Improve Sales Using a Funnel

Most of us, if not all, know that marketing is the bloodline of a business and one common goal for marketing is to drive customers towards the business. There's a lot of people out there but the question is, "How would you make them spend money on your offerings?"

We can compare the business to a bottle that is left outside on a rainy day and raindrops would symbolize customers. The bottle, alone, would normally catch raindrops without exerting any effort on it. Though, we could speed up the process by using a funnel so we could catch more drops.

Same thing applies to business. Marketing strategies would serve as our funnel to drive more customers towards the business. These customers would later convert into revenues for the business. Most marketing strategies are based on a basic marketing concept -- AIDA.

Under this marketing model, marketing effort is split into 4 stages: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.

Attention / Awareness

This is the first step of marketing efforts. Implementing something catchy is definitely a good way to make your target market listen to what you are about to say. This explains why advertisers use humor, tag lines, and even sexy models. These attention-getting strategies should be used sparingly though because if not, it might grab the focus that is intended to be on your message. 

Interest

Now that you have your audience, it's time for you to present to them your message. To make them interested, focus more on benefits that they could derive from your product / service. Instead of focusing on presentation of features, use WIFMs. Your audience would most likely ask, "What's in It For Me?". So might as well provide the answers upfront.

Desire / Decision

After making your audience interested, make them realize that they want your offering and lead them into deciding to buy what you are offering.

Action

This is the moment that we've all been waiting for -- conversion. This is the point where your audience would actually buy. Take note though that this is not something that happens on it's own. We should never forget to provide the customer with means / information on how they could buy the product. One of the worst thing that a marketer could possibly do is to leave an interested customer clueless on how / where to avail the product.

AIDA could be split into different business encounters but aggressive marketing normally integrates the whole process into a single encounter that is split into segments. Regardless if you are an aggressive marketer or not, one thing is for sure. This marketing model, if used efficiently, would definitely lead into the progress of a business.