This blog concludes our series on marketing funnels. To read about building your marketing funnel, generating more leads, and nurturing those leads, please click on the appropriate link. 

This week we are going to focus on the bottom of the funnel. The bottom of the funnel is where all of your hard work literally pays off. This is where you turn those leads that you generated and nurtured into sales. This is where potential customers become paying customers. This is where you (hopefully) turn a paying customer into a repeat customer. 

That is why the bottom of the funnel is so important. You have to be ready to convert those potential customers into revenue. Otherwise all your hard work will be for not. 

We believe many businesses struggle with this part of the funnel because they have not created an effective and efficient process to turn leads into revenue. It’s not enough to get your potential customers to the bottom of your funnel. 

You have to be ready to escort them through the process. This will make them feel confident in their buying decision. In turn this will increase your chances of turning a new customer into a repeat buyer and having them send you referrals. 

Let’s look at how you can prepare yourself and your customers to go through the bottom of the funnel.

Qualify Your Leads

One of the first things you want to do is to qualify your leads. This means analyzing your leads in a couple of ways:

• First, you want to see who is more likely to make a purchase and who needs more time. This will help you determine how to nurture the lead. If a potential customer’s need appears to be more urgent, then you can deliver information that is more appropriate for someone who is ready to buy now. If a person seems interested, but their need is not as pressing, then you can deliver a drip campaign aimed at getting the person more familiar with you, your organization, and your offerings. 
• Second, you can qualify the lead by which product or service they are most likely to need. If you are a general contractor and someone approaches you for a potential job remodeling their bathroom, then you would want to send them information pertaining to remodeling bathrooms. 

The key here is to find out the needs of your audience and the urgency of those needs so you can deliver marketing content that best addresses their needs. You can learn this information by conducting surveys or asking your employees to get this information whenever they interact with a potential customer. 

Focus On Solving Problems

We just touched on this with respect to understanding and addressing the needs of your audience. It helps to remember that your audience is not interested in a salesperson. What they are interested in, what is of value to them, is answers and solutions to their problems. 

Your goal in interacting with your audience should be to be a resource and problem solver. By doing this you will become an organization they know, like, and eventually trust. 

At that point the sale is almost guaranteed. The only thing you have to do is wait for the need to become urgent and be ready to process the sales. 

Make Sure To Follow Up

Follow up is an area where we see many small businesses struggle with. It’s understandable as there are many things that need to be done in a day and it is easy for a day to go by before remembering to return someone’s call or email or to answer a question on social media. 

However, proper and timely follow up is a MUST. If a potential customer reaches out with a question, concern, or anything then it could mean they are ready to make a purchase. They might just need a couple concerns smoothed out and then they are ready to move forward. 

This is where you have to act, because the potential customer’s need is not going anywhere. And if it is pressing enough, then they may go to your competition to get it addressed. If this is a lead that you generated and nurtured, then you just did all that work to make a sale for your competitor. 

No matter how busy you are, you must make time to follow up on any engagement you see from your audience. 

Track Results

As you work to convert leads to sales, you might try different tactics, tools, or methods to see what works best for you. That is good. This is what you should do. But as you do this, make sure you track your results and periodically go back to review them. 

Do not trust raw sales data as that does not always provide a full picture of what is going on. Rather look at how many leads are being generated each month, how many make it to a sales page or to a salesperson, and how many sales are closed. 

Study these numbers to see if you can determine where any improvements can be made. This should be an ongoing process. Your business will constantly need to evolve to meet customer demands, so you should be ready to make the appropriate changes to make sure you are operating at optimum levels. 

Communicate With Your Team

There is not much to say about this last one. Communication is so important at all levels of your business. Closing sales is just another example. Make sure you communicate any goals you have, processes that you are updating, promotions that you plan to run, or any issues that you might anticipate coming up and how you want your staff to address them. 

The key here is to make sure that everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goals.

The bottom of the funnel is where you begin to take your business from where you are now to where you want to be. This is where all the hard work you have done designing your marketing funnel, generating leads, and nurturing those leads pays off. Preparing yourself, your staff, and your customers for this part of the funnel is key to making closing a sale a smooth and enjoyable experience for all involved.