many types of content you can use for this stage of the funnel.
There are two main types of middle of funnel content that are popular : ebooks and email. These are easy to create and set up.
To create your ebook, you will need four items: the ebook itself, the landing page where readers can access it, the thank-you page for those who sign up, and the email delivering the ebook.
You can also create extra forms of promotion for your ebook, like popups that appear all over your website.
Your second option is to create a mini-ebook. The first option is to create a comprehensive guide on a topic your audience will find interesting and informative. This guide should include all of the relevant information on the topic. The second option is to create a shorter ebook on the same topic.
An example is a resource that provides detailed instructions on how to gain followers, when to post, how to use hashtags, and other advanced tactics like tracking your analytics.
If you have an ebook that covers everything on a certain topic, you can use it to create blog posts focused on specific aspects of that topic. Then, you can use the traffic from those blog posts to generate leads for the ebook.
It’s also a good idea to set up other types of opt-in forms on your website, like popups, sliders, header forms, header bars, and end-of-post opt-in forms. That way you can convert traffic from other parts of your website without having to send it all to landing pages.
After someone signs up for your lead magnet, they are redirected to a thank you or confirmation page.
The purpose of a sign-up confirmation email is to assure the reader that they have successfully signed up, help you track conversion rates, and offer extra space to promote your products.
After you set up the thank you page, you should set up goals in your Google or other Analytics account to track the conversion rate of your ebook landing page, as well as the conversion rate of other pages on your website. Doing so will help you determine how effective your ebook landing page is in comparison to other pages on your website, and allow you to make necessary changes to improve your website’s overall performance.
It is now time to create an email sequence for your leads. In the first email you will send to your leads, you will attach the PDF they signed up for. However, do not just send a basic email with only the PDF attached. Share some extra tips that are not found in the PDF. Additionally, promote a product that is related to the topic. This will help to convert some of the hot traffic into customers.
The first four emails should provide free content to nurture the lead, while the last email can promote a product while providing educational information.
However, do not discontinue emailing after that initial period. The former Head of Marketing Automation at Leadpages, Chris Davis, discovered that 50 percent of their customers convert from being a stranger to a customer within the first four weeks.
It is advisable to create a new email sequence that is sent out once or twice a week over a period of a few months, after the initial email sequence has ended.
It’s important to keep track of what readers do after receiving your email, like whether they clicked on any links, opened the email, replied, visited any related websites, or took any other desired action. Doing this will help you figure out which leads prefer which types of content, so you can send them more of what they’re interested in and increase the likelihood that they’ll take the desired action.
This part of the funnel is designed to convert hot and warm traffic into leads. Many of those leads will be undecided about whether to purchase from you. The bottom of the funnel is designed to convert more of that hot and warm traffic, as well as some of the cold traffic, into customers.
Creating the Bottom of the Funnel
People who are interested in your product but are trying to decide if you are worth the investment are at the bottom of the funnel. They just need some more content that is focused on their interests. If you have segmented your list by their interests, you will know what type of content to provide them and when.
Content that is typically used at the bottom of the funnel includes case studies, webinars, and product comparison posts. You can find out more about how to create this type of content below.
Case studies are an effective way to show your leads how your products or services have helped other customers. By detailing the problems your customers faced before using your product, and how things changed for the better after they purchased it, you can give your leads a realistic idea of what to expect if they decide to do business with you.
Indochino, a landing page platform client, got 800+ showroom bookings, sold 40 suits, and got 750+ newsletter sign ups within nine months by using Unbounce’s software.
The article also included a video interview with Indochino’s Director of Acquisition, Lisa Craveiro, to add extra credibility.
If a lead is not converting, Unbounce can email them links to case studies that will boost the lead’s “social proof.”
The message includes a call to action at the bottom, urging people to take immediate action.
You can use webinars to nurture leads when a case study won’t be sufficient. Webinars are live events that people usually love to attend. You can demo your product and provide useful content for leads at a webinar.
Webinars are a great way for businesses to find success. For example, Mention was able to convert 53 percent of people they sent to their webinar landing page into registrants. They generated $10,000 in sales within two hours of the live webinar.
Individuals who are interested in your product will often research what similar items are offered by your competitors. They will be looking to see if there are any products with better features, more competitive pricing, or more favorable reviews. To convince potential customers that your product is better than what your competitors have to offer, you should create “Vs pages” which compare the features of your product against those of your competition. The goal is to show that your product is superior to the alternatives.
One example is the Intercom Vs Drift page. Both companies offer live chat, but Intercom created a Vs page to show you why they believe Intercom is better than Drift.
The website also includes signup forms throughout the page to encourage visitors to take action.
If you create an effective landing page, you can persuade many potential customers to make a purchase, as people who find this type of content are likely to be ready to spend money. They just want to know which option is better before they finalize the purchase.
If you want to generate a lot of customers, you should create all three types of content for all three stages of your funnel and present them to your leads at the right time.
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